LYNN — Data shared with the School Committee on Thursday night showed that nearly half of the district’s students who dropped out last year were English Language Learners, which has left school officials trying to figure out how to address the needs of kids who fall into that group.
Deputy Superintendent Patrick Tutwiler shared the district’s graduation and dropout rate information with the School Committee, highlighting English Language Learners (ELL) as students most at-risk of dropping out of high school.
Data also showed the four-year graduation rate last year was 73.7 percent, down 1.6 percent from the 2015-16 school year. ELL students had a 47.6 percent four-year graduation rate last year.
The ELL group includes students who come to the United States from other countries, who may have experienced trauma in their native countries or in their journey to America.
Last year, 221 students dropped out, which represents 5.1 percent of the district’s 4,332 high school students. Data shows that dropout rate has trended up in the past several years — the rate was 4.3 percent in the 2013-14 school year, 3.8 percent in the 2014-2015 school year and 4.9 percent in the 2015-16 school year.
Of those 221 students, 48 percent, or 104 students, who dropped out last year were ELL students. That group had a 12.8 percent dropout rate, which is nearly double all of the other subgroups highlighted in the data Tutwiler shared.
The 12.8 percent dropout rate for ELL students is also more than double the 2009 rate of 5.5 percent, which shows the rate has been trending in a concerning direction for several years, Tutwiler said.
Tutwiler said the ELL dropout rate trend is on par for what’s happening in the state — the aggregate state dropout rate is 1.8 percent, while the statewide average ELL dropout rate is 6.5 percent, almost five times the aggregate dropout rate.
Tutwiler said data shows the issue really seems to live in the ninth grade. Of the 104 ELL students who dropped out, 88 percent who dropped out started their tenure in the ninth grade, which means that they didn’t feel any of the early interventions the school district tries to provide to their students at the elementary and middle school level.
At the elementary level, he said there’s work being done with social workers, and connecting family members to community agencies, which is meant to help students feel like they belong. At the middle school level, he highlighted programs such as Project YES, an afterschool program at Thurgood Marshall Middle School that deters kids from dangerous behavior and teaches community involvement and leadership.
Of the ELL students who dropped out, Tutwiler said they’re not in the school district for very long — the average tenure is three years, with most students staying 1 to 2 years in the school district. The longest tenure was seven years, which was only one student. This compares to the average tenure of nine years in the district for non-ELL students who dropped out last year, he said.
“With that reality, we don’t have a lot of time to address trauma, to meet these students’ needs,” Tutwiler said. “I can tell you with a high degree of confidence, our ELL who arrive here in ninth grade are at serious risk of dropping out on day one.”
The average age of ELL students who dropped out was 19 years old, compared to a non-ELL average age of 18. Tutwiler said the district receives a large amount of late teen ELL students, but the majority of those students are enrolled in the ninth grade upon arrival.
Over the last five years, he said 587 ELL students between 17 and 19 years old were enrolled, with 401 of them placed in ninth grade, rather than 11th or 12th grade which would be on par with others their age. In addition, Tutwiler said those students’ last grade of completion is not eighth grade, but is often sixth grade or lower.
Tutwiler said those students are, by no fault of their own, credit deficient and are working on acquiring the language, but the district hasn’t scratched the surface on the trauma those kids may have received in their native countries or through the process of coming to the United States.
Tutwiler said Lynn Public Schools tries to use certain strategies to prevent students from dropping out, which includes support and intervention strategies such as the Project YES program, social workers and guidance counselors, along with frequent misbehavior monitoring.
But he said those strategies don’t address the needs of those ELL students. He said the district isn’t throwing in the towel, but rather working on a solution to address the need. He highlighted the new hire of a social emotional learning executive director, Carolyn Troy, which will help with addressing the students’ trauma, and the work of the district’s language support office, which is working with secondary educators to align curriculum and content with the LOOK bill that was recently passed.
“It’s inappropriate to take a student whose 18 with a sixth grade education and drop them in a traditional day program from 8 a.m. to 2:15 p.m.,” Tutwiler said. “That doesn’t meet their needs.”
School Committee member Brian Castellanos, a first-generation Latino, said he’s an example of at-risk himself, having become homeless at 17 and dealing with poverty growing up. He said trauma is something that’s very important to address in the school system.
Castellanos said partnerships are huge to address the problem, citing nearby colleges such as Salem State University and North Shore Community College.
“When I look at 12.8 percent, that’s a crisis to me,” Castellanos said.
Superintendent Dr. Catherine C. Latham said there are more than 1,000 homeless students in the school district right now. Trauma is serious with some of the district’s students, with homelessness being a trauma — a social emotional director would be able to help, she said.
