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AASD, Tyrone tackle dropout rate

School districts join initiative to re-engage at risk students

In the back of the classrooms, empty chairs sit through lessons that students should be hearing, but the students aren’t there.

“You can’t teach an empty chair,” Altoona Area Superintendent Charles Prijatelj said.

There were 72 dropouts in Altoona Area School District in the 2016-17 school year, which is the latest school year recorded by the Pennsylvania Department of Education.

Overall, the dropout rate for the state is 1.72 percent. At 72 dropouts, Altoona Area’s dropout rate is 2 percent, which was a slight increase from 70 dropouts in 2015-16.

Tyrone Area School District had the second highest dropout rate in the county at 1.57 percent or 13 students. That represents a slight decrease from 1.90 percent or 16 students in the 2015-16 school year for Tyrone Area.

Both Altoona Area and Tyrone Area are partnering with the Central Pennsylvania Graduation Initiative to re-engage students who are at risk of dropping out. They are doing it, in part, by giving students what they want — the opportunity to get out of school.

On Monday, Altoona Area students in the William P. Kimmel Alternative School began piloting the initiative’s work program that offers school credit and pay. Students started out by cleaning the city’s sidewalks. Their work to beautify the city will continue through the summer, said the Central Pennsylvania Graduation Initiative’s Executive Director Rick Zupon. Zupon was out working with the students on Monday.

The program pays the students $8 per hour. As they advance, they will have opportunities for internships with local companies, Zupon said.

The initiative started three years ago and is a nonprofit sister organization of Blair Family Solutions. The first partner school district was Tyrone Area.

Currently, from both school districts, there will be 20 students working through the summer.

“They have to monitor their grades to be able to get out of school early two days a week and make money and earn school credit,” Zupon said.

There is a counseling phase to the graduation initiative that precedes the work program.

Students are paid through PA CareerLink and at $8 an hour, they could make $1,900 by the end of the summer.

“It’s a different opportunity than the traditional school day,” Zupon said. “It gives them a different outlook on education.”

Through the program, the students will graduate not only with work experience but also with knowledge about how to write a resume, and project proposals — for instance, for a landscaping business, Altoona’s Prijatelj said.

“The Kimmel program in general serves those for whom the traditional education model doesn’t work because of a discipline problem,” he said. “But kids don’t deliberately want to fail. It’s just when they don’t succeed, they get more and more frustrated, and that’s what we see.”

The Central Pennsylvania Graduation Initiative has given students at risk of dropping out a sense of purpose in school, Tyrone Area counselor Matt Kimberlin said.

“It is getting them reconnected to school and identifying jobs. We’ve seen an increase in confidence in themselves, school attendance and developing work skills,” he said.

“Students start to see a purpose. They are not good sitting for eight hours a day but put them in the workforce and it’s a totally different kid. They are invested and it means something to them.”

Kimberlin said the dropout statistics are “huge” for Blair County.

“After dropping out, it’s hard to find a job,” he said, adding that is not good for the individual or the community.

He said the work program shows students the reward of doing a good day’s work.

“And it gives them the confidence that they have a bright future ahead of them,” he said.

Prijatelj said the initiative is a solid approach to decreasing dropouts.

“While they are getting these work experiences, they are getting reading, writing and arithmetic, which will make them successful when they graduate,” he said.

Mirror Staff Writer Russ O’Reilly is at 946-7435.

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