Challenge to Keep Students in School

By Thelma Melendez de Santa Ana

Later this week, the state Department of Education plans to release new data regarding school district dropout rates that’s much more accurate than what’s been used up until now. It actually tracks each student in a personally identifiable way to find out whether a student who leaves a school district just quits school all together or re-enrolls elsewhere, something that hasn’t always been clear in the past.

The good news is that close to 200 students who, under the old system, would have been thought to be dropouts from Pomona Unified School District have been found to be attending school in other districts. That’s good for them and for PUSD.

What remains a great concern to our school board and me, however, is that a significant number of our students are still not finishing school. Our district’s dropout rate remains slightly higher than both the state and county averages. The figure, as determined by this more accurate method, is better than it was, but it’s nothing to celebrate, as a school district or as a community.

Students who have dropped out were on my mind last month as we awarded diplomas and I congratulated graduates. I wondered where they are now. What are they doing? What’s in their futures? And how could we have served them better? Parents in our district have already given us some ideas about how to better serve their children, and we have already implemented some of their solutions.

At a series of very well-attended community meetings in the fall of 2006 and again this past spring, parents told us that they want more education options for their children. In response, we created two new and very popular schools: Cortez Mathematics and Science Magnet School, and the School of Extended Educational Options.

Parents want to know that their children’s educations are rigorous, relevant and engaging, and that it will lead to college or gainful employment. In response, we created a Reaching, Teaching, and Learning Committee comprised of various community stakeholders to help us guide instruction for all students. Parents also want what they have a fundamental right to expect: that they and their children are treated respectfully by a welcoming and inclusive staff and school system that understands that we exist to serve their needs, not the other way around. In response, we made improved school climate one of our target goals, with a new districtwide expectation that teachers, administrators and others take personal responsibility for modeling respect for our students, parents and each other.

Parents also have told us that they want safe, secure, modern, and attractive schools in which our community can take pride. In response, we have hired more maintenance staff, made improvements where we can, and have worked to make sure all our support staff understand the role they play in supporting and improving student academic achievement. Our own audits have also given us direction in some areas. For example, we need to do more to include our special education division as a part of regular instruction, not keep it a system separate and apart from the Reaching, Teaching, and Learning we expect for all other students. We need a greater focus on helping our English-language learners become proficient in English – and not just in conversational language, but in academic English, the language they need to move forward with confidence to higher education and deeper understanding. We also need to pay more attention to the needs of our other underserved students, both those who struggle and those who are ready for much greater challenges.

We are now in the process of developing more small academies at our secondary schools, at which core curriculum will be delivered around a specific real-world career focus. Just last month, we formalized a partnership with Cal Poly Pomona and Western University of Health Sciences to create the Pomona Health Career Ladder, intended to identify elementary students who have the interest and the aptitude to pursue health care-related careers and guide them forward through PUSD, Cal Poly, and on to Western U.

These are just a few of the exciting changes we’re making at Pomona Unified, and they come none too soon. We must reduce the number of students who are choosing to give up on school, and, as we have done in the past, we ask the community for its help. The massive cuts to public-education funding from Sacramento are making it even harder for us to solve this problem alone. As a school district, we have to work with the community and with parents to help students stay in school and pursue their dreams. It is our collective moral responsibility to see all our students through to a successful completion of their journey with us, and off to a successful start on their next journey to college, work, and beyond.

In September we will welcome a new class of kindergartners, the class of 2021. They will come to us expecting our care, our patience and our most focused attention to their many needs. If we do what we know we must to serve them, then we may well see every one of them 13 years from now at their own graduations.

Thelma Melendez de Santa Ana is superintendent of Pomona Unified School District, which serves about 31,000 K-12 students and 17,000 adult learners in Pomona and Diamond Bar.

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