Mayor Nutter has made the dropout problem one of the central education goals of his administration:
"We cannot teach them if they do not show up."
And every year, 8,000 Philadelphia high school students do not show up. They drop out.
A little more than half of Philadelphia's high school freshmen graduate. The rest disappear into the streets.
It's a problem that hamstrings the quality of the city's workforce, drains its social services, and creates a breeding ground for crime.
Mayor Nutter has declared this issue a major goal of his administration:
"In five to seven years, we will cut in half our astoundingly high 45 percent dropout rate."
Nutter says the city cannot afford not to address the dropout issue, and he says that politically, the timing is right:
"I'm relatively new in office. We have a new superintendent, we have a governor who's a former mayor, we've got a general assembly that is increasingly focused on education. So sometimes it all lines up."
Nutter has limited direct control over the state-run school district, but Laura Shubilla, president of the Philadelphia Youth Network, says the mayor's desire has challenged parents and the business community to step up:
"He really talked about what everyone can do. No one was really left out of either the responsibility or the opportunity to participate in the solution."
And Nutter is diverting $200 million in city money from after-school and summer programs to fund an early-warning system to identify sixth-graders in danger of becoming future dropouts.
Mayor Nutter's Mission
Mayor Nutter has made the dropout problem one of the central education goals of his administration. KYW's Mike DeNardo reports. (1:12)
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