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Saturday, March 31, 2001
Harlingen finds key to helping kids
KEYS alternative school helps cut dropout rate
By Jeremy Schwartz
Caller-Times

David Adame/Caller-Times

Jesus Chavez, the Harlingen Consolidated Independent School District’s superintendent, visits a math class at KEYS Academy. The district started this school to help dropouts return to school. Chavez credits the school’s success to everyone in the community offering support to the students.

HARLINGEN - Last year, Sandy Lopez became pregnant and left high school, missing her entire ninth-grade year. "I just didn't want to be there," the 17-year-old mom said.
   With the prospect of repeating ninth grade looming, Sandy was a prime candidate to become a dropout.
   Statistically, most students in Harlingen who drop out do so in ninth grade and being kept back increases the likelihood that a student will drop out by almost 50 percent, according to a national study.
   Sandy said that what saved her was an innovative program at Harlingen's alternative high school - called KEYS Academy - that allows students to go through both ninth and 10th grades in one year. Because of the program, Sandy will be able to rejoin her friends next year.

David Adame/Caller-Times

Two students raise their hands during class at Harlingen’s KEYS Academy. The dropout rate in Harlingen has decreased significantly over the past 10 years. In 1991, the district had an annual dropout rate of more than 15 percent. Ten years later, it was 1.4 percent. Community involvement and several programs have contributed to the lower rate, district officials said.

   "It's such a relief," Sandy said. "When I'm done I know I'll be on my way to being a senior."
   KEYS Academy is one of the cornerstones of the Harlingen Consolidated Independent School District's dropout prevention strategy, a series of concerted efforts that has given the Rio Grande Valley district one of the lowest dropout rates in the state.
   While other Valley districts have four-year dropout rates that hover in the high teens and low 20s, Harlingen's rate was 4.9 percent for the class of 1999, less than half of the Corpus Christi Independent School District's 11.1 percent.
   Harlingen Superintendent Jesus Chavez, who the Corpus Christi school board has voted to proceed with hiring as its new superintendent, said his district's success with dropouts stems from a comprehensive approach to the problem.

David Adame/Caller-Times

Jesus Chavez walks the halls of KEYS Academy. The Harlingen Consolidated Independent School District says the district’s low dropout rate is the result of the academy and the involvement of the community.

   "It's the district, the city, the county, the business community, the police department, it's the entire community," he said.
   "You put all those elements together and that's what allows us to keep kids in school and have them succeed."
   Harlingen's approach to dropouts takes a variety of interlocking forms, including:

KEYS Academy: The alternative school offers students accelerated classes in which they can finish the seventh and eighth grades, as well as ninth and 10th, in one year.
   "They can catch up and they don't have that stigma of 'I'm behind, I'm not with my friends,'" Chavez said.
   The school also offers General Educational Development test classes, through which 48 potential dropouts earned their high school equivalency last year.

Aggressive dropout recovery efforts: A team of seven attendance officers identify all district students who have withdrawn from school and make regular home visits to try to convince them to come back. Counselors and parents also make home visits to dropouts.
   "We show an interest in them," said Jose Luis Cavazos, director for parental involvement and dropout prevention.
   "We never let go. We want them back in school. We let them know how they can make up credits, we find alternatives for them."

Support for at-risk students: A group of Harlingen businesses contributes about $70,000 a year to the Harlingen Area Education Foundation.
   About half of that goes to support programs for at-risk students in middle and high school. Called New Horizons and New Directions, the programs act like clubs for the students and counselors take members on retreats to area universities and bring in motivational speakers. College and university students serve as mentors for the students.

Public Housing Centers: Partnering with the Harlingen and Cameron County Housing Authorities, the district operates five Family Learning Centers at the housing projects.
   Students who live there - often from poorer families and thus more susceptible to dropping out - can get help with their homework, work on computers and find mentors.
   "Some kids feel isolated and we want to prevent that," said Linda Wade, assistant superintendent for curriculum and instruction.

