AUSTIN – With the public school dropout rate continuing to grow, Congressmen Michael McCaul (R-TX 10) and Henry Cuellar (D-TX 28) hosted a bipartisan panel of community leaders to discuss ways to keep children in school and off of a path of self destruction.

Reps. McCaul and Cuellar, who both serve on the House Homeland Security Committee and have crossed party lines on numerous occasions to tackle homeland security and border security challenges, brought community leaders together to address an issue that has the potential to destroy our country from within. Nearly one thousand students dropped out of Austin area schools last year alone. Statistically, half fall into a life of crime. "They’re gonna be on the wrong path and the cost to society will be great," Rep. McCaul said.

Rep. McCaul has seen the transformation from dropout to criminal from his service as a federal prosecutor before he was elected to Congress. "The names would change," he recalled from cases that filled federal dockets, "but it was the repeated story of a broken family, drop out of school and buy a gun."

Panel members included Austin Independent School District Superintendent Pat Forgione; Austin Police Chief Art Acevedo; Suki Steinhauser, CEO of Communities in Schools; Dr. Ramona Trevino, principal of the University of Texas Elementary School, which hosted the event; and Susan Dawson of the E3 Alliance. The discussion was moderated by Manny Flores, CEO of Latin Works.

Each of the panel members has experienced success employing various strategies to keep at-risk kids in school. Ideas discussed include:
• Impact Team in every school to identify and confront at-risk students
• Increased English language emersion
• Increased availability of health insurance to reduce health crisis that lead to dropouts
• Greater funding for No Child Left Behind

One of the challenges, which today’s panel can help to overcome, is collaboration. "We haven’t learned how to truly share best practices across institutions," said Dawson. Congressman McCaul intends for the discussion to be the first of several regular community dialogs to address and help solve the dropout crisis.