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An initiative to improve the high school graduation rates of Bartholomew County students is closer to beginning with the hiring of two team leaders and the training of graduation coaches they will oversee.

Christy Boes and Angela Stiverson have been hired by Ivy Tech Community College-Columbus/Franklin to serve as team leaders for the iGrad program.

The mission of iGrad is to provide students with the resources they need to graduate from high school and to achieve a 100 percent high school graduation rate in the county by 2017.

About 20 percent of students who start high school in Bartholomew County do not finish in four years, according to Indiana Department of Education data. Bartholomew Consolidated School Corp.’s graduation rate has slipped in the past two years to 80.6 percent, more than 5 percentage points below the state average.

Boes, a 1991 Columbus East High School graduate, said she views this as a way to give back to her hometown, after working with struggling students at the Atterbury Job Corps Center in Edinburgh and the IndyPendence Job Corps Center in Indianapolis.

“So many of the students I worked with were told they couldn’t do it, they would amount to nothing. ... I think with this message I am saying, ‘You can do this,’” Boes said.

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