The Committee for Dropout Prevention in conjunction with The
Academic Talent Search Program at Canisius College, and the City of Buffalo
will host its First Annual High School Dropout Prevention Summit on May 6, 2009
at 8:00AM to 4:30PM at the Montante Cultural Center, located at Main and
Eastwood Streets on the Canisius College campus.
Andrew Moore of the National League of Cities will be the
Keynote Speaker.
The summit, concentrating on issues central to Buffalo, seeks local answers to the national epidemic of high school dropouts. Buffalo is very much in line with the national data that states that nearly 1 in 3 high school students drop out before
graduating. Across the nation, approximately 1.2 million students drop out of
school annually, which would amount to about 7,000 every school day, or one every 26 seconds.
The primary goal of The City of Buffalo Dropout Prevention
Leadership Summit is to spotlight the problem as a community concern and to
bring public awareness to the challenges we face in ensuring that “at-risk”
students stay in school and graduate.
The first objective of the summit is to foster consensus among stakeholders
and the public concerning the urgency of the problem and the need for a
collaborative effort to alleviate it.
The second objective is to induce business leaders, community
leaders, faith-based institutions, educators (P-12 and higher education),
healthcare providers, policy makers, nonprofit organizations and youth to
commit to a city-wide dropout prevention call to action.
The City of Buffalo Dropout Prevention Leadership Summit will
serve to raise public awareness of the day-to-day challenges faced by students “at
risk” to obtain a high school diploma, and in doing so, it will create a sense of urgency and a plan of action to reduce Buffalo’s drop-out rate.
Sponsors include the Buffalo Public School System, Kaleida
Health, the Urban League, the Western New York Law Center, Buffalo Teachers
Federation and Senator Antoine Thompson. The summit is free to participants.
Registration is open to the public on the Committee for Dropout Prevention web
site.
Organizations and individuals are welcome to attend. For more information call (716) 855.0203. Morning presentations will be followed by a noon lunch and breakout workshops concentrating on the 5 components of America’s Promise Alliance as follows:
- Caring Adults
- Safe Places
- A Healthy Start
- Effective Education
- Opportunities to Help Others
The City of Buffalo’s Dropout Prevention Summit was organized by Joy McDuffie. McDuffie is an urban planner with the Western New York Law Center, a member of Mayor Byron Brown’s Anti-flipping Task Force, an advocate of the Joint Schools Construction Board project and author of Transforming Neighborhoods of Circumstance into Neighborhoods of Choice.