A spike in dropouts and absences has overtaken Colorado schools. What will keep more kids in class?
When students stop showing up to school in San Luis, school often shows up to them.
A district team that includes Principal Kimba Rael, the assistant principal, the restorative justice coach and a counselor head out to a student’s home if the student has been absent and is not responding to phone calls, or if they’re trying to meet with a parent to create an attendance plan.
And keeping the rest of the Centennial School District R-1’s 160 students on pace with school involves every staff member with a spare moment, including those who help run an alternative education program for just three students, including one teen who is dangerously close to dropping out.
“It’s hard to allocate the kind of human resources that are really needed to support these students when you’re talking about three students,” Rael said. “But those three students matter, and we have to find a way.”
Centennial School District is one of about 90 Colorado school districts where the dropout rate jumped in 2022, with the state’s overall dropout rate climbing by 0.4 percentage points from 2021 to 2.2%.