Latino student drops out of school to protest the alarming number of Latinos dropping out of school
By ONANTZIN News
2011-06-28
Fresno, CA -- A student activist from Fresno, CA dropped out of high school this week in order to more effectively protest the state's critical dropout rate among Latinos.
Eduardo Gomez, a sophomore in Fresno High School and leader of the community organization LAG (Latino Advocates for Graduation), was compelled to act after the release of "Diplomas Count", a nationwide survey of graduation rates from the publisher of Education Week magazine, which revealed that an astronomical 40 percent of Latinos don't graduate high school in California.
"The report sent my head reeling", stated Gomez. "I thought graduation rates in the state had actually improved across all groups, but it looks like we still have a lot of work and protesting to do".
In recent years, California's overall high school dropout rate has indeed declined, but minority dropout rates remain disproportionately high. Compared to an 86.9 percent graduation rate for whites and Asians, less than 60 percent of the state's black and Latino students graduate, the report notes.
Following the release of the dismal figures, it became clear to Gomez that he needed to work twice as hard if he wanted to expand LAG's influence and help more Latinos graduate from California's broken school system, but that meant the C average student, who was already struggling to juggle school and his extra curricular activities, had to divert considerably more time to his activism.
"There just wasn't enough time during the day - with school work and stuff. I figured since I didn't really like school anyway, I would leave and divert my full time into improving the dropout rate", said the recent Fresno High School dropout.
Gomez officially dropped out of school on Monday and said he would immediately start his new full time commitment running the LAG organization.
His family declined to comment on his perplexing actions, but his political science teacher did have the following words to say about Gomez: "He's a fine young man and a testament to the type of bright future leaders we are creating in our schools".