The Galax school district had a dropout problem.
The district, located in a small, rural Appalachian town in southwestern Virginia, has 1,400 students, of which 33% are Hispanic, 40% are economically disadvantaged, and 19% are English learners. In the 2023-24 school year, its English-learner population had a 29% dropout rate, compared with 18% ELs statewide.
Elizabeth Stringer-Nunley, the English-learner lead for the district, knew she had to get creative if she wanted to decrease the dropout rate.
In 2023, Stringer-Nunley worked with college officials to launch Primeros Pasos, a mentoring program that pairs Hispanic college students at nearby Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University, also known as Virginia Tech, with Hispanic high school students from the Galax school district at risk of not graduating.
Now, the program is in its third cohort of students. All the students in the first two cohorts graduated from high school. The English-learner dropout rate in the 2024-25 school year was 7%—a 22 percentage-point decrease from the year prior.
In a conversation with Education Week, Stringer-Nunley, a 2026 Education Week Leader to Learn From, discussed how the program works.
This interview has been edited for length and clarity.
What factors might have contributed to the dropout rate?
Many families are here to work. It’s very hard to keep [students] in school after they’re of age to be able to get a job, because there’s some pressure to help support the family financially. A lot of the families come from areas where education is not the priority. Hard work is the priority. Survival is the priority. There’s not always a lot of support or understanding from home about the importance of education and the doors that it will open up.
How does the mentorship program work?
We have a kickoff event in late September, early October, where we take our students from Galax to Virginia Tech, and they meet all of the mentors.
When we come back to Galax, the high school students meet with their mentors on Zoom once a week. The mentors check in with grades, attendance, how life has gone that week. They talk about anything that the students are comfortable talking about. It’s an extra person that they have who will just listen. High school students just want to be heard, and a lot of people don’t always have time to just listen to them.
Then once a month, we have in-person visits. Either the mentors from Tech come to Galax, or we go to Tech. The mentors plan activities for them, such as career fairs or speakers, for them to see things beyond high school. It doesn’t have to be college—it can be military, vocational school, career opportunities. I just want them to see everything that is available so that they can choose.
How do you pick the students?
They are invited because they are at risk of not graduating. But that is not what I say to them, of course. I usually present it as a special program that offers additional support for students who might need it for many different reasons, and you have to be invited. It’s a very special program. It would give you a person outside of school who is a college student, from some of the same language and cultural background as you, who would be an additional person [who] can help you through the rest of high school.
Typically, when they hear college student, that’s what hooks them in. They like having a person just for them, and they like the idea of having someone outside of school who’s not a school person who’s gonna get them in trouble for dress code and things like that. And it’s completely optional. If they say no, there is no pushing. No one is forced to do it.
Do you have a success story you want to share?
I would have bet my yearly salary that [this student] would not graduate from high school. He was a challenge from the time he was in elementary school. No support at home. Older brothers had dropped out. He was not always pleasant to be around. Got in trouble a lot.
He was in this program for those reasons. He stuck through it. His mentor was amazing. He graduated from high school last year. First person in his family to graduate from high school. He was so proud. He actually even did [an electrical] lineman program [to be able to work on powerlines], earned his commercial driver’s license, and is working, making more than I make with a master’s degree in education. He’s probably my favorite success out of this program. I don’t think he would have [graduated] had it not been for this program. For 10 years of his life, he had all of us trying and helping, and it took someone who looked like him, who sounded like him, and who had the same background as him to open his eyes to what he could do.
Do you have advice for other districts like yours?
Look for outside resources. This is not something that we would have been able to do here. We’re too small, we’re too rural. We don’t have all these organizations and nonprofits that are in a big city that can help support a school. Reaching out to our nearby universities was priceless, and we found that there were so many college students who wanted to do things like this. There are people out there who have a heart to help. Make those connections, communicate with universities and organizations in your community. It really does take a village.
