[July 05, 2011] Valley school districts to guide dropout recovery network Tweet MCALLEN, Jul 05, 2011 (The Monitor - McClatchy-Tribune Information Services via COMTEX) -- A Boston-based non-profit group selected six Rio Grande Valley school districts to lead the state and nation's dropout recovery efforts as part of a new Back on Track to College Replication Network. Brownsville, Donna, Edinburg, La Joya, Pharr-San Juan-Alamo and San Benito schools eventually will share what they know draws "off-track" students back to school and onto a road to higher education, said Rebecca Wolfe, a program manager with Jobs for the Future, or JFF. The districts are in varying stages of development. "Some of them are pretty far along, like Donna (while) Brownsville has actually not even started their (dropout recovery) school just yet," Wolfe said. "This is not just about dropout recovery, though," she said. "It's about getting students back on track for some postsecondary education." The education and workforce training non-profit became familiar with each of these "high flier" districts -- as Wolfe described them -- as it helped the state distribute money for a dropout recovery pilot program. But those funds did not fare well in the cut-hungry legislative session that ended last week in Austin. So new grant money provided by the Open Society Foundations will help the six districts team with South Texas College and Texas State Technical College to offer former and potential dropouts a second chance. "We focus not only on finishing that high school diploma but having the chance to get all the college credits they can manage," said Lydia Gonzalez, principal at Donna's 3D Academy and liaison for the Network. "Most of the students will do dual enrollment to push them closer to higher education opportunities," she said, "and we will bus them all over to STC so they can become familiar with class work, the enrollment process, what college holds for their future." She said JFF already has helped her campus start a new college preparation center and will fund transportation for a recruiter who essentially knocks on dropouts' doors until they go back to class. And each of the district's efforts will parallel a very successful College, Career and Technology Academy in PSJA, where the dropout recovery campus has helped more than 700 former dropouts get a diploma. However, every school has a different student population with different needs, Wolfe said. So the Network -- along with an upcoming "Texas Back on Track" website -- will pool resources and district experiences for interested education officials throughout the state. "The big vision for this is once these demonstration sites are ready, we would have demonstration days," Wolfe said. "And we would invite six sites from, say, the Houston area (to) receive intense coaching. "All of that now depends on the available funding." -- Neal Morton covers education and general assignments for The Monitor. He can be reached at (956) 683-4472. To see more of The Monitor, or to subscribe to the newspaper, go to http://www.themonitor.com. Copyright (c) 2011, The Monitor, McAllen, Texas Distributed by McClatchy-Tribune Information Services. For more information about the content services offered by McClatchy-Tribune Information Services (MCT), visit www.mctinfoservices.com. [ Back To TMCnet.com's Homepage ]