CISNTblog

Tuesday night I had the pleasure of talking with the amazing people of Altrusa in Denton about Communities In Schools of North Texas.  They do such great work supporting the needs of non profit organizations in our community.  After sharing a few CISNT stories (one of my favorite things to do!) they asked question after question about our students and their needs.

As I drove home, it left me thinking about how far we have come.  That small group of community members that met each week in 1993 who conceived the dream of building a Communities In Schools organization in this area (there are 28 across the state of Texas now) would be amazed.  They would be amazed not only in how far their dream has come, but in how visionary their thinking was and how strategic their efforts have become.

We study demographics at CISNT, they help to illuminate the “invisible” epidemic we’re facing with students who are at-risk of dropping out of school.  Recently, we collected data from the Texas Education Agency’s AEIS (Academic Excellence Indicator System) Report for the last reported school year (2006-07).  We found that in the four school districts we serve (Denton ISD, Lewisville ISD, Little Elm ISD and Northwest ISD) that these school districts reported to TEA that there were 22,015 “economically disadvantaged” students in these four districts combined.  There were only 84,032 total students in the four districts combined, so this staggering number represents 26% or 1 in 4 students.  The number of “at-risk” students reported by the four districts was even greater, 26,273, or over 30%.

It takes people like the great folks at Altrusa, and many many other civic, faith-based and community organizations to address the growing needs of our north Texas at-risk student population.  It’s encouraging when we get to be with a group of caring and concerned people who want to understand the problem and truly try to help.

This entry was posted on Thursday, February 28th, 2008 at 8:23 am and is filed under community awareness, Communities In Schools of North Texas, CISNT. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.