More than 16,000 young people dropped out of school in Virginia during the 1996-97 school year, according to state Department of Education figures. In the United States, dropouts cost society an estimated $7 billion a year in lost tax revenue, welfare payments, unemployment compensation and crime. Nearly 90 percent of the inmates in our prisons are school dropouts.
For many of these kids, dropping out has more to do with what's going on in their lives outside of school than in it. Six-year-old Billy King (not his real name) lived in a low-income, largely neglected neighborhood on the south side of Richmond, in a house with no utilities that was home to three separate households -- 14 people in all. Billy had never been enrolled in school and lacked basic medical care and immunizations. The whereabouts of Billy's mother were unknown. His pregnant, 17-year-old sister was a high school dropout living at home with an infant child who also lacked basic medical care.
For children in families like Billy's, talk about high academic standards -- Virginia's number one educational priority -- can be beside the point. What these children need are people to address their noneducational needs so that they can be in school, prepared and focused, in the first place. That's why, when we talk about school reform, we need to talk about families like Billy's. We need to look more deeply into the state's priorities, and shed more light on the role of parent and community involvement.
The "accountability focus" adopted by the Virginia Board of Education states, in part, "Quality education requires a partnership and a total school commitment to providing an environment that invites all to use their knowledge, skills, abilities and resources to support the education of students."
School programs that have successfully involved the community and social service providers have several key elements in common, including: evaluation of local social service delivery options, involvement of pertinent social service providers, coordination and integration of the various services, development of after-school programs, and follow-up efforts to make sure the children in need and their families have access to the program.
Over the last 20 years one of these programs, Communities In Schools (CIS), a nationwide stay-in-school organization, has been taking resources, volunteers and service providers inside the public schools and training them to work as a coordinated team on behalf of students. CIS partners are parents, mentors, tutors, business leaders, entire government agencies, human services workers, professional sports teams and others who volunteer their time or are reassigned to work with children in need during, before and after school hours -- right there in the school. There are four locations in Virginia where the CIS program is in place -- Richmond, Petersburg, Newport News and Chesterfield County.
Because CIS has a program set up in Swansboro Elementary School, just blocks away from Billy's family, this child and his siblings were able to be helped in a coordinated way just by enrolling them in school. The school's representative on the CIS team referred the 17-year-old single mother to Richmond Families For Learning to acquire life skills and pursue a G.E.D. The nurse practitioner saw to it that the children received needed medical exams and immunizations. The CIS team member from the Department of Social Services found the family's maternal grandmother, who was willing to pursue legal custody and assume responsibility for Billy and his siblings. A worker from the Department of Social Services located subsidized housing for the family, and Billy was enrolled in kindergarten. His four-year-old sister was placed in an early childhood program.
For Billy's family and hundreds of others, the crucial element was that all members of the team were in the same place -- the school -- working together as partners. Children are in school 9 am to 3 pm, while service providers generally work 8:30 am to 5 pm. That leaves about two hours a day to hunt down needed services for children. CIS brings these existing community resources into the school building in a coordinated way to help young people learn to stay in school and successfully prepare for life.
Too often agencies in Virginia, as elsewhere, view these problems in isolation. Well-meaning, we offer services -- but in so many different locations that it often defeats the purpose. The need is to bring the community together on behalf of kids.
As the Virginia Board of Education notes, the "responsibility for student learning and personal development" is shared by the whole community, not just the schools and parents. School districts across Virginia need to rethink how important services are being delivered to children and can take a close look at the CIS model as an example of how this can be accomplished. If Virginians are truly serious about all of our children doing their best in school, we should make sure integrated services programs are everywhere throughout the state.
Emblidge is executive director of the Virginia Literacy Foundation. 
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