Gary Thomas, Ed.D. County Superintendent

Superintendent's Message

Call To Action Targets County Dropout Rates

While there are a number of challenges we face in public education today, there's no greater priority than making sure our students stay in school and remain on track toward high school graduation. That's why, early in November, our County Schools office hosted the first community meeting as a "Call to Action" to target the issues of dropout and graduation rates.

Certainly, San Bernardino County is not alone with its concerns for improving its graduation rates and lowering its dropout rates. Across the state and around the nation, schools and districts are faced with the grim statistics showing far too many of our students leaving their educations far too early.

In our region, our economic well-being and the long-term viability of our populace is tied to making sure that more of our students achieve academically, graduate from high school and attend post-secondary educational opportunities.

Frankly, our region offers plenty of advantages in our efforts to reverse these trends toward higher grad rates and lower dropouts. First off, we have a variety of strong post-secondary institutions like Cal State San Bernardino and UC Riverside, as well as Loma Linda University, University of Redlands, La Sierra University and Cal Baptist University. In addition, there also are strong community colleges programs in our county in Barstow, Chaffey, Copper Mountain, San Bernardino and Victor Valley. These institutions, combined with other post-secondary schools and colleges in our close proximity, are the envy of most other places in the world for access to high quality higher education.

On top of opportunities for higher education, our large population base provides an ample landscape to mine fertile minds. Even with the tough economic circumstances of the last several years, San Bernardino County is still home to more than 420,000 students in 33 school districts, which could be a tremendous economic engine if we can bring about stronger grad rates. Already, our schools offer tremendous career-preparation opportunities through state modeled Regional Occupational Programs like those at County Schools, Colton-Redlands-Yucaipa and Baldy View, as well as rigorous and relevant programs like the Alliance for Education, Smaller Learning Communities and Advancement Via Individual Determination (AVID).

Still, even with these advantages, our most current county dropout rate for the 2007-08 academic year is a four-year rate of 22.8 percent, compared to the state average of 18.9 percent. Conversely, our graduation rate in the county is on the low side, 74.3 percent for 2007-08. Again, we trail state grad averages, which are 80.2 percent.

That is why we have called upon leaders in business and labor, education and government, community and faith-based organizations to help us develop strategies and resources to lower dropout rates and raise achievement so that more of our students can graduate. I was pleased to see such a positive turnout to our first meeting on Nov. 10, as well as the positive feedback and the information shared by the individuals who attended. The group plans to meet again in January to review proposals made at the meeting and move forward with strategies and resources to offer schools.

One of the contributors to the meeting was Betty Brooks, a former County Schools' teacher of the year who is a nursing instructor in ROP at Fontana High School. "We are all lifetime learners in this room. We need to make sure all of the students in our schools today become lifetime learners as well," Brooks said.

These are high stakes for our communities, and why it is so necessary that we have active partnerships from groups and individuals who are committing themselves to providing support for all of our students. We need to reverse the dropout and graduation trends to remain a globally competitive and economically viable region that offers a highly skilled and educated workforce.