Eugene White

Superintendent of the Indianapolis Public Schools

"The 21 alternative option programs kind of fit universally into everything we’re doing because they involve students from first grade through 12th grade. At the elementary level, we have one alternative program for students from grades 1 through 5 that really deal with those students who are having problems in the regular school program. We hopefully will intervene and change their behavior so they can come back to school, regular school, and be successful. But those other programs serve as, one, a kind of a recruitment for those students who have already dropped out of school, so we want to attract them back. . . . Sometimes when you look at students who drop out of school, it’s not like they can’t learn. As a matter of fact, many dropouts are pretty good students; they just lose interest or there’s some event in their lives (that) they feel like they can’t take it anymore; they need to get out of this. In those times they need an option. Maybe they think they need a job and they’ve got to quit school. Well, if they have an educational option that will give them half time for the job, half time for school, job, they may take that and that may keep them connected to school. . . . Other times a student may have trauma in his or her life and that trauma is just, they feel like, they just need to get away from it. In those situations you can even get them signed up to go to e-school where they can take virtual classes. They don’t have to come out and be in school for a while. But we think now, with these options, that we can meet most of the needs these students will have and we want to eliminate excuses so they can’t say, “you had nothing to keep me in school” because so many young people feel that they are pushed out of school."