Dropout recovery in ECISD

Following the extension of a Sept. 26 deadline, ECISD is still working to identify students who have left school to get them back into district classrooms.

"Our efforts are still ongoing; we need to get more in, but they are still coming back slowly," Scott Randolph said. Randolph is the lead social worker for student assistance services.

Randolph said the district uses a number of methods to locate students, which he said is the hardest part. Workers may talk to friends or relatives of a student directly in order to find out a location. If a student moves, they still have to provide proof of the change as well as a different enrollment.

Yolanda Carr serves as instructional services director at Odessa High, and she said they are only about 2 percent from TEA's minimum completion (graduation) rate of 75 percent if they recover a few more students. She said OHS started with 336 students needing to be located at the beginning of the school year, and now they are down to 156 students still missing, less than half the original number.

That 75 percent mark is significant because it could make schools unacceptable or acceptable in next year's ratings. Randolph said the district still needs a few more students back at the high school level, though junior high is now below the state-maximum of a 2 percent dropout rate since the district stepped up efforts this year, including holding truancy court at the ECISD building.

"We've been quite successful, but we would like more," Carr said.

Like both high schools and affected junior high campuses, OHS has a system to try to recover students who have left school. Carr, like Randolph, said she has found personal contact to be very effective. She said they look to see if students are miscoded as dropouts first before making phone calls and going as groups to individual houses.

"Most of our success has come through knocking on doors," Carr said. Randolph said that when people went to look for one specific student recently, they found three others in the same house. Some have been found at a workplace.

The biggest challenge for Carr is to make sure all students pass the TAKS tests, for some students have met all graduation requirements except for a few TAKS sections. The district will be able to recruit those students back to have them pass the tests this year.

Hurricane Ike caused the Texas Education Agency to extend the deadline to bring student dropouts back into school after declaring a state education-related emergency. In addition, due to a few school district closings, TEA extended the deadline for the entire state to Oct. 24.

Randolph said he expects the district to hold another session of truancy court this fall.

CONTACT

>> If you need information on how to get back into school, contact student assistance services at 334-3728.