Lawrence Schools Responds to Graduation Rate Report

Responding to a report of disappointing graduation rates, Lawrence Schools Superintendent Gary Schall and other administrators held a talk last Monday to “isolate the problem and grasp the essence of it.”

Schall said the district isn’t attempting to “excuse failure” but to look at the “faces behind the statistics.”

Sixty-two students out of 252 did not graduate in June. Seventeen students will graduate in August, another 15 will take a fifth year and seven will seek a GED.

A factor in the district’s graduation rate is its large population of Latino students, some of whom do not speak English as their first language. About 45 percent of ESL students hold “adult-like” jobs such as gardening, factory work and construction, according to Veronica Ortiz, a Lawrence High guidance counselor and the only Latina staff member of the district. These students feel the need to work either due to pressures from home or the need to help their single parent, or they live on their own.

“They have to worry about adult-like things,” Ortiz said. “These are things students shouldn’t have to think about. We know a student’s main priority is to be a student, but for these students it’s to survive.”

Some students are not legal citizens, causing additional stress. Ortiz said many of these students have a misconception that they cannot attend college.

“We can have success. These students are fighters,” Ortiz said. “We as a community should find ways to help them.”

To help raise the rates, the district will introduce new initiatives: parent advocates for at-risk students, evening programs for regents and GED review, new welcome procedures for new students and revised retention policies.

Students will now be held accountable for their grades in the middle school, and could be left back in eighth grade if they fail in summer school.

“There’s this mindset that somehow it will happen in high school,” said middle school principal Willis Perry. “Some students don’t feel responsible for their actions. If we don’t put a policy in place, this will be a continual pattern in the high school.”

Heidi Beyer, co-president of Central Council PTA, applauded this move, but said that elementary school students should also be held accountable.

At the end of the evening, administrators and parents engaged in a lengthy conversation, where they agreed there should be more outreach to Latino parents and a larger emphasis on speaking English outside of school.