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Students – particularly former dropouts – will join educators, business leaders and others this week at a summit looking at what leads teenagers to leave school.

By KELLEY BOUCHARD, Staff Writer July 26, 2009

One in five Maine students doesn't graduate from high school.

That's about 3,000 students each year who don't get to put on a cap and gown, march to "Pomp and Circumstance" and receive the diploma that most agree is a minimum requirement to get ahead in life.

"We know this is a problem," said Shelley Reed, project manager at the Maine Department of Education. "What are we going to do about it?"

To answer that question, Reed has organized the department's first statewide dropout prevention summit, to be held Monday and Tuesday at the University of Maine in Orono.

More than 250 educators, business leaders, community members and others will develop a plan to increase the statewide graduation rate from 80 percent to 90 percent by 2016, with a long-range goal of 100 percent.

It's also the first time that state officials have asked students -- particularly former dropouts -- to help them fix a problem that has plagued public schools across Maine and the United States for decades. In Maine, past dropout prevention forums have catered to educators.

"If we're going to change anything, we've got to include students in the conversation," Reed said. "We need to understand how we get them to a place where they can choose their future instead of getting run over by it."

Sovanaka Diep, a 2009 graduate of Portland High School, is one of about 20 students scheduled to make presentations or participate in panel discussions during the summit. She and two other Portland students will present a video they made about being dropouts and read personal essays from a booklet they published for the summit.

Diep said she hopes the summit encourages school districts to be more welcoming and less judgmental of students with varied learning needs. "They need to be more flexible," she said.

Diep dropped out during her freshman year, as the result of an unstable home life. When she returned as a sophomore, Portland's alternative education program helped her catch up and graduate on time.

"People need to understand that a lot of times, it's not the students' fault when they don't come to school," said Diep, who plans to study art and open a coffee shop where she can sell her work.

Maine's largest school district, Portland also will send a dozen teachers, social workers and administrators to the summit. Among them will be Jim Morse, newly hired superintendent, who has pledged to push Portland's graduation rate above 75 percent.

"The grand vision is to have no dropouts," said Morse, who readily admits that he dropped out of school for several months when he was a junior at Portland High.

Morse said the summit will help the district develop a plan to assist students who often come from unstable or abusive homes, are challenged by learning disabilities or have psychological, emotional or substance abuse problems. Typical interventions range from early childhood education and family counseling to alternative education and service learning opportunities.

Portland's plan will include efforts to increase community awareness and involvement, Morse said. It also will call for improved collaboration with other agencies that are working on the same problem.

"I'm hoping to get some institutional momentum on this," Morse said. "It starts with recognition of the issue."

The summit is funded by a $25,000 grant from America's Promise Alliance, with additional support from TD Bank, AmeriCorps Vista and UMaine's Institute for the Study of Students at Risk, Reed said. The alliance is sponsoring similar events in each state after governors across the country pledged to increase dropout prevention efforts.

The broad goals of Maine's summit are to increase public awareness of the state's dropout crisis, encourage school districts to host similar local summits and draw up plans with measurable goals to increase the graduation rate.

"We need to be developing...