When she entered high school, Warren Central senior Tiffany Sanders said she always had heard that the junior year of high school was the most stressful. She says it was a prediction that turned out to be true.

Overwhelmed with all the work and the other demands, “I just dropped out,” she said. But it lasted only a week. “I got back in before it was too late.”

Although she returned with the encouragement and help of her family, statistics published by the Mississippi Department of Education show that an estimated 37.9 percent of Warren County’s high school students will not graduate with their classmates. Statewide, an estimated 26.6 percent of students don’t graduate in four years.

However, said Vicksburg Warren School District Superintendent James Price, that statistic can be misleading. The state-calculated estimated rate doesn’t take into account students who take five or more years to finish or those who leave the district to go to private school, or students who eventually go elsewhere and earn their GEDs.

“If they start with us, but don’t finish,” it counts against us, Price said. “They could be off in college somewhere, but it still shows up,” that they don’t graduate.

Now, with little more than two months of school under way, some students have already missed nearly 30 days, said Warren County School Attendance Officer Mary Greer. She and fellow attendance officer Charles Winston are responsible for investigating students who are frequently absent.

Students who drop out face a variety of issues, said County Prosecutor Ricky Johnson, who also handles all youth court cases in Warren County.

They include abuse, neglect, family addictions, mental health issues, physical health, the absence of family structure and few or no role models and mentors, said Johnson.

“If a child makes a decision on his own to drop out of school, that means he’s made a terrible decision,” he said. “But there’s usually a reason for doing that,” he said. An attorney for 28 years, Johnson said he deals with about 600 children annually.

“I’m convinced that if we would focus more attention and develop the attitudes and mindsets of children in grades K-7 we could save more children,” from dropping out, said state Rep. George Flaggs, who works as counselor for Warren County Youth Court.

Greer agreed. She said younger students with legitimate academic or family issues often become embarrassed and frustrated as do older students in a class filled with people two or even three years younger than they are. So they act up to avoid coming to school.

But Flaggs said the VWSD has taken steps to ensure that students hoping to avoid school don’t get their wish. Even in the Warren County Juvenile Detention Center, students are taught daily by certified teachers.

While stressing finishing school is important at all ages, the critical point often comes when high school students start to work, said Warren Central counselor Carla Smythe.

She said that many students see their parents, who don’t have high school diplomas, doing OK and figure they’ll be OK, too. One student recently announced that he was staying only until he was 17 and that he would not be back.

“That just killed me,” said Smythe. “It’s not like he had academic trouble — it just wasn’t in his thought process,” she said.

Under mandatory attendance laws, students are supposed to be tracked. If a student doesn’t turn 17 before Sept. 1, he or she must complete the school year, Greer said. And “the parents have to be held accountable until that child reaches the age of 17,” she said.

“If the parents don’t place a lot of value on education,” neither do students, said Warren County Youth Court Judge Johnny Price. As the county’s youth court judge, Price has jurisdiction over all civil and criminal matters involving youth. Last week, he spoke to junior and high school students throughout the district about things that could land them in court. Students who miss 12 days of school must appear before him.

Students do face legitimate economic and social issues that may keep them out of school but “our job is to go out and find them,” Winston said. “We are here in a helping capacity.”

For the most part, students acknowledge that they need to stay in school to have more opportunities for their future.

“I don’t want to drop out of school,” said Warren Central freshman Erica Brinkley, a sentiment echoed by fellow freshman Jessica Williams. “I know I need a good education to be successful in life,” Jessica said. But that’s not always the case, Smythe said. “I think one of the biggest issues for some of these students is economic in nature — they really are helping support their families.”