Senate passes dropout law

With the bill's passage in the NH Senate, it looks like the law to raise the legal high school dropout age from 16 to 18 will become law. According to the news story in the Concord Monitor (see Dropout bill gets $1.2 million), the Senate also added $1.2 million for pilot programs to create alternative programs to help those children stay in school. This was a response to criticism that simply forcing kids to say in school without any programs to help them would end up with them becoming a nuisance. Last year, 23,000 students dropped out in New Hampshire. The catch with this money is that this program is only targeted at Manchester and Nashua and is a one-time allocation.

In SAU 38 there is only one program I'm aware of that could possibly help channel kids that don't fit the regular mold in the right direction. That's the Monadnock Community Connections School, which is partially funded through a grant (MRPSOC) that runs out next year. It's innovative, it could help. Will voters support it? In March of 2005, amidst a raft of negative publicity from the Monadnock Taxpayer's Association, voters passed a measure saying that they did not support the program. The future of the program is in doubt, unless parents can organize and do more to build public support for the program. The grant runs out in 2007. The new law goes into effect in 2008.