In partnership with Yavapai Community College, goal to offer courses for variety to students who have dropped out of school for many reasons – will offer automotive in recently purchased $25,000 metal building and add equine program

Cottonwood Community Schools are moving creatively, with minimal financial support, to try and deal with the high school drop out rate in the Verde Valley in a variety of ways.  Experts, speaking to the Yavapai Community College Governing Board, put the high school drop out rate at from 20 to 25 percent. 

In addition to the mini-class experiment described earlier in the Blog, with an initial enrollment of ten students, it also launched its first year of experimenting  with the Verde Tech High School concept.  According to the staff, its first effort was successful.  It now hopes to expand on what it learned during its first year.

The new high school will attempt to attract a wide variety of students who have dropped out of school  for many reasons.  It will offer “catch-up” classes for some and accelerated classes for others.   It will focus on providing early training in career and technology courses to students beginning in the ninth grade.

In its accelerated program, which may attract highly skilled learners, it is hoped they will select a major in their early high school years at the Verde Tech High School and take enough college level courses during high school so they can graduate with an Associate in Arts Degree and a High School Diploma.   

The Community School is looking to Yavapai Community College’s Verde Campus to continue to provide teaching space for the program.  The College may also provide transportation for students to and from the campus, which is a little over a mile from the Cottonwood Community School.

For greater details about the experiment, please click here and you will be taken to a video clip of the presentation given the Yavapai Community College Governing Board at its May 2022 meeting.