According to the state department of education, about 12 percent of high school students drop out before graduation.
Among the state's Latinos, the rate jumps to an alarming 50 percent.
Nashua High, with the state's highest population of Latino students, wants to reverse the trend.
For starters, school officials are training volunteers to be mentors.
NHPR Correspondent Sheryl Rich-Kern visited the school and files this report.
When Richard Jiminez was five years old, his mother left him in the Dominican Republic to find work in the states.
He didn’t see her again until he was 10…when she returned to bring Jiminez and his siblings to Nashua.
Now a lanky 16-year old, Jiminez attends Nashua High North.
sound
He tosses a basketball from hand to hand, as he speaks.
Jiminez1: In the beginning it was kinda rough because I didn’t know the language. My mom can speak a little, but not as great. I went on to middle school, got involved in sports.
Jiminez plays varsity football and wrestling. On weekends, he works in construction.
Despite his time demands, he brings home A’s and B’s, and talks about a career in law.
But as a Latino student, Jiminez knows he is working against the odds.
Headmaster Robert Fitzgerald.
Fitzgerald1: Our school population is roughly 18 percent Latino and sadly, that population has a dropout rate that hovers around 50 percent.
School sound, fade under
It’s 6 PM at Nashua High North.
The daytime chaos is gone.
But the corridors echo with yet another, albeit smaller group of students.
The forty or so who are attending night school.
19 year old Kassandra Santana of Nashua is graduating this spring.
She’s come a long way since her junior year when she went to school, but…
Santana: I would walk out second period, third period, walk around the school. And leave. I would go, but I wouldn’t attend class. I went to my friend’s house, my house, walked around, went to parks, and that’s it.
Bill Adamson is an officer in the Nashua police force. He sees a lot of kids hanging out during school hours.
Adamson: Sooner or later, they’re having a run-in with us.
They may not get arrested, says Adamson, but they often they get into fights.
Adamson2: They’re at the age where the hormones are going, and it’s you know, he looked at me the wrong way. Or they’re getting involved with the gang activity, getting into fights.
Before working at the high school, Headmaster Robert Fitzgerald was an officer in a gang task force in Boston.
He recalls the kids who were less likely to get into trouble: they always had someone in their corner.
Fitzgerald1b: One of the boys was the eighth of eight brothers. Seven had been incarcerated by age 16. This eighth boy graduated from high school, college, wrestled in college, and is now a police officer.
Fitzgerald says a mentoring relationship can reshape a student’s future.
So he's organizing volunteers – he’d like to get at least 40 -- to spend about six hours a month with some of these students.
It’s one way Nashua High can reduce its dropout rate.
Otherwise, he says, the community will pay:
Fitzgerald1c: Studies reveal that dropouts are more likely to receive federal assistance, unemployment.
Monroy1: Yesenia Monroy, and I’m a sophomore. My family moved here from Mexico.
Monroy sits down with her mentor, Brenda Silvi, who also teaches Spanish at the school.
Fade under short dialogue between Monroy and Silvi
Has pensado en trabajar en los hospitales aqui en Nashua…
Silvi is asking Monroy, who wants to study nursing, if she has thought of working at of area hospitals.
But, Silvi adds, she won’t tell Monroy how to respond.
Silvi2: We were told as mentors to listen. We’re not here to reprimand, or to judge. And also to build relationships through activities, through conversations.
Fade under and out short Spanish conversation.
Esteban Lopez of the New Hampshire College and University Council directs a program that encourages Latinos to further their education.
The demographics in New Hampshire, he says, present a unique set of challenges.
For example, in Manchester, only five teachers out of 1400 are Latino.
Lopez1: And five teachers out of 1400 is only half a percentage of a point. So we don’t have those role models: distinguished Latino leaders, teachers and guidance counselors that look like them.
Headmaster Robert Fitzgerald says Lopez will visit Nashua High this fall to discuss how the school can better serve diverse cultures.
So far, 45 students have signed up for the mentoring program, which Fitzgerald has named “The Power of an Hour.â€
Fitz1d: There will be a lot of eyes on how this program develops and how effective it is reaching at-risk students.
Whether the program can continue will also depend on funding and staffing.
Those resources, says Principal David Ryan, are shrinking.
But if the program does succeed, Headmaster Fitzgerald says education officials hope to model it across the state.
For NHPR News in Nashua, this is Sheryl Rich-Kern.
