Anti-dropout effort in Chesterfield uses details from prison life

Keeping Chesterfield kids in school Every 26 seconds, a student drops out of school. Three out of four end up in prison.

Some Chesterfield County middle school educators hope that stepping into a small reproduction of a prison cell and hearing the grim details of prison life will discourage students from choosing to drop out.

Students from Bailey Bridge, Robious and Perrymount middle schools took a 20-minute tour of The Choice Bus yesterday. The bus visited Bailey Bridge, and the other schools drove their student to that school.

Since the Birmingham, Ala.-based Mattie C. Stewart Foundation unveiled the bus a year ago as a dropout-prevention initiative, 80,000 people have been on it, said Lynn Smelley, the foundation's program manager.

The bus will visit Salem and Falling Creek middle schools today.

Students touring the bus watched a video with information on student dropout statistics and inmate testimonials on the importance of staying in school.

Then Smelley, the tour conductor, slid a black curtain in the back of the bus and revealed an 8-foot-by-8-foot prison cell mockup with a bed and a toilet doubling as a sink.

Instead of one bunk, the cell would have four beds, he told students. If one of the inmates used the toilet, three others would be watching, he said.

"When prisoners come through that cell, they lose all their rights, all their privileges, all their privacy, all their choices," he said.

Prisoners use each other's underwear, Smelley said.

"I ain't wearing somebody else's drawers," a student responded in disbelief. Michael Gill, principal of Bailey Bridge Middle, said he did not have parents' permission to identify students by name.

"Starting right now, everything you do, especially in school, the choice is yours," he said. "Stay in school and make the right choice."

Gill said he was happy that the county had paid for the bus to come to the schools. It costs $1,500 per day.

"We want students to realize that choices have consequences, whether positive or negative, and we have to live with those consequences," he said. "Education is not only the right thing to do, but it's also going to lead to a lot of positive things."

Students got the message.

"If I should drop out of school, I could end up in prison," a Bailey Bridge Middle student said after the tour. "That jail cell, I can't stand in there 23 hours with [up to] eight people."

Contact Juan Antonio Lizama at (804) 649-6513 or .