Salem Schools, Colleges Provide Head Start for High Schoolers
For the seniors at Early College High School, graduation means more than new cars and big parties. They walk out the doors for the final time with something they’ll carry into the next phase of their life: an associate’s degree, a trade certificate or a determination to enroll in a four-year university.
“School districts have realized that many students have difficulty transitioning from high school to college,” says Cheryl Roberts, president of Chemeketa Community College. “Some students have high potential, but their achievement is low. Other students want to move directly into college level work.”
Officials from Chemeketa invited the Salem-Keizer Public School System to embark on a joint effort with the goal of getting students to transition seamlessly from high school to college or to graduate high school with a trade degree.
Students, many of them from groups that are underrepresented on college campuses such as minorities and first-generation college students, are selected for the five-year program, which allows them to earn college credit for many classes taken as part of their high school curriculum.
“The idea is a student can enter as a freshman and exit after five years with our school and have both their high school degree and an AA degree,” says Patti Hoffert, director of high schools for Salem-Keizer Public Schools. The idea is for as many students as possible to continue their education at a four-year school.
“This is a school where we want to build the culture of this whole group of students being college bound,” Hoffert says. “They have a lot of extra support because typically this is a student that moves into the college and is very frequently the freshman dropout. So we wanted to put lots of underpinnings and surround them with support and give them that launch into their first year so that they’re successful.”
The school, which students attend at no cost, represents both a unique opportunity for the students and a valuable investment for the community.
“When you’ve got students whose family history may have not accessed higher education beyond high school, and you get them onto a campus and into an environment where they see that they can be successful, you’ve not only given them an educational opportunity, but you’ve given them a life-changing opportunity,” says Sandy Husk, superintendent of Salem-Keizer Public Schools.
“For the community, what this means is that you’ve got a population of young people who may or may not have known that opportunity was open to them without this structure in place,” she says. “They are going to improve the quality of life and the economic development in this area for decades to come.”
