This solutions journalism project was created as part of reporter Emma Davis’ service project as a Report for America corps member. Davis worked with nine high school students in Hillsdale’s 2021-22 yearbook class to produce journalism relevant to their district. The students include Delaney Painter, Devon Simmons, Jackson Radcliffe, Jacob Spillman, Klaire Meyer, Marissa Heldenbrand, Celeste Harris, Aaron Horton and Alexis Hamilton. Yearbook teacher Kyle Wissel also contributed.
JEROMESVILLE – Hillsdale High School has 20 teachers, in addition to a few administrators, who serve an overall 9-12 grade enrollment of 273 Hillsdale students for the 2021-22 school year.
But, far fewer students take classes in the high school building each day because many choose alternative learning options.
High school guidance counselor Scott Call said around 70 Hillsdale students take classes at the Career Center each year, mainly students in the junior and senior classes. Additionally, at least 50% of juniors and seniors typically take classes through College Credit Plus, meaning they spend their school days at local colleges and universities or take courses online, Call said.
Call has found once students leave the high school building to pursue these alternative learning options, they rarely return.
“Which is why so many Hillsdale students are not here,” Call explained. “Usually it’s freshmen and sophomores who make up the bulk of any meetings we have.”
It is not a problem that students are using the alternative resources at their disposal — the career center and CCP — Call said. After all, it is his job to find the most effective ways for students to graduate and encourage progress to their desired careers, he explained.
But, when asked the reasons students often give him as to why they chose options outside of Hillsdale, Call said, “I’ll be honest with you, I also hear they want to get away from stuff here. What that stuff is, I don’t always get to hear that.”
Hillsdale high school’s 2021-22 yearbook class identified key reasons through interviews and surveys, as well as explored potential solutions to the preventable retention challenges the district is seeing.
The product of this work, this series, will explore two dominant reasons students cited as to why they pursued options outside of Hillsdale High School, or if they remain in the high school building, in what ways they wish their school to improve:
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The offerings in the high school building, both the content of classes and their structure.
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School culture, specifically making all students feel welcome and fostering understanding between students of various views and backgrounds.
Hillsdale High School will be housed in a new building starting in the 2024-25 school year, and administration, including principal Davis Baker, said they want to ensure they can make use of the new facilities.
As staff and students prepare for the move, Hillsdale’s yearbook class offers ways the district can maximize new and existing resources for student success.
Next: Offering more by scheduling less: A personalized approach to education
Reporting process
Emma Davis worked with Hillsdale High School’s yearbook class, taught by Kyle Wissel, once per week throughout the 2021-22 school year to teach students reporting and editing skills they could use to document their year. This work was part of her service project through Report for America.
After building foundational skills in the first few months of the school year, the students began brainstorming ideas to pursue a solutions journalism reporting project, where they could put their newfound skills into practice. Solutions journalism is a key component of Ashland Source. More about that here.
Before deciding on a topic, as a class they laid out as many aspects of the school system they could think of (groups, school performance, size, recent changes). The students settled on the retention of junior and senior students, as each had noticed their peers increasingly leaving the high school.
Then, they set out to do some pre-reporting. Each student interviewed a peer who chose to attend an alternative education option — career center, college credit plus, online school — to better understand why they left the building. The students shared their findings and identified recurring reasons, two of which they focused on for this series: class offerings/schedule and school culture.
With this pre-reporting knowledge, the students conducted interviews with peers, teachers and administrators, disseminated a survey and inquired about ways Hillsdale could solve the retention issues at hand.
