Baltimore schools chief Andres Alonso ordered the city's high schools yesterday to try to individually track down the 925 students who have dropped out since January and get them back in class.

While students are legally permitted to drop out of school once they turn 16, Alonso says it's unacceptable that they're allowed to go without a fight. American schools spend millions of dollars each year on dropout prevention, but they typically do little to help students once they're gone.

"I don't want to be the head of a school system where 900 kids decide not to be in school and that's considered ordinary," Alonso said in an interview.

By Tuesday, the system is requiring staff at city high schools to place at least one phone call to each of their 2008 dropouts. By the end of the month, when the system's state funding will be calculated based on its enrollment, they must have personally visited the students' homes.

In a letter to principals, Alonso wrote that dropping out of school should be the hardest choice students can make, "not the easiest." Of the 925 students, he wrote, "We need to get them back - starting today."

Graduation and dropout rates are difficult to calculate because it's hard to track how many students who leave eventually get diplomas from other districts. But Alonso estimates that nearly half of city students don't finish high school. The state reported a 2007 graduation rate of 60 percent in Baltimore. In June, the journal Education Week published graduation rates for the nation's largest school districts using different methodology. It put Baltimore's graduation rate at 41.5 percent for the Class of 2005.

The state has not released 2008 graduation rates.

Under the new initiative, most high schools will be responsible for contacting 20 to 30 students, but a few have more than 100, said Jonathan Brice, the system's executive director of student services.

For dropouts ages 16 to 18, Brice said, the goal is to get them to re-enroll in the schools they left. About 300 of the 925 dropouts are older, 19 to 21. For them, the system will host two daylong resource fairs next week with social service providers on hand to address the obstacles preventing them from finishing high school, including drug addiction, lack of transportation and lack of child care.

Brice said the system will work with the older students to find an appropriate placement, be it a GED program, a regular school or an alternative school. Any dropouts who return to a city school will be provided with an individualized re-entry plan outlining the support the student is to receive.

State Superintendent Nancy S. Grasmick said yesterday that she applauds the initiative, but the system needs to be sensitive to the demands it places on its staff. Some city schools face a huge challenge this year to get all their seniors to pass the state's high school exit exams or complete a senior project as an equivalent. The schools with the highest dropout rates are also likely to be those with the most students who have yet to pass the exams.

"I just want to be sure it doesn't interfere with the students who are there and who do deserve as much attention as possible to ensure their graduation," Grasmick said.

Still, she said, "The dropout rate in Baltimore City has been entirely too high. We know that dropping out without a high school diploma or a GED places a student at a huge disadvantage in terms of life opportunities."

Brice said the central office will provide support to the schools with the largest number of dropouts to track down. But in Alonso's letter to principals, he noted that high schools received an extra $11 million as a result of a budget reorganization this year, and the system nearly doubled the number of seats in its alternative schools.

The city schools have a financial incentive to get dropouts back because funding is determined by enrollment on Sept. 30 of each year. Baltimore's schools have been losing enrollment for four decades, and Alonso says the system must reverse that.

In September 2004, then-schools CEO Bonnie S. Copeland and her staff tried to find students who hadn't shown up at school. Gov. Martin O'Malley, who was mayor at the time, provided firefighters to knock on doors and city 311 operators to call students' homes. System officials said yesterday that they didn't know how many students re-enrolled as a result of that effort.

Michael Sarbanes, a spokesman for Alonso, said the system is putting the responsibility on principals this time to promote the mentality in schools that there are no throwaway kids. Nonetheless, officials are appealing to other public agencies and community groups to help with the work.

Brice said schools will be expected to review their data monthly all year to see whether any students have dropped out. He said schools will be expected to make a minimum of three phone calls and one home visit to each new dropout. Previously, a dropout in Baltimore received a letter from the school and sometimes a single phone call.

Alonso said that when a student in a small town drops out of school, "it becomes a community event." In Baltimore and other big cities, "thousands of kids drop out, and we're not batting an eye."

RESOURCE FAIRS

The Baltimore school system will hold resource fairs for dropouts from 10 a.m. to 8 p.m. Wednesday at Dunbar Middle School, 500 N. Caroline St., and Thursday at Frederick Douglass High School, 2301 Gwynns Falls Parkway.