The Idaho Commission on Hispanic Affairs is co-hosting a two-day summit in July to address these challenges. Other statewide efforts include a recent symposium in Sun Valley for 300 Latino high school students.
During the opening day, Hispanic students met with college recruiters and competed for scholarships; last year $1.6 million worth of scholarships were awarded during the symposium, said Debra Kahl, a spokeswoman for the Idaho National Laboratory, which also sponsored the event.
The symposium was created nearly two decades ago when organizers sought to correct a 60 percent dropout rate among Latino high school students.
While Hispanic dropout rates have improved since then, Latino students still accounted for 468 of the 2,100 Idaho high school students who dropped out last year, according to Idaho Department of Education statistics.
Ricardo Lopez, a bilingual claims representative with the U.S. Social Security administration, was among those who attended the first symposium in 1990 when he was a high school sophomore.
For Lopez, the symposium served as a wake-up call, helping him become the first in his family to graduate from high school. With the help of the Hispanic symposium, Lopez earned a scholarship to attend Idaho State University.
Now, Lopez, 34, is encouraging Hispanic students to take advantage of the same opportunities he did.
“I knew it was important for me to come back and contribute,” he said.
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