Out of all the home visits during Ector County ISD’s recovery walks, Director of Community Support Services Scott Randolph said 25 students were brought back into the fold.
Randolph added that they had a record turnout of volunteers to fan out around Odessa to find students who had dropped out of school.
Last year, they had one walk which was on a Saturday morning.
“This year, we increased it to three walks. We had a home base each night and the first night it was in Music City Mall and then we had teams out walking. And then on Saturday, our home base was here (at the Community Outreach Center). On the next Thursday, our home base was at Odessa College,” Randolph said.
The idea to have a home base and involving other organizations was new this year. Odessa College GED, Catholic Charities GED, Premier High School, Richard Milburn Academy and Acceleration Academies participated.
“… If kids wanted to just show up, they could show up there and we would try to get them an alternative type of schooling if that’s what they were looking for,” Randolph said.
He added that they had three or four people register there.
“But we were able to probably double what we did last year as far as recovering students. Now that’s not talking huge numbers. You’re talking 25 kids maybe that we were able to reengage this year out of all the home visits,” Randolph said.
“In dropout world, that’s significant. People sometimes expect hundreds and then it’s just not the way it really works,” Randolph added.
At least half the stops yielded no answer, a vacant house or a person who didn’t know the person they were looking for.
“It’s just you’re out there getting a lot of dead ends,” Randolph said.
He added that it’s sometimes a symptom of a family in transition, a struggling family that is moving around a lot, struggling to make ends meet, having social issues at the house such as a child not listening, substance abuse or any of a myriad of items.
Randolph said they are going to try and expand on the recovery walks next year and do it even better.
“We wanted it to be a community wide event where people that hadn’t graduated would say, ‘Okay, there are some options here. Let me go check it out.’ We’d like that to increase next year, so not just the high school kids that had quit going, but if you’re 25 years old, and you didn’t get your degree, maybe come back to Odessa College or come back to Catholic Charities GED; more of a community not just a high school kid event; that was our goal,” he added.
The district can’t accept students past age 21 unless they have special needs.
But Odessa College and Catholic Charities don’t have an age limit.
Randolph said they have looked at having recovery walks more than once a year.
“I think January we may after the New Year, we might try to at least have one more. I think there’s always a need to recover dropouts and I think the people that go out and make those home visits, they’re not used to speaking to families out there, to see what they’re actually going through. I think (for) a lot of the people it was kind of eye-opening to see how this child is really struggling with these other major issues in their life. I can see where schools may have to provide for the family. The volunteers really seemed to enjoy it. They’re like, wow, that was really impactful,” he said.
Randolph noted that not everyone comes home to two parents and electricity on in the house.
“They come home and there’s no electricity, or maybe there’s one parent working a minimum wage job and they’ve got to figure it out themselves with no internet; a lot a lot of tough stories out there,” he added.
They do try to bring middle school students back, as well, but they are usually easier to find than high school students.
“… We can usually find those students and so we’re not as concerned because we can whittle that list down to a small number. It’s really the high schools that give us the significant numbers of real dropouts. Middle schools, they’re usually not really dropouts,” Randolph said.
They may have had a hard time registering, or they might need some paperwork.
“We can get those back in, but it’s really the high schoolers that are real dropouts,” Randolph said.
As of Monday morning, there were 538 students that were defined as dropouts.
“Typically, we will get that down to right around 200 …,” he added.
Without the recovery effort, Randolph said the number of dropouts would stay high.
“We started out with about 1,100 kids on the dropout list and those aren’t all dropouts. Those are kids that just dispersed over the summer and we’ve got to try to find them,” Randolph said.
Some of the students are enrolled in California or Colorado.
“And we haven’t gotten the records and so we’re still reconciling all those records,” he said.
The number will decrease to 200 to 300 students. Those are the ones that don’t want to return to school.
“… So we are trying all necessary means. We had our dropout recovery court Thursday also. We tried to do the positives. We had a car show. We tried to attract them to the car show. Then we had the welcome walks. We tried to say come see us. Let’s try to get you something else. The last phase is the truancy court. We’ve tried all these other means, so now we’ve got to get you to the court and see if the court can help. We have another truancy court this Thursday (Sept. 22) in the morning for dropouts,” he said.
Truancy Court is held in the main board room in the administration building. They call it the courtroom.
“The city prosecutor’s office has their staff there and the families are summoned to come in. The families come in and they are given the option to meet with our staff here. We talked to them about hey, you know what’s going on with Johnny? A lot of times they will produce evidence. Hey, I enrolled him in GED. Here’s my proof … so we’ll dismiss the case. We also have the two high schools present and Acceleration Academies present, so if they’re willing to enroll right then, we’ll enroll them right then,” Randolph said.
Last week, he said he thinks five students enrolled on the spot.
“That’s the whole goal. That’s what we started it as because a lot of times they would appear in court and then they would say okay go register at school, and they would disappear and they wouldn’t register. So we want to actually register them right there so that they can get a schedule and they can transition much easier back into school,” he said.
If parents don’t have proof of GED enrollment, the case will be left open and they’ll let the parents know the student has to be in school because the law says they have to complete the school year in which they turn 19. “Those are the only cases that we submitted. So usually the parent will take that next week to either get them into some alternative type program, or they’ll put them back in the high schools or they’ll do something else,” Randolph said.
If the case can’t be resolved, the parents will be fined, he said.
Some examples of why students drop out is if they get behind, don’t think they can catch up and get frustrated.
There are also social factors such has being pregnant, being homeless, getting crossways with their parents or getting kicked out of the house.
Randolph said kids may also run away and some of them get offers to work that are too good to pass up.
“So there are a lot of factors that push and pull them out of the schools,” he added.
ECISD Board of Trustees member Tammy Hawkins and Secretary Chris Stanley participated in the recovery walks.
Hawkins, who was Teen Court coordinator, said it was “fabulous.”
“… It was eye-opening to see where our children live. It was eye-opening to hear our children’s stories,” Hawkins said.
She added that everybody in the district should take part.
She added that she was privileged to have Superintendent Scott Muri walk with them.
Stanley agreed and said Executive Director of Leadership Robert Cedillo went along, too.
“That was amazing and there’s no easy answer. The kids that we met have dropped out for incredible reasons. There was no slacking. They were all heartfelt. We met a young lady who was having to go work at 7:30 in the morning; probably working full time. For me it was kind of a compassion exercise in understanding (what) these students are having to deal with to try and graduate,” Stanley said.
