\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n
\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tGustavo Osorio Beltran\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n
\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tSubmitted photo\/Stand For Children\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n
By Gustavo Osorio Beltran | Phoenix<\/p>\n
OPINION \u2014 When I first enrolled in Camelback High School as a freshman, I was nervous. Everyone talks about how difficult the transition is between middle and high school.<\/p>\n
Not to mention how important ninth grade is to our futures. Success in freshman year is a better predictor of high school graduation than anything \u2014 race, gender, income or test scores.<\/p>\n
That\u2019s where programs like 9th Grade On-Track<\/a> come in. I\u2019m so grateful my school had this program to help me successfully transition to high school.<\/p>\n One of the key elements of the program is \u201cadvisory\u201d \u2014 an opportunity for teachers to intervene early when their students are falling behind. But it\u2019s more than that. It\u2019s an opportunity for teachers to mentor students and help us be successful in high school and beyond.<\/p>\n It didn\u2019t just have an impact on my freshman year. Being on track to graduate, I could take classes that would not have been available to me if I had to retake classes instead. I enrolled in an early college program and completed almost an entire year of college while still in high school.<\/p>\n Now, I\u2019m at Arizona State University, studying to become a dermatologist physician assistant. I\u2019m the first in my family to go to college. 9th Grade On-Track helped me get there.<\/p>\n Over the last three years, the Arizona Legislature funded small grants to help support my school \u2014 and others around the state \u2014 provide 9th Grade On-Track programs. But this funding has not been included in any FY 2027 budget proposals.<\/p>\n I hope that in the end this funding is in the budget. Last year\u2019s $3.4 million helped 22,000 more students get the benefits I got. That seems like a really good deal to me!<\/p>\n Please submit comments at\u00a0yourvalley.net\/letters<\/a> or email them to AzOpinions@iniusa.org.\u00a0We are committed to publishing a wide variety of reader opinions, as long as they meet our\u00a0Civility Guidelines<\/a>.<\/p>\n \n \n\t\tKeywords<\/p>\n \t\t\t\tArizona,\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n \t\t\t\t Arizona Legislature,\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n \t\t\t\t 9th Grade On-Track,\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n \t\t\t\t school,\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n \t\t\t\t funding,\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n \t\t\t\t 2027 budget,\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n \t\t\t\t students,\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n \t\t\t\t Arizona State University,\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n \t\t\t\t Camelback High School\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Gustavo Osorio Beltran Submitted photo\/Stand For Children By Gustavo Osorio Beltran | Phoenix OPINION \u2014 When I first…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":857903,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[5131],"tags":[346893,350084,5229,5643,91271,22076,1587,296252,1258,1589,11645,6214,67,586,132,5230,68,2969],"class_list":["post-857902","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-phoenix","tag-2027-budget","tag-9th-grade-on-track","tag-america","tag-arizona","tag-arizona-legislature","tag-arizona-state-university","tag-az","tag-camelback-high-school","tag-funding","tag-phoenix","tag-school","tag-students","tag-united-states","tag-united-states-of-america","tag-unitedstates","tag-unitedstatesofamerica","tag-us","tag-usa"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/116726909486547972","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/857902","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=857902"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/857902\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/857903"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=857902"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=857902"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=857902"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}