Document text
Steep rise in dropouts is a puzzler By VICKI GUARINO Medford high school students have been disappearing at a record pace this fall. School officials are hoping a new tracking effort will tell them why. The answers, they say, could lead to new classes, activities and services to get more kids to stay in school. Since September, a former North Medford High School dean, Bill Storey, has been chasing down the long-absent. He goes to their homes, talks to their friends. He tries first to cajole kids back into the classroom. If that doesn't work, he tries to find out what is keeping them away. If nothing else, Storey tries simply to develop some kind of relationship with dropouts, some connection that perhaps eventually will bring them back to school. Storey has been battling a steep enrollment decline. Since the school year began Sept. 7, North and South Medford high schools have lost more than 130 students, the sharpest dropoff in many years, according to district records. Although enrollment typically drops over the course of the entire school year, it hasn't fallen off so fast before. Administrators say they need the information about dropouts that Storey is collecting to address the problem. "We simply don't know enough about what's happening with our kids," says Dan Zaklan, Medford's director of secondary education. In the past several years, the high schools have launched special programs, new activities, classes and labs, and even night school to retain students. Those efforts have helped reduce the dropout rate, Zaklan says. For instance, about 250 students are enrolled in night classes. Zaklan says many of those students wouldn't be in school at all if not for the after-hours program. At this point, however, administrators don't know what more they can do to retain students. "I'm really at a loss right now," Zaklan says. "Hopefully, this data will show us. "Then when we start thinking about solutions to the problem, we can work with real data." Generally, Medford's dropout rate has been at or below state averages. But last year, schools saw enrollment drop off steadily after Christmas. By the end of the 1998-99 school year, high school enrollment had dropped by more than 9 percent -- from 3,682 students in September 1998 to 3,348 students in June 1999. So last spring administrators decided to have Storey go after the missing students beginning in the fall. As it happens, Storey's work has coincided with an even sharper drop in enrollment. After just two months of classes, the two high schools had lost more than 3 percent of enrollment. Whether the decline will subside, and 1999-2000 enrollment results will be no worse than previous years, is unknown. For the immediate future, Storey has managed to get a few Medford teenagers back to school, but progress has be tough. Storey has returned 62 kids to school, but only 30 are still enrolled. Mail Tribune Copyright � The Mail Tribune 1999, Medford, Oregon USA