Paige Ponder is in charge of reducing the district’s drop out rate. She says she understand principals’ frustrations.
PONDER: They’re perspective is I need to focus the resources that I have and the energy I have on kids who can graduate. So kids who are coming to school who have no chance of graduating may often be also kids who are disruptive and distracting everybody and causing lots of problems. But the problem is we simply don’t have the capacity as a city to serve these students. There is no where else for them to go, or not enough places for them to go.
Ponder wants to fix this, of course. But it’s expensive. New York City has invested heavily in re enrolling drop outs, Chicago has not. There are at least 50,000 Chicago students who need to be reenrolled in school. There are only about 5 thousand spots for them in alternative schools.
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