Joy McDuffie knows how to coax people into action, and today's Dropout Prevention Summit at The Montante Cultural Center at Canisius College was filled with area dignitaries, educators, school board members, concerned citizens, students and a national speaker from the National League of Cities.
View image
The program started with a choir from South Park High School under the direction of Linda Appleby. The students' voices were the perfect way to bring the meeting to a start. They sang several songs including "Imagine". Appleby is a fantastic choir director, but even more, she's one of those rare individuals who knows and nurtures her students, way after the music stops. When she accepted the call to bring her kids in to sing at the summit for Dropout Prevention, she said, "I know what this is all about. I lost three students over Easter vacation. Six weeks to graduate, and they didn't come back."
McDuffie started the morning's program. She talked about why dropout prevention is so important to the students, to the city, and in her words, "to the very fabric of our society." Proving today that she's not simply a person who recognizes a problem and throws brave words at it, McDuffie succeeded in pulling together a summit in short time and with big players. Those sponsors who missed the boat in participation this year are already writing next year's summit into their upcoming budgets, but McDuffie says, "The real win will come when our graduation rate is at least 80 percent."
Mayor Byron Brown spoke about how many of the community oriented groups in town are doing so many wonderful things, but expressed some frustration that they operate as silos, stand-alone entities, and he said they need to pledge to work together to make a difference. He echoed McDuffie's words about graduation rates, calling for 100 percent.
Superintendent of Schools Dr. James Williams expressed enthusiasm about scholarships students are winning, with 4 getting a full ride to Canisius College next year through the Academic Talent Search Program. Williams, it should be noted, not only sat through each and every speaker, but returned at 3:00 to sit on a panel. No one is more aware of all of the variables that go into creating a graduate than Dr. Williams, who is in charge of the second largest school district in the State of New York. From where he sits, the solutions to the dropout problem need to come from a multitude of places such as parents, the curriculum, teachers, administrators and the state. "Children must be educated," Williams said, "and I am the only one in this room who is bound by law to educate children. The law says it's my duty, and it's my goal."
Andrew Moore believes he has some solutions to raise the graduation rate based on the 5 target issues (below) of America's Promise Alliance, all of which he promised he would post on the Summit web page shortly.
In answer to the nationwide formula for raising the graduation rate, McDuffie set up workshop sessions for the afternoon that became a jumping off point for forming tasks forces in the near future that will find solutions to the following needs:
- Caring Adults
- Safe Places
- A Healthy Start
- Effective Education
- Opportunities to Help Others
Image: Summit organizer, Joy McDuffie; Superintendent of Buffalo Public Schools, Dr. James Williams; Mayor Byron Brown and Elizabeth Caffee of Canisius College's Academic Talent Search Program.
Linda Appleby said: "I know what this is all about. I lost three students over Easter vacation. Six weeks to graduate, and they didn't come back."
Question: What are we doing for these three students? Where is the intervention from the School District, the caring adults, the parents, the community? We know who they are, we know where they are, do we know why they dropped out? Can we ask them directly why they left? Were the schools not meeting their needs? Did they feel unsafe? Did they drop out to make money? What is the rest of the story?
It is this complacency that is part of the problem. The article states that this teacher "is a fantastic choir director, but even more, she's one of those rare individuals who knows and nurtures her students, way after the music stops". I don't doubt that she is every one of these things in the classroom, but the music stopped for three of her students. What is being done about it?
A task force is being formed to address exactly what you're talking about. This isn't to say that things haven't already been done, but the specifics of those three students wasn't the focus of the article. It will be the focus of the task force that will ask those questions and and find the answers.
This is going to take a small army. I'm hoping you just enlisted because, believe it or not, there are people who are not outraged by this idea; some accept it for being the status quo.
As for Appleby, she didn't toot her own horn for me, but don't assume she did nothing. I've got testimony from one of her former "at risk" students coming up. Appleby is a mentor and a gift. You went to school; you know some teachers did what the were required to do, while others did much more. The task force will do more. Whynot, raise your hand.