Education Law

Knock, knock . . . Who's there?

It looks like the answer to that question is a big one. This weekend between 1,500 and 2,000 volunteers from the Houston Independent School District will be going through the streets of Houston knocking on doors to encourage students who haven't shown up at school yet to come back to school.

BoardBuzz got word of this event through the Houston Chronicle. This door-knocking walk is an initiative aimed at helping Texas' cities that are fighting higher drop-out rates. Since its start in Houston in 2004, cities including Dallas, Fort Worth, San Antonio, Corpus Christi, and El Paso have added programs, and this year 16 districts statewide are expected to participate.

The goal of the walk is to encourage students to return to school, and over past years its success has been proven:

"We're really gaining momentum," Mayor Bill White said. "Most folks in Texas and the United States understand that education is the most important issue facing our nation today."

In 2007, volunteers visited more than 1,740 homes in the Houston area looking for students who failed to return to school last August. By September, 766 of those students were back in class, officials said.

BoardBuzz is inspired to see so many members of the community realizing the importance of a high school diploma and making education a priority. It looks like this year the effort is going to be strong with Mayor Bill White saying:

School districts must continue to take strong steps to reach these at-risk children, White said.

"For too long people have regarded a dropout rate as something that was either inevitable or acceptable," he said. "When there's a young person who doesn't return to school, we want it to be viewed as a crisis."

It may be a couple of weeks into the school year, but BoardBuzz agrees it's not too late to come back to school. We think the community should be commended for its efforts and hope to hear they accomplish their goals!

Full post as published by BoardBuzz: NSBA's Daily Weblog on September 04, 2008 (boomark / email).