Even though many Aurora high school students will cry foul, if keeping them on campus all day reduces truancy rates, it will be worth all of the fuss.
After all, if students aren’t there, they can’t learn. And learning is more important than, say, grabbing a bag of Doritos at 7-Eleven.
Colorado’s embarrassing drop-out rates and equally embarrassing poor rate of sending kids on to college won’t change if drastic measures aren’t taken to get students into the classroom. Far too often, students show up for school, but bolt their campus for lunch and never come back.
If Aurora school officials need proof that closed campuses work, look no further than Denver. The truancy rate in Aurora’s four major high schools last year was 10 percent. The state average is 4 percent.
Denver Public Schools toyed with the idea of closing its high school campuses last year but opted instead to allow each school to set its own rules, so long as it could meet the district goals of 97 percent attendance. It was a smart move, because what’s good for Abraham Lincoln may not be good for East, which has virtually no decline in attendance after lunch.
At Lincoln, freshman and sophomores were barred from leaving campus. Juniors and seniors can still leave for lunch. Afternoon attendance for ninth-graders improved from 83 percent in the 2005-’06 school year to 91 percent this year. Tenth-grade attendance improved from 88 percent to 91 percent. Even the tardiness rates for those grades after lunch declined.
“The closed campus is definitely a major reason why that is happening,” principal Antonio Esquibel told The Post. “But to have a successful closed campus, you have to have other things in place, other interventions.”
Aurora schools are working on that, too. The district will pay teachers more for doubling as “case managers” who meet with small groups of students each week. If students are deemed at-risk for skipping school, the teachers check in with them daily.
Many Aurora students have balked at the closed campus idea, and for many of them it’s unnecessary. They welcome the chance to get away from school for awhile and exercise their burgeoning responsibilities as young adults, and they do so responsibly.
But a 10 percent truancy rate is unacceptable. It may be a bitter but necessary bag of chips to swallow.
