Local News
Identifying Challenges
Dropouts: Bullying, teen pregnancy seen as factors that lead kids to drop out.
Date: 1/15/2010
Posted by Garden City Public Schools USD #457 on 1/18/2010
By MONICA SPRINGER
Programs for students that identify bullying and how to handle it, help decrease teen pregnancy and help increase graduation rates are needed to help curb the growing dropout rate in southwest Kansas.
(Brad Nading/Telegram - A group of Garden City High School students make their way to their next class Thursday in one of the hallways at the school.)
(Brad Nading/Telegram - Garden City High School students make their way through the main hallway Thursday during the first lunch period.)Those were some of the conclusions reached by a group of southwest Kansas residents who attended the Kansas DropIns' southwest region dropout prevention post summit Thursday afternoon at Garden City Community College. The summit was hosted by the Kansas Department of Health and Environment, along with other public and private entities.
Kansas DropIns hosted a pre summit in Garden City and several other cities in September, when each region identified a list of reasons why kids drop out of school.
On Thursday, the group identified four main reasons kids in southwest Kansas drop out of school out of a list of 23 reasons identified in September: a lack of parental involvement and support, gangs and substance abuse, bullying and peer pressure and teenage pregnancy.
Jessica Noble, executive policy analyst with the KDHE, said the goal of the post summit was to let each area of the state know what other cities identified as problems and to identify solutions to those problems.
At the three-hour long meeting on Thursday, participants broke out into groups of four and identified the challenges of keeping children in school in southwest Kansas. Students, teachers and principals from Ulysses, Liberal, Garden City and other cities attended the summit.
The group that focused on bullying wanted to decrease bullying by 10 percent in a year by providing training for students. The group also wanted to involve the community in the training. Building strong adults will help build strong kids, the group said.
The group that focused on teen pregnancy determined that those programs need to focus on supporting teenage fathers. Many teen pregnancy programs, they said, tend to focus more on teen mothers.
Sheila Koop, principal at Ulysses Career Learning Academy (UCLA) a charter school in Ulysses, said she attended the summit with students to learn more about the issues pertaining to dropouts.
UCLA is a school designed to help dropouts or high school students who are at risk of dropping out, Koop said.
Several UCLA students attended the meeting, including Adan Marquez, Manuel Acosta and Ramon Corona, all seniors, and Kelsie Berger, a sophomore.
Marquez said he thought the parenting class for teenage fathers was a good idea.
The four students cited problems such as bullying and gangs as reasons they chose to attend the charter school opposed to a regular school. They said they attended the post summit to let the state know why kids drop out of school.
"We've been around all of that," Marquez said of the issues the meeting addressed. "We can let (Kansas DropIns) know what students really face."
The group of 30 people discussed two more issues: Substance abuse and gangs and lack of parental involvement.
Noble said lack of parental involvement is an issue that all areas identified as a problem.
Letting parents know when their child does something right would be a good start to getting parents to trust schools, the group said, instead of the parent only being called when something isn't right.
Garden City was the first place to mention bullying as a major problem in schools, Noble said, of the four post summits Kansas DropIns has held.
The substance abuse and gangs group also wanted to decrease activity in schools by 10 percent by providing drug and violence education to numerous grade levels, and possibly install a leadership class at schools.
Kansas DropIns has held four post summits and will hold four more.
After all of the post summits are completed at the end of this month, Noble will compile a final report bringing together all of the challenges each area in the state faces when it comes to dropouts. The report will serve as an action plan for the state, Noble said.
After the final report is finished, Noble said, Kansans will be able to go www.kansasdropins.org, and view each area of the state to see what issues are facing each community.