Burbank superintendent driven to attain 100% graduation rate

In his ongoing push to see a 100% graduation rate, Burbank Unified School District Supt. Matt Hill has been tracking down last year’s dropouts and pushing them to complete their studies.

Not long after he was hired in July, he began personally calling students who did not graduate as part of the class of 2015.

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In May, 95% of 1,239 high school seniors went on to earn their diplomas, but 62 did not.

Since then, 33 went on to complete their diplomas in summer school, while another five got them at Burbank Adult School.

Three more students graduated from Monterey High School, the district’s continuation campus.

Those achievements bumped up the district’s graduation rate to 98.3% and, as of now, 1,218 have graduated, according to a district report.

That leaves 21 outstanding students who belonged in the class of 2015. Of those, 15 are enrolled at the Burbank Adult School and one student is at Monterey High School. Two more are attending charter schools outside of Burbank.

Three students are not enrolled in school. In recent weeks, Hill and staff in the district’s instructional services department have repeatedly been calling those three students and encouraging them to finish.

During a recent school board meeting, Hill announced that he and the staff had tracked down all three. Two had moved to different cities. One needed a single class to graduate.

“Now you have a superintendent (who) will not let a month go by without asking, ‘Where are these students?’” he told the school board. “Even though they’re no longer our responsibility because they’ve left the district, It doesn’t matter to us. And that’s they type of focus we’re going to continue to have here in the district.”

School board members praised Hill and his staff for their effort to see the students attain their degrees.

School board member Larry Applebaum wondered about the students who would have belonged to the same class but who dropped out of school before reaching their senior years.

“I think if that desire had been there when those kids were ninth graders … the ones who dropped out, they would be crossing the finish line too,” Applebaum said.

For his part, Hill acknowledged his focus on seeing fewer students drop out, and he recalled meeting face-to-face recently with academically struggling middle school students who opened up to him about their personal challenges.

Hill referred to intervention specialists, and others as crucial figures who could step in when students meet academic hurdles.

A perfect graduation rate is not impossible, he said.

“I wanted to use the senior class to prove that 100% is attainable,” Hill said. “It is not a myth. It depends on that right moment, that right phone call, that right connection, but it can be done.”