Ryan Gresafe wants to be a professional boxer, but he's staying in school to get an education "in case anything goes wrong, like I break my hand or something," says the 112-pound division fighter who's in ninth grade at North High School in North St. Paul.
The school is fighting for Ryan to get a good education, too, by enrolling him into what it calls "Freshman Academy" -- North High School's new, first and, perhaps, last-ditch effort to keep kids on track to graduate.
"If kids are successful in ninth grade they go on to graduate, and if they aren't then they go on and drop out," says Greg Nelson, principal at North.
Plenty of evidence suggests that ninth grade is as important to graduating as, say, first grade is to learning to read, Nelson says.
Freshman Academy takes kids deemed most at risk of failing and puts them in single-sex classes that are half the size of normal classes. They are led by two of the school's best-liked teachers.
Such efforts are worth the resources, Nelson says, because the individual tragedy of dropping out often creates a wake of broader problems in society, including higher costs for incarceration, health care and welfare.
North High selected its Freshman Academy students based on their performance in middle school as well as consultations with their school counselors. Since then, some have earned their way out, while others who were struggling with their classes have been moved in. Soon, Nelson and others at North High will begin scanning the records of kids in their feeder middle schools for next year's Freshman Academy.
As much as the complexities of students' lives -- family, community and individual makeup -- spool into their academic performance, their failure in high school involves only simple math, says Assistant Principal Mike Redmond, who is in charge of the freshman group.
