Staff writer
Marion High School Principal Brenda Odgers and counselor Phoebe Janzen do everything they can to keep a student from dropping out of school.
“Nobody wants to lose a student so we’ll work with them how we can,” Janzen said.
MHS graduate Amanda Steward said that the only way she made it through school was daily visits with Janzen to complete her homework.
“Some of the stuff was too hard and the rest of it was too boring,” Steward said.
Odgers said she and other administrators will contact parents when a student is failing a class. After 27 weeks of a student continuing to fail a course, letters will be sent to parents once a week with a status update.
“What works best is when the school and household work as a team,” Odgers said.
Truancy is usually the warning sign that a student may drop out.
“What happens is that kids start missing school. You can’t pass classes if you keep missing classes,” Janzen said. “One day builds on the next and then they get behind. Attendance is very closely linked to school success.”
According to Odgers, Kansas truancy law allows for three days in a row of unexplained absences, five days of absences in a semester, and seven days in a year.
Staff at the high school keep close track of students’ whereabouts. If a student doesn’t show up for class at any point throughout the day, attendance officer Judy Versch will call his or her house. If a student doesn’t show up for a class when they on school grounds, Versch will call his or her house and work until the student is found.
Odgers and Janzen then try to find out what is keeping a student from succeeding.
“We try to figure out what’s the glitch,” Odgers said. “Is it one class? Is it having no time to do homework?”
They try to catch a problem early. If a student is missing classes, Janzen will try to work with the student to reorganize their schedule.
Odgers said she stays at school until 5:30 p.m. Fridays for mandatory study times. If a student is failing one class, they have to take one hour of study time. The hours add up if the student is failing more than one class.
As a last resort, Janzen and Odgers will meet with a student who wishes to drop out and outline the lifetime earning potential for a high school dropout.
“If you drop out of school your ability to make a living drops dramatically,” Janzen said. “The last thing we want is for a kid to drop out.”
Currently a cook at Hillsboro Pizza Hut and a Hillsoro resident, Steward is thinking of going back to school. She wants to enter the field of early childhood care, either as a preschool teacher or the owner of her own day care. She said that neither of those goals would be attainable without a high school diploma.
When a student is ready to drop out and goes into this meeting, it is very difficult to convince the student not to drop out. Up until a student turns 18, they need to have parental permission to drop out; at this stage, the parents are often locked into a decision.
“If the family has their mind made up, it’s very difficult to convince them to stay,” Janzen said.
Even after a student is 18, Janzen will meet with the student and give the lifetime earnings information, although the student will not have to get parental permission to quit school.
Janzen said she always encourages students dropping out to go to the Marion County Learning Center in Hillsboro to obtain a high school diploma if she cannot convince the student to return to school.