Parental involvement: The district operates a nationally recognized parenting program that includes parent centers on each campus where parents can volunteer.
   The district also holds parenting sessions throughout the year and administrators bring parents to conferences around the state. Cavazos says up to 8,000 parents get involved with the district per year.
   "It touches those parents who otherwise wouldn't want to come to the schools," Chavez said.

   State recognition

   The result of the multi-pronged approach has helped earn the district a recognized rating from the state the past four years.
   But a decade ago, this Rio Grande Valley city was struggling with one of the highest dropout rates in the state.
   According to district officials, in 1991 the district had an astronomical annual dropout rate of 15 percent.
   By comparison, the district's 2000 annual dropout rate - which measures how many students drop out in a given year - was 1.4 percent.
   "(In 1991) the district and the community came together and said let's do something about it," said Chavez, who came to the district from Round Rock in 1995.
   "Since then, there has been a continuous focus on programs for at-risk kids."
   A community effort

Kimiko Fieg/Caller-Times

Click image for larger version.

   William Jorn, the chairman of the Harlingen Area Educational Foundation and vice-president and general manager of the local Telemundo TV station, said business leaders realized the dropout was hurting the city's economy.
   "They looked at the greatest problem facing the district, which was the dropout rate," Jorn said. "They decided it didn't matter what you do for a school system if the kids aren't there.
   "Kids dropping out of high school are the greatest drain on a community. They provide a surplus of untrained, uneducated workers."
   Today the foundation counts among its members the president of the Harlingen Chamber of Commerce, the owner of an insurance agency, representatives from Valley Baptist Medical Center and the owner of dairy farms among others.
   Gerry Fleuriet, the vice-chair of the foundation and district board president, said the foundation was the result of an understanding that the school district couldn't win the battle against dropouts alone.
   "There was a recognition that no one entity in a community can be successful by itself," she said.
   Wade, who has been with the district for almost two decades, said most of the district's dropout programs were born out of that time, including KEYS Academy.
   KEYS offers opportunity
   Yolanda Gutierrez, principal of KEYS Academy since its inception, said the district did a survey and discovered most dropouts left school in ninth grade, followed by seventh grade.
   As a reaction to that, the district instituted the two-in-one grade completion option, in which students work at an accelerated pace and finish a year's worth of work in a semester.
   KEYS Academy, which stands for Keep Education Your Solution, also offers GED classes, designed to help dropouts and potential dropouts.
   "Some are referred by the high school and some have dropped out and decided there's nothing out there," Gutierrez said.
   Amanda Garcia, 19, dropped out of school in eighth grade, had a baby, and realized she didn't have the skills to make it in the workforce.
   "I just didn't have the basics," she said. "I thought it would be hard to go back to high school."
   The GED program allows her more individualized instruction and the ability to work at her own pace.
   Garcia, who also works full-time at a pawnshop, hopes to finish by May and enroll in the nursing program at a local community college.
   Fine-tuning the programs
   Since the early 1990's, district officials have worked to fine tune dropout prevention programs.
   "We look at the data and look for gaps," Wade said. "We look at where we are losing students and how we can match the needs of those students."
   One recent trouble spot has been the district's disciplinary alternative school, which has since been restructured to be more motivational for troublesome students.
   Chavez, who was in Corpus Christi this week to meet with local school officials, said each district must attack its dropout problem in its own way.
   What worked in Harlingen won't necessarily work in Corpus Christi, he said.
   But what is a prerequisite for dropout prevention is community involvement in the problem, he said.
   "It needs the commitment of everybody - the superintendent, the teachers, all the entities," he said.
   "And we're all going to benefit from it. The entire community gets the benefits: better-educated students, less juvenile crime, more support for community programs. They're all byproducts."

Staff writer Jeremy Schwartz can be reached at 886-3779 or by e-mail at schwartzj@caller.com

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