Two years ago, she didn't have the same feeling when she went to Hickman High School. Marva stopped going to her classes at Hickman High School only a few weeks into her initial semester of tenth grade. At the end of her first semester, the administration notified her that she earned no credit for her classes because of her excessive absences. Discouraged by the lack of communication with the faculty and her perception of the high school environment, Marva withdrew from Hickman. Twila Bennett, a classmate of Marva's at Douglass, shares this coolness towards the school district.
People have their own ways of doing things.
When I was at Hickman, they treated the students all the same. If a student wasn't like everyone else, the teachers treated them like an outcast. Similar to Marva, Twila left Hickman during her sophomore year believing that the administration was not willing to help her succeed in school. Marva and Twila represent a large group of students who have dropped out of Columbia high schools in recent years. The 1996-97 annual dropout rate of Columbia Public Schools, as a percent of total enrollment, was 9.11 percent.