Now, working long hours and caring for his 2-year-old son, Castilleja is back on track to graduate from a Houston high school this May because of a special program that lets struggling students and former dropouts attend classes part-time and on Saturdays.
The Houston Independent School District wants to expand that program to all its high schools to fight the dropout epidemic that has dogged the nation's seventh-largest school system for years.
The district's school board approved the plan Thursday night. Administrators will now apply for state funding to expand the program.
Flexible scheduling is a growing strategy among urban schools as they juggle the complex needs of students with jobs and families with state and federal demands for graduation rate improvements, said Jay Smink, director of the National Dropout Prevention Center at Clemson University in South Carolina.
Eighteen percent of all HISD students who should have graduated in 2006 dropped out, state records show. That's double the statewide dropout rate for the same period.
Sixty-three percent of all HISD students are considered at risk of dropping out, according to figures released by the district, though chief academic officer Karen Soehnge said not all of those students are expected to actually leave school.
HISD has worked for years to prevent students from dropping out, and has started every school year since 2004 by organizing volunteers for a door-to-door campaign to urge dropouts to return.
But it has been difficult for the district to afford to make evening and weekend classes available to working students because of state funding rules that pay districts based on their daily attendance rates.
Districts didn't get paid anything if the student was in class for less than two hours a day, and only got full-day funding for students in class more than four hours a day.
A law that took effect this year allows districts to get the full amount for students with flexible schedules, as long as they are in class a total of 1,080 hours a year.
Principal Bertie Simmons of Houston's Furr High School found money in other areas of her budget to offer flexible schedules, including some Saturday classes, to students in her campus' dropout prevention and recovery program.
Enrollment in the program, called REACH, has grown from 35 to 169 in its first three years, with students coming to the east-side school from all corners of the district, Simmons said Thursday.
With just four dedicated teachers and a policy of accepting anyone who's willing to put in the work, REACH's core classes are teeming with 40 or more students. That's troubling in a program where many students desperately need one-on-one attention.
Simmons hopes to use the new funding to expand the program to 300 students while reducing class sizes to no more than 20. And she'd no longer need to divert money from other Furr programs to fund the project.
REACH has been a blessing for Castilleja, who sometimes works 12-hour shifts that stretch into the early morning hours as a valet parking attendant. He said getting his diploma will help him provide a better life for his son.
"I don't want him to have the same life I had," said Castilleja, 18. "I don't want him to be struggling and to be in the streets."
Simmons said stories like Castilleja's will multiply if other schools offer flexible hours while focusing on teaching strategies that engage struggling students.
"I think every kid we save is one more kid who has a future and can make something of themselves and can go out and contribute in a positive way to society," Simmons said.
