Let's take a look at the numbers...
In the last completed census of 2020, there were 37,948 working-aged adults in Monroe County without a high school diploma. We can get an idea of where these numbers come from by taking a glance at dropout data. In the last eight years, 4,429 children have dropped out of school in Monroe County with an average dropout rate of 528 students per year. Census data indicates that there are 6,796 youth between the ages 18-24 without a high school diploma in Monroe County, equivalent to an average of 970 young adults for each chronological year from the ages of 18 to 24. This is an ongoing issue in every major urban community in the country.
The solution to this requires innovation.
We can’t solve our problems with the same tools and expect a different outcome.
The Excel Center is fundamentally a program rooted in the belief that a person over the age of twenty-one should be allowed to get a high school diploma if they want, just as a person can return to college at any stage of their adult life or train for a new career. The decisions that we make during our teenage years shouldn’t be permanent, and we don’t believe that they should be. The impacts are too stark.
Research shows that a person without a high school diploma is more likely to smoke, more likely to suffer from heart disease, twice as likely to live below the federal poverty line, and most sadly of all, more likely to have a child that does not graduate high school.
It's time to do something different.
Help us tell by telling New York State that it’s time for an Excel Center, here in Rochester. It's time.
Sign the petition now: https://www.excelcenterny.org/sign-the-petition