ROCKLAND, Maine — The Rockland-area school district’s leaders vowed Thursday night to get parents and students more engaged in education at an early age as a way to deal with the community’s longtime high dropout rate.
The Regional School Unit 13 Board met to discuss how to increase the percentage of students who graduate from the district.
First-year Superintendent John McDonald said the district needs to restart a dropout prevention team that apparently disbanded several years ago. Board Chairman Steve Roberts agreed, saying he does not know why that committee stopped meeting. Roberts has been on the board for two years, and the committee ceased meeting before he joined the board.
McDonald said his observation of the district is that it has a very transient population, in which students move in and out of the district multiple times in one year. He said he also sees homelessness as being at the root of some students’ failure to complete their education. Both are indicators of students who will end up dropping out of school, he said.
Roberts agreed demographics played a role in the district’s high dropout rate.
“Part of our challenge is the level of poverty,” Roberts said.
He said research has shown that students perform better in more affluent communities.
“You will find this kind of divide,” the board chairman said. “But that doesn’t mean we have to accept it, and I don’t.”
McDonald echoed those remarks, saying he too will not accept lower performance because of the community’s social and economic makeup.
Oceanside’s graduation numbers and that of its predecessor, Rockland District High School, consistently have been worse than the statewide average. In the final year of RDHS, before its merger with Georges Valley High School, the Class of 2011 lost 40 percent of its students over four years. The most recent graduating class at Oceanside East started with 185 freshmen but ended up with only 120 graduates, a loss of 35 percent of the student body in four years.
Rockland’s median income in the 2010 U.S. Census was $37,549, well below the state average of $48,453. The percentage of residents who live in apartments is double the state average of 19 percent.
Board member Carol Bachofner said there are parents and grandparents who do not see the need for education but feel getting into the workforce is important.
“We’re a little bit like Appalachia here,” Bachofner said.
First-year Oceanside Principal Renee Thompson said the situation in the Rockland area is similar to what she experienced in the Ellsworth-area school district, in which students move in and out of the district frequently. That also negatively affected the dropout rate in Ellsworth, she said.
“There’s a lot of movement by families. It’s often a revolving door,” Thompson said.
Oceanside High School West Principal William Gifford said two steps that will help address the dropout problem is the start of a pre-kindergarten program in the next school year and the proposed start of a fishermen’s academy in the fall at Oceanside East.
“Pre-kindergarten will bring families into the culture of education earlier,” Gifford said.
Board member George Emery said he knows teachers who are teaching the third generation of students whose family members have dropped out of school before graduation. He said an earlier connection would play a big role.
Board members said chronic absenteeism at the elementary school is an early sign of students being at risk of not completing their education.
Board member Loren Andrews said the district needs to look at key tipping points for students, such as if they are not able to read after kindergarten or if they are failing classes as freshmen. He said the district has found that only 30 percent of ninth-graders who earn three or fewer credits in that first year will end up graduating.
Roberts said the restart of the dropout prevention committee will be on the board’s April agenda for action.