SEQUIM –– Schools in Sequim need to be better at creating alternative education styles to reach the 1 out of 4 students who do not end their secondary education with diplomas, Sequim School District Superintendent Kelly Shea said this week.
“We’re into the final 25 percent. We’re down to the hard part now,” Shea said.
The district graduated 78.5 percent of its students last year and is looking at ways to make more efforts to drive that number closer to 100 percent, he said.
“It starts with me,” Shea told the Sequim-Dungeness Chamber of Commerce at its regular luncheon meeting at SunLand Golf & Country Club on Tuesday.
“We have to inspire our kids and create in them an intrinsic motivation. Everything we do has to be driven toward getting them to believe in themselves.”
While drug use, pregnancy, financial and peer pressures are all reasons many students don’t graduate, Shea said, studies repeatedly show the No. 1 factor in a student’s graduation is support from home.
“The lack of expectation from the home to graduate is the No. 1 reason why kids don’t finish,” he said.
“If families aren’t providing that, then we have to.”
Alternative focus
One place that seems to be working is the district’s alternative high school, Shea said.
Last year, Shea learned of 34 seniors who were not going to have enough credits to graduate on time.
“Could you imagine starting your senior year already knowing: ‘I am not going to graduate from high school in June’?” Shea asked.
“No wonder we think: ‘What’s the point? I’m out of here.’”
Guided by the alternative school, doubling up credit loads through online education programs, 31 of those students received their diplomas with the rest of their class.
That model, he said, could have even more implications for other students who want to add to their class load or take core classes like English or math online to free up time for electives.
“It is not an either/or,” Shea said. “It is an ‘and.’”
Shea also pointed to the hiring of Gary Neal this school year as an assistant superintendent as a move to improve the district’s graduation rate.
As principal of West Valley High School in Spokane for the previous decade, Neal oversaw efforts that increased that district’s graduation rate from 80 percent to 96 percent.
Shea hailed that experience, saying it should help improve the rates that have been climbing, though slowly, of late.
Over the past four years, Shea said, the number of students who have graduated on time has increased 6.7 percent, and the number of students who graduated after more than four years of high school has risen 10.2 percent.
P-12 system
Shea also noted the district is trying to work with students at an earlier age.
He said the district is assembling a coalition with preschools and other early childhood educators to ensure students are skilled by the time they get to kindergarten “so our kids can start this race at the starting line, not in the bleachers still tying their shoes when the gun goes off,” Shea said.
“It’s no longer K-12; it’s actually P-12.”
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Sequim-Dungeness Valley Editor Joe Smillie can be reached at 360-681-2390, ext. 5052, or at jsmillie@peninsuladailynews.com.
