It’s graduation season. High school seniors will be getting diplomas, tossing caps into the air. But many students don’t make it that far and drop out. Turns out a growing number of them are hitting the books once again and studying to get her GED. Like Felisha Grindle. She says she dropped out of high school after failing eleventh grade.
Felisha Grindle: It was hard, and I didn’t want to go back because I started getting too old. I think I would have been 19 or something or 20 when I was going to graduate, so I was like I’m just not just going to go back. And I just started working.
That was in her home state of Mississippi. Later on, Grindle was working at the Palace Casino in Biloxi when hurricane Katrina came ashore. The storm destroyed the casino and her home:
Grindle: And so we packed up all the stuff we could save and take with us right then and there, and we just left with that, and came to Colorado.
Grindle’s now 31. She’s a cashier at Wal-Mart, and lives in Aurora with her two kids. She says they live paycheck to paycheck. And at times there hasn’t been enough money for the bus. She told CPR’s Zachary Barr about deciding to study for the GED.
