How Businesses and the Community Can Help

Click here and sign up to make a difference!

Community Objective:

• To create awareness of the dropout rate and its consequences to the Missoula community.
• To provide a call-to-action so that concerned members of the community can act to help increase high school retention rates.

Businesses… we are encouraging you to:

• Support employees in volunteering. Provide time off for employees to volunteer, including and for parents to volunteer at their children’s schools.
• Provide student-internship and job-shadowing opportunities. Provide them with a designated contact at MCPS through which to arrange regularly scheduled opportunities for these efforts.
• Voice support for GraduationMattersMissoula (GMM). Including by linking their corporate websites to the GMM website, publishing the logo in printed and online communications, and displaying a sign in their workplace indicating support for the initiative.
• Offer student incentives. Provide to those graduate from high school– a tangible gift, a discount, etc.
• Adopt a classroom. Or a school by asking principals to delineate their schools’ needs and helping to address them.
• Implement a zero-tolerance policy for tagging and graffiti. At the same time, encourage them to be “youth-friendly,” including, for example, by providing an approved space for tagging/graffiti.

Business and community leaders we are encouraging you to:

• ·Tell your own success stories. Give speeches (as guest speakers at schools) or in other forms of communication, orally and in writing.
• Get involved in the school system at the policymaking level. For example, a universal reason cited for dropping out (by those who had dropped out) was “failure/lack of credits.” Are there opportunities for you to provide credit for out-of-classroom experiences?
• Act each week (or every 2 weeks) on the electronic Tip of The Week that GMM will disseminate electronically – an action they can take to promote kids staying in school.
• Be mentors. Work with programs like GUTS, Big Brothers Big Sisters, Flagship and other existing programs that offer tutoring opportunities.
• Disseminate and practice the Search Institute’s 150 Ways to Show kids You Care.” http://www.cyc-net.org/today2000/today001211.html

Take Action!

Support employees in volunteering.
Provide time off for employees to volunteer at our schools.
Provide student-internship and job-shadowing opportunities.
Offer student incentives.
Provide a tangible gift, a discount, etc. to those who graduate from high school or complete their GEDs.
Adopt a classroom, or a school, by asking principals to delineate their schools’ needs and helping to address them.