OCEANSIDE -- A top Oceanside Unified School District official said last week that a team of administrators, counselors and teachers has been convened to create a program to find students who have dropped out and re-enroll them in a new program.

"I don't doubt we have dropouts," said Deputy Superintendent Larry Perondi, while glancing at a North County Times special report earlier this month that painted the school district as the worst in North County, below state and countywide figures, when it comes to graduation rates.

"What we want to do is find them and provide them with a program that will help them. Some of these youngsters may have dropped out because they have to get jobs, they have children, or they have medical issues. We have to have something for them that's difference from the (traditional) school day."

Taking dropouts and re-enrolling them in a traditional high school, with its long days and populated classrooms, wouldn't work and never has, according to Perondi.

The district already has alternative programs in place for at-risk students and those who have dropped out and re-enrolled: Clair Burgener Academy and Ocean Shores High School.

The academy is a program for freshmen and sophomores who did not have either the grades or test scores in middle school to advance to a traditional high school. The district has referred to this program as an intensive care unit for struggling students.

To put students on track, the academy boasts a shorter school day -- two hours over the traditional six-hour schedule -- and smaller classes. Last year, 204 students were enrolled in Clair Burgener.

Ocean Shores is another smaller program that enrolled 216 students last year. That program is offered to students in grade nine through 12, but sees the bulk of its enrollment in its senior class.

Students have been known to enroll in Ocean Shores to help collect the credits they need to graduate on time. As at Burgener, the program is offered during the day, five days a week.

Perondi said that's the problem with some alternative programs: They do little to help meet the needs of students who have dropped out and can't re-enroll in all-day school because of jobs, children, and other issues.

"We have to have something in place that's different," he said. "These students, for whatever reason, don't want to and can't be in school all day."

The drawing board

The district has no "official" plan in place so far, but says it has spent the last few months working with a team of administrators to help design a program for dropouts.

Perondi said some of the ideas include independent study, a shortened two-hour school day, weekend and night classes, summer classes, and year-round course offerings.

"Some of these students just want to get in (school) and get it done," he said.

The district's upcoming attempt at solving the dropout problem has been in the works for several months, and was one of the objectives spelled out by Superintendent Ken Noonan to Perondi when he was hired last summer. The North County Times report helped highlight the problem, he said.

The district is relying on principals at all levels, elementary to high school, counselors, nonteaching employees that work at the high school, and educators to help create the dropout recovery program.

Jefferson Middle School Principal Duane Coleman, who is working with the group, said involving middle and elementary schools is important because potential dropouts can be identified much earlier than the freshman year.

He said the district's drawing attention to dropouts is a big step in solving the problem.

"What we need is more communication between schools in identifying (at-risk) kids," he said.

Perondi said the plan will also call for frontline recruiting: find out where the dropouts live and invite them back to school, he said.

"This will be very labor intensive and we realize that," he said. "The kids want to be in school. If you ask a dropout, they'll say, 'Gosh, I should have never done that.' There are reasons they don't come back. You'll hear, 'I just don't see myself sitting in a classroom with high school kids.'

"Our job is to find out why they won't come back and give them a program that helps them finish (their education)."

Report highlights problem

The North County Times special report recalculated district graduation rates -- the percentage of students who graduate four years after entering high school -- using a well-studied approach created by the Manhattan Institute for Public Policy.

That conservative think tank has garnered nationwide attention in the educational community for proving that states report highly inaccurate graduation rates for school districts.

While the state has calculated Oceanside Unified's graduation rates as between 92 percent and 96 percent between 2000 and 2004, the Manhattan calculation sets graduation rates in Oceanside between 56 percent and 63 percent over that same period.

The 30 percent-plus difference paints a stark picture for Oceanside when the percentages translate into hundreds of students.

The complete North County Times report can be viewed at www.nctimes.com/special_reports/gradrates.

The Manhattan study, which found similar differences in graduation rate calculations in states across the country, argues that such results beg the question: How many students are seeping out the public education system?

Contact staff writer Louise Esola at (760) 901-4151 or lesola@nctimes.com.

Related links

Oceanside Unified School District

http://www.oside.k12.ca.us

By The Numbers: Counting North County Graduates

http://www.nctimes.com/special_reports/gradrates/