Raising school dropout age: Right goal, wrong approach

Developing a program to keep kids from dropping out is a great idea. Unfortunately, New Hampshire Governor John Lynch's proposal to raise the mandatory school attendance age to 18 doesn't appear to do much in the way of creating or funding programs to help deal with the reasons why these children have dropped out in the first place.

The risk here is that this feel good legislation from Concord will saddle financially strapped schools with the additional burden of babysitting teenagers who don't want to be there without providing any additional resources to meet those children's needs.

Now the effort has gained support in the Senate (see Stay in school, kids in the Concord Monitor).

Forcing kids against their will to attend school when they don't want to attend and without any program to help them could become a big headache administrators, a classroom disruption for students, and an additional resource drain on SAU 38's already strapped budgets.

Students who drop out have problems that require special programs that can be expensive. How will Concord address that?

Ironically, one innovative program in the Mondanock school system that could help, MC2, suffers from a lack of public support and has been under sustained attack by a local anti-tax group, the Monadnock Taxpayer's Association.

Without public input this measure is likely to become law. Monadnock School District residents who have concerns with this measure should contact Sen. Thomas Eaton at (603) 271-2111 or thomas.eaton@leg.state.nh.us. Voters from other districts can can find their representative's contact information on the NH Senate Members Web page.