Monday is the first-ever Student Recovery Day in the Los Angeles Unified School District. The LAUSD wants drop-outs to come back to school and is willing to go door-to-door to find them.
Starting around 8:00 this morning teams of LAUSD administrators, including superintendent Ramon Cortines, will scour the streets and neighborhoods of Los Angeles in an attempt to recover as many students as possible who are no longer enrolled in LAUSD schools. The recovery teams will also be tracking down the students by phone.
Superintendent Cortines says thousands of students who have left school are out there, kids from middle school through high school. The district is targeting neighborhoods surrounding ten schools with the highest number of students on the drop-out lists. They are: Fremont, Fairfax, Wilson, Los Angeles, Jefferson and Santee High Schools in Los Angeles; Polytechnic High School in Sun Valley, Monroe High School in North Hills, Banning High School in Wilmington and Huntington Park High School in Huntington Park.
The district will provide special support services to any students who return to school to help them get back on track. "We know if we can do this we can have a second chance of helping them reach their goal of high school graduation," Cortines said.
Every students who drops out of school costs the district state money -- and when the state loses money it eventually has to lose teachers, so if the district can recover students it benefits as well as the kids.
The sweep will last six hours today and tomorrow. Cortines says he hopes to make this an annual effort.
