Tacoma dropouts get a new chance

Nineteen-year-old Cameron Buesgens went to work at Les Schwab Tire Centers on Monday. He expects he’ll be stocking and sweeping, gofering and getting job experience.

But he wants more for himself. And what he wants – entrance into a construction electrician apprenticeship program – requires a high school diploma. He’s two credits and a senior project shy of graduating.

Enter the new Tacoma Business Academy High School.

The partnership of the Tacoma School District, Bates Technical College and Communities in Schools of Tacoma aims to give dropouts between 16 and 21 the individualized learning plans and one-on-one attention they need to earn their diplomas.

It’s also unlike other high schools in one big respect: Students must either have a job or be willing to get one before they gain admission. Part of the philosophy is teaching youths the importance of work and helping them to eventually learn and earn their way out of low-paying jobs.

The school opened last week on the Bates campus. More than a dozen students are enrolled, and new ones are signing up every day, said business teacher John Ruby.

It’s not a continuation high school, but targeted at youths who might not re-enter school any other way.

Roughly one-third of Tacoma’s high school students drop out before they finish. Buesgens doesn’t consider himself a dropout. He simply came up shy of credits at the Tacoma School of the Arts, he said, and discovered he can’t walk his chosen career path without a diploma.

Once Buesgens completes an English class, finishes an online course in Washington state history and turns in that culminating project, he’ll get his diploma. As soon as December, he could become the Tacoma Business Academy High School’s first graduate.

Other students have a much longer road. A young woman came in Monday with just half a high school credit, Ruby said. Twenty-three are needed for graduation.

PART OF A SOLUTION

Tacoma’s on-time graduation rate, as reported by the state, is about 68 percent.

The School Board has set goals of decreasing the dropout rate by 10 percent a year and reducing the number of students who don’t graduate by the same amount.

“It will take some time to turn that ship around,” School District Superintendent Art Jarvis said of the district’s dropout statistics.

But he thinks the Tacoma Business Academy High School might be one weapon in the battle.

Tyler Stanek, a Communities in Schools board member and organizer of the mall school project, calls the new school “huge” in the movement to get dropouts back in class.

Communities in Schools is a nonprofit group dedicated to helping the city’s most vulnerable students succeed in school.

“Anytime you can bring just one student back and try to engage him and really go at that student in a different fashion” is a measure of success, Stanek said.

Though school districts in other states offer business high schools, Tacoma officials said they know of no model exactly like their new offspring. The school has the capacity for about 50 students, and officials hope it will fill up fast. There is no charge to eligible students.

The pieces of this puzzle fit together in a relatively short time because Bates had the space and Tacoma schools officials had the desire to get the school going.

Educators thought it would be easier to lure dropouts to a college campus than a high school. The Bates facility downtown has both a central location and the cachet of the largest public technical college in the state.

Bates’ existing Technical High School provides academic classes in concert with the World of Work, Digitools, business law and business math offered by the Business Academy High School, Ruby said. Students can take Washington state history online using the 19 computers in the new lab.

As promising as the concept sounds, Tacoma Urban League President Emeritus Thomas Dixon said Tuesday that he hopes the school district works closely with representatives of minority groups to reach the students who need it most.

“There’s no question it’s a wonderful idea,” he said. “It sounds good if they do it right.”

Minority leaders have expressed concern about the school system failing too many students, particularly young black males, who drop out of school and land in low-earning, poor-advancement jobs.

School officials are working with Felix Flannigan, executive director of the Martin Luther King Housing Development Association, on exactly that, said Bates Technical College President David Borofsky. Flannigan and his staff believe they can find young black males who might fit the program model and are willing to enroll, Borofsky said.

‘I THINK IT’S PRETTY COOL’

As Ruby, teacher Janet Hopkins and Communities in Schools community resource specialist Sinuon Hem explain it, there are a handful of major components of the Business Academy. Besides the work requirement:

 • Each student works with teachers to make an individual plan that will help meet his or her goals.

 • Students get small-school instruction and one-on-one help and guidance as they need it.

 • Hem links youths up with the social services they need. That could be finding food from a food bank, bus passes or dealing with “math fright.”

“When they come back, they often have a lot of issues,” Hem said. “We ask them, ‘What do you need?’”

In Hopkins’ World of Work class on Monday, Buesgens and a handful of other students wrote elements about their personalities, hobbies and interests, constructing self-portraits in words. Such insight will help them both in school and in the job market, Hopkins said.

She related well to the youths, talking to them about football and skateboarding, exhorting them to be specific – and professional.

“I don’t want to know that your hobby is drinking,” she said. Then she told one student, “I want you to go down your list and give me more specifics. Skateboarding: Do you ride it? Do you teach it? Do you have your own skateboard jump at your house? Whatever it is, write it down.”

Erick Than, 16, worked on a posterboard showing his interests, including basketball, football, cars, family, friends and the University of Southern California, which he’d like to someday attend, perhaps on an athletic scholarship.

His immediate plan, though, is to graduate on time with the Class of 2010.

While at Lincoln High, “I always goofed off,” he said. “I have like three or four credits.”

Tony Barros, 15, sat, skateboard in lap, soaking up his World of Work lessons.

The former Stadium student needs 22 credits to graduate, he said. He wants to be a professional glass blower at the Museum of Glass.

“I think it’s pretty cool,” he said of the new school. “There’s individual people who can work with you and explain all the things you need to know.”

John Page, the School District’s assistant director of career and technical education, is encouraged.

“You can see the hope in their eyes,” he said. “This is a chance to come in and finish that diploma.”

Kris Sherman: 253-597-8659

WHERE TO CALL

For more information about the Tacoma Business Academy High School, call 253-571-1126. If you want to apply, you can schedule an appointment with a staff member. If you want to refer a potential student, you can get a referral form.