During Fossil Ridge High School’s first year, 2004, more than 800 kids of the 1,600 kids in the building were failing at least two classes – and that doesn’t even count advisory. Just this past spring, only 545 kids of the 2150 attending FRHS had two or more F’s. After participating in Ms. Cheryl Ingham’s program, only 82 of the 545 kids were off track for graduation.

Ingham is an intervention specialist. “My whole job is to find kids who are struggling in school and figure out a solution to make them be successful,” Ingham said. Prior to this year, Ingham had a staff of 20 people who worked with students failing classes. However, due to a shift in funding from the district, Ingham was unable to compensate her staff for their work.

Without a staff to help students, Ingham had to come up with a new plan.

“What we did then is start incorporating that first layer of meeting with kids into advisory,” Ingham said. Now Ingham runs a list of students failing classes and sends them to advisory teachers. “The expectation is now your advisory teacher can talk to you about it during academic time,” Ingham said.

Students who are “chronically failing” will meet with small teams of teachers, administrators, and counselors, and their parents will be contacted. However, Ingham hopes that experience isn’t intimidating. “We’re not getting you in trouble,” said Ingham. “We’re trying to solve a problem to make you successful.”

The change in the system is actually better than the original system, according to Ingham. “What’s so cool is the advisory teacher already has that relationship with the kids, or it’s a nice way to make a relationship with a kid,” said Ingham.

However, the system does have its flaws. “Because advisory has so much packed into it, it’s really time consuming for me to run grades for the entire building every week, so I end up doing half the building one week and half the building another week,” Ingham said. Also, assemblies and student absences get in the way of working with students.

Ingham strongly believes in the program, and its success is evident through the numbers. “It’s so awesome to know we’re helping kids.”