Pasadena school dogs chronic dropouts
In this July 21, 2010 photo, Anthony Morris, 27, top, a chaser and security guard at the Learning Works! Charter School, and Edgar Rodriguez, 17-year-old high school dropout, joke around during their lunch break in Pasadena, Calif. The school was founded two years ago by Mikala Rahn to serve Pasadena’s highest risk youth, gangbangers, teen mothers, parolees, with one goal in mind, to get them to graduate high school. The school employs former dropouts as "chasers." The chasers round up the students, covering every excuse they use to not attend school. They will bring them to school, take them to planned parenthood appointments, to see parents in jail, to attend court hearings and even pick them up from juvenile hall and police stations. (AP Photo/Jae C. Hong)By Christina Hoag
Associated Press Writer / August 7, 2010
Associated Press Writer / August 7, 2010
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PASADENA, Calif.—School has long since started for the day when Jose Ramirez pulls up to a small bungalow and yells out to a tardy student. Anthony Gonzalez limps to the door, shirtless with a head of bed-tousled hair.
"It's after nine, man, you got to be in school," Ramirez tells the 19-year-old, who dropped out of school after a gang shooting four years ago left him paralyzed on one side. Ramirez helps pull a T-shirt over Gonzale's frozen arm and playfully scolds him.
"I got to dress you, too, sleeping beauty? The day you graduate I'm going to let you sleep in." Gonzalez smiles sheepishly, grabs his cane and gets in the car.
It's part of Ramirez's job as a "chaser" at Learning Works! Charter School, which pushes Pasadena's most hardened dropouts back to school by using former
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