A program in Greeley has found one way to get teenagers into summer school: actually paying them to be there.
KUNC has a report on 40 students earning cash for spending their vacation in the classroom.
The point of the
Student Recovery Program is to help students who have been identified as at-risk of dropping out. All of the participants are also Latino males--a demographic group with the second highest drop rate in the state.
Paychecks come at the end of each week during the program. Students earn $5 dollars a day just for attendance and $15 to $25 when they complete a unit of study. There is no cap on how much they can earn.
But Bob Tointon, a Greeley businessman and longtime donor to the program, says the program is really about second chances. Toward that end, the idea seems to be working. 80 percent of the students in the program manage to graduate from high school. That's 4 points higher than the state average for all students.
