OCR Text |
Show Grand Dropout Rate Not That Bad, Meador States Grand County Superintendent Superin-tendent of Schools Bill B. Meador this week responded re-sponded to reports circulating circu-lating in the community purporting that Grand District had the highest dropout rate in the State of Utah. "Actually," Supt. Meador Mea-dor stated, "Grand County, Coun-ty, by comparison, has one of the lower dropout rates, and the situation has improved substantially substan-tially over the past four years." Mr. Meador pointed to a report issued this week by the State Department of Education, which showed show-ed that in the past four fiscal years, twnty-two districts out of forty in the state reported a worsening wor-sening situation. Some of those districts showed a dropout rate in excess of 100 increase over 1969-70. 1969-70. The remainder of the tricts showed improvement improve-ment in dealing with the serious problem, some from only a few percentage percen-tage points, to other with great success. "The report showed us that Grand County has reduced-, its dropout problem pro-blem by a total of thirty-three per cent in the past four years," Mr. Meador said. "This should stand as proofthat the reports now being circulated cir-culated in Moab' are false." ' Neighboring San Juan County, he pointed out,-reported out,-reported an 18 increase in dropout problem in the past four years. Other districts of comparable size to Grand were even ev-en worse. Washington County, located lo-cated in the extreme southwest corner of the state, reported an increase in-crease of 36. Emery County showed the effects ef-fects of an expanding problem pro-blem in its school system sys-tem by reporting an 83 increase. Sevier County, in central Utah, another district about the same size as Grand, reported an increase of 5. The report showed that in 1969-70, Grand County Coun-ty had 32 dropouts. By last year, that number had been reduced to 24. "The dropout problem is still an extremely serious ser-ious one," Supt. Meador stated, but it is one we are constantly working on. I believe, withouttry-ing withouttry-ing to minimize the seriousness ser-iousness of the problem, that the report just issued is-sued by the State shows that we are making substantial sub-stantial progress, and that our dropout rate is' not the highest in the state, as some would lead us to believe." |