CORPUS CHRISTI, Texas — The good folks with Communities in Schools will gather at Solomon Coles High School on Saturday to get kids back into the classroom.
This will be the 12th year for Operation Keeping Every Youth in School.
It is known as the “Keys Walk.”
Every year, CCISD sees students drop out of school.
In 2013, the CCISD dropout rate of seventh graders to 12th graders was 2.8 percent. But as of 2018, the dropout rate has been lowered to 2 percent.
"Every student has a different reason for them not coming back to school, whether it's bullying, or economic reasons or they just don't want to come to school,” said Steven Vasquez, a recovery specialist at Solomon Coles High School.
Part of the success lowering the dropout rate has been the Keys Walk.
"We're getting volunteers to come out and help us do what we do every day,” Vasquez said. “As a recovery specialist we go out into the community, and we find those kids that did not come back to school."
Both adults and students will go door to door to directly reach out to the kids who have currently not returned to school.
"I have a student, he dropped out, we got him back from the Keys Walk, he came to school here and messaged me the other day when school started at del mar,” Vasquez said. “And he’s starting his first year of college."
This year, volunteers will be looking to reach 93 kids from seventh graders all the way to seniors.
"Sometimes it just takes that extra person to reach them to say, 'Hey, you can do it, we believe in you,' and they'll come back," Vasquez said.
