Foothills High helping at-risk kids to keep up
By Jamar Younger
ARIZONA DAILY STAR
Catalina Foothills High School administrators have taken another step toward helping at-risk students keep up with their schoolwork.
The school has implemented the Student Support Program, a class that helps students review important subjects, organize their work and earn additional credits.
The program is part of the high school's multitiered approach to alternative education, which includes a tutoring lab, teacher and student mentoring relationships.
Principal Loren Rathert and assistant Principal Susan Rosenthal started working with teachers and other staff this year to better identify at-risk students and link the alternative-education programs together.
The program has the capacity for 35 students, and administrators have been targeting students since January, Rosenthal said.
"Our intent was to catch them in ninth and 10th grade so they wouldn't fall too far behind in 11th and 12th grade," she said.
Students attend the voluntary program in addition to their regular classes, giving them the opportunity to make up previous credits without leaving their present classes, Rathert said.
That option wasn't available to students in the past, he said.
"You didn't have a program that gives credit to a kid who is behind in credit," he said. "Now that helps them get credit while keeping them in regular classes."
Students are referred to the program if they are failing two or more classes with less than 65 percent, failing a class due to absenteeism or if their teacher determines they have lackadaisical attitudes about learning.
Each student receives an individual performance contract that outlines specific goals.
The support program is structured as a series of intervention measures designed to help students while they're in the classroom, provide help outside of the classroom and, if needed, place students in an alternative classroom setting.
If students continue to have trouble with one form of intervention, they'll move on to the next step until they reach the alternative classroom setting, Rathert said.
The school already has a tutoring lab and implemented a mentoring program last year that paired incoming freshmen most likely to struggle in high school with teachers who would serve as advocates for those students.
"We pick out a teacher and say, 'Here is a kid who will benefit from your attention,' " Rosenthal said.
The support program started almost two months after most of the students from the district's alternative high school, Falcon Rock, graduated, she said.
Falcon Rock moved to the Catalina Foothills campus from 4980 N. Sabino Canyon Road at the beginning of the school year.
The school had about 10 students at the beginning of the school year, and two students remain, she said.
Rathert said the district will restructure the alternative high school, and officials expect the school to reopen in 2009-10.
"It will look very different. That could be a good-sized high school," he said.
Rathert and Rosenthal speculated that Falcon Rock could serve 100 to 200 students in the next five years.
It's not clear whether the alternative school will remain at the Catalina Foothills campus, but Rathert hopes so, he said.
● Contact reporter Jamar Younger at 434-4076 or jyounger @azstarnet.com.
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