Reach Out to Dropouts is a door-to-door outreach that began in a dinner conversation between Mayor Bill White and his wife, Andrea White. It is the Mayor's and HISD Superintendent Abe Saavedra's common sense approach to solving one of our city's most pressing problems. "If something is important, you knock on doors." says the Mayor. Each year, when a student fails to show up to class at the beginning of the school year volunteers go door-to-door knocking at the homes of these students. The volunteers offer the encouragement and resources that these students lack to complete their high school education. This award-winning program has been followed by other cities across the country and continues to grow in numbers locally as well. Over the first six years of the event, the walk has brought back over 7,400 students thanks to the help of over 15,600 volunteers. The 2009 walk included six Texas big cities, 13 small cities and 20 Houston-area school districts.
Mayor White and other community leaders lead the Houston Reach Out to Dropouts Walk each year.
Participating Cities: Houston, Corpus Christi, Dallas, El Paso, Fort Worth, Midland, San Antonio, Angleton, Baytown, Cleveland, Galena Park, La Marque, Missouri City, Pasadena, Richmond, Rosenberg, Stafford, and Sugar Land
