RICHMOND — For some students, graduating from high school and going to college is their goal.

For others, turning 16, dropping out and getting a job is their goal.

That is one message a group of education leaders and First Lady Jane Beshear heard Monday from some former Madison County High School students.

Those students, along with Beshear and educators from central and southeastern Kentucky, came to Eastern Kentucky University to discuss ways to improve the state’s high school graduation rate.

About 6,500 students across Kentucky leave high school without graduating, according to state statistics.

Teachers, counselors, principals, district administrators and the First Lady listened in rapt attention as a panel of students from Madison County’s GED (General Education Diploma) program tell why they chose to quit high school.

“My father died when I was in eighth grade,” said a young woman who will soon take the GED exam and plans to enroll in college. “He was my mentor and motivator” for all things school-related, she said.

For a year after he died, individuals who had worked with her father, along with her middle school guidance counselor, provided the emotional support and advice that she did not receive from her mother. A year later, after she entered high school, support from people outside of school trailed off. Although she had made good grades in middle school, her grades fell and she started skipping school.

Her truancy pulled her into the criminal justice system, creating only negative associations with schooling.

“I was just waiting until I turned 16, so I could quit and get a job,” she said.

The prospect of being out of the juvenile justice system, because she no longer was legally obligated to attend school, also appealed to her.

After visiting her high school guidance counselor who urged her to remain in school, the student learned she had missed so much school she would have to attend until age 20 to retake all the academic credits she had failed.

That is when her counselor told her about the Madison District’s GED program. It allows students to attend tutoring and study at the district’s alternative center, where meals are served and bus transportation is available.

After passing the GED, the student plans to enroll in college.

One of the educators asked her if raising the dropout age to 18 help keep students in school. The student said it her case, it would have.

Beshear asked her if having a mentor to help fill the void left by her father have helped.

“This lady right here helped me a lot,” the student said, pointing to her middle school counselor. “Ms. (Jamie) Ford (of the GED program) also helped me a lot. I wouldn’t know what to do without her.”

Still, school staff cannot take the place of a missing parent, she acknowledged.

A young man on the panel who passed the GED exam last week said he wanted to quit school so he could get a job, live on his own and escape an alcoholic step-father and a violent home life.

“It’s hard to concentrate on school when you know you’re going to have a fist fight with a drunk when you get home,” he said.

Another young man said the prospect of a good-paying factory job helped lure him out of high school.

“The money you can make working in a factory sounds good, but factory work will kill you,” he said.

“You see how smart and articulate these young people are,” Ford said. “They didn’t leave school because they couldn’t do the work.”

They left school not because they could not do the work, but because they wanted to get out of the high school environment, she said.

Additional counselors could probably help students such as those on the panel, said a high school principal, but funding is a problem for his district. His school of 750 students has one full-time and one half-time counselor, he said.

“I’m in-effect my school’s third guidance counselor,” the principal said.

Madison County’s GED program creates very little extra expense for the district, Ford said, and it enables students no longer in the regular academic program to pursue other educational options, including college.

However, some at the summit expressed concern that students could view the GED as a “quick ticket out of school,” pulling them toward dropping out if they are allowed to quit before age 18.

A series of summits, called “Graduate Kentucky: A Community Approach,” are being conducted in each region of the state, said the First Lady, who plans to attend them all. Keeping students in school until graduation is one of her priorities, Beshear said.

Previous summits have been conducted in Murray and Bowling Green, with others scheduled for Hazard and Northern Kentucky.

While addressing the dropout issue will require money, plummeting revenues have the state looking at budget cutbacks, not new programs, Beshear said. A grant from America’s Promise foundation has funded the summits.

In addition to having educators share problems and solutions, Beshear said, the summits are designed to help educators draw on community resources to keep students in school.

“We want to involve the business community and the faith community in address the dropout issue,” she said.

Churches are interested to help young people become good citizens and business people and are motivated to create a trained workforce, the First Lady said.

In addition to it being the home of EKU, Dr. Dorie Combs, chair of the university’s Education College’s Department of Curriculum and Instruction, said Richmond was chosen as the site for one of the summits because of the school district’s successful GED program and the Madison County’s Business Education Partnership.

MCBEP was formed within the past four years by the county schools and the Richmond Chamber of Commerce.

“Other districts need to know what’s working in districts such as Madison County’s,” Beshear said.

After the summits are completed, the results will be analyzed and shared with all districts in the state, she said.

Bill Robinson can be reached at brobinson@richmondregister.com or at 624-6622.