New Austin schools superintendent Pat Forgione announced Monday that he’s about to make it a lot harder to quit school. With the creation of a 40-plus-member task force to review and assess strategies the district could use to encourage students to stay in school, Forgione said he’s keeping a promise to “connect the community on behalf of our children. … We hope to create a system so that every child knows if you start to fall, we will catch you.” He complimented County Attorney Ken Oden, who recently dropped his investigation of AISD’s dropout reporting methods in exchange for an agreement from the district to better identify and aid at-risk students, as a “burr under our saddle, pushing us to do this.”
For his part, the crusading county attorney says Forgione’s spirit of cooperation will bring “a fresh start for the district.” Oden adds that he hopes the district will tap the “huge pool of public servants” available in Austin — state employees, university faculty, and businesspeople — to serve as student mentors and tutors. Oden says he expects a statement expressing the district’s long-term strategies by next fall.
Forgione alluded to community partnerships Monday, but said he’s waiting on the report from his task force — which already includes teachers and principals, social service workers, youth advocates, peace officers, and church leaders — for specific proposals. The group, headed by Hispanic Chamber of Commerce chair Eloy Barrera, Austin Area Urban League head Herman Lessard, and former AISD board member Melissa Knippa, holds its first meeting today, Thursday, and is expected to meet every other week for two months, delivering a report before Christmas break.
Forgione says he’s requested that $1 million of the nearly $17 million expected from the recent AISD tax hike be used to implement the task force’s recommendations, perhaps as early as next spring. Forgione also said he wants to overhaul AISD’s accountability system so that the district’s dropout statistics can be compared with other districts nationwide. AISD recently revised its dropout numbers to show an annual junior high/high school dropout rate of just under 6%, or about 22% over four years, but the district’s so-called “evaporation rate” — the number of students who slip away unaccountably between ninth and 12th grades — has been measured at higher than 40% by independent researchers.
This article appears in Carol Keeton Rylander.