Dropout Task Force Makes Recommendations

More than a quarter of Metro School students don’t graduate with a high school diploma. Today, a city task force issued twenty pages of recommendations for identifying and helping potential dropouts. Mayor Karl Dean says work has already begun on enacting several of them.

For instance, the juvenile justice department will open a so-called “Attendance Center” this fall to work with kids who regularly skip school. And work is underway to build a coordinated system of after school programs for middle schoolers across the district, in hopes of preventing kids from slipping into trouble.

The changes come while the district is searching for a new director, half of the school board is up for reelection, and the state has stepped in to mandate certain changes in the way the central office is run. Mayor Dean says that’s no reason to wait.

“A kid in second grade, a kid in seventh grade, they have only one year to go through those classes, they get one shot at it. So you can’t wait, you can’t say we’re gonna hire a director and hope they have all the answers. We’ve got to keep working on it, we’ve got to keep focused on it.”

A list of the task force’s primary recommendations is on our website, wpln.org.

Web Extra:

1. Develop a new protocol for dealing with unexcused absences

2. Reduce out-of-school suspension and offer ways for students to keep up with their work while removed from their peer group

3. Create a Social and Emotional Development Department within the school system led by an SEL director and staff

4. Increase community involvement in support centers through community collaboration

5. Improve the way schools collect and access data relating to each student’s attendance, discipline and grades

6. Provide continuous and rigorous professional development to teachers and administrators at schools with chronic poor academic performance

7. Create stability by reducing mobility of students, teachers and administrators

8. Establish infrastructure that ensures students with chronic poor performance or who are at risk of dropping out are identified, monitored and assisted

9. Create and expand incentives for student and teacher performance

10. Implement and monitor use of the state’s record-keeping system to frequently send teachers, principals and schools data reports on each student, classroom and school (Tennessee Value-Added Assessment System)

11. Restructure the current Mayor’s First Day Festival to celebrations at each school

12. Expand Family Case Management to every school

13. Provide professional development to help teachers create supportive partnerships with parents

14. Redesign the MNPS website to be more helpful for parents

15. Provide access to high-quality after-school and summer programs and learning opportunities

16. Re-engage and recover disengaged youth and young adults