At a morning presser at Jordan High School in Watts, LAUSD unveiled a campaign to begin targeting dropouts using popular Internet social networking site MySpace. The district will recruit up to 10 "peer-to-peer mentors" (students and recent graduates) to post information on their personal Internet pages and actively search for potential dropouts.
Superintendent David Brewer advised students, at the press conference, to "Come back. Do not stay out there and become a stastiic our society."
The district has also begun a radio blitz, launched a Web site and will send text messages to students with embedded statistics. One text message, for example, would tell students that high-school graduates earn $175 more per week than dropouts.
The district will also step up the frequency of home visits to the 17,000 students listed as potential dropouts. Counselors such as Rochelle Morrison -- she's based out of Gardena High School -- were hired a year ago to monitor dropout lists and work to recover students who have left campus.
"It's a different approach," Morrison said about the campaign. "It could be a way to reach kids. It's going to help us reach them, but we're still going to have to do our best to bring them back."
Read our story by Naush Boghossian.
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