Dropouts Returned For Bounty Women Earn Fee If Pupil Earns Diploma

Students who drop out of Central Linn High School will be tracked down by a pair of bounty hunters who together could earn $1,000 if the truant ends up with a diploma.

There are no guns, handcuffs or violence involved.

Donna Bronson and Marie Ekenberg just want dropouts to sign on the dotted line.

John Dallum, Central Linn’s superintendent, calls them his headhunters.

They call themselves alternative education coordinators, hired to lure displaced youth back to school.

Central Linn gives the pair $300 for enrolling a student and charting a way for him or her to earn a high school diploma or general educational development certificate, a GED. That might include helping the youths take home-study courses or schedule classes at Linn-Benton Community College in Albany.

Monitoring the student’s progress nets another $200, and the women get a $500 bonus if the student finishes.

State educators say this 820-student district south of Albany is the only one in Oregon that uses a bounty system to return teenagers to school.

The women have earned a reputation for relentlessness, stirring students from bed, tutoring at least one in jail and advocating for them in court.

And dropout ranks have thinned since Bronson and Ekenberg began prowling the district in March for truants.

“When they are not where they say they are supposed to be, we know who their friends are, and we go get them,” Bronson said.

Kyle Lynde was strolling through Brownsville when the bounty hunters passed in a blue Toyota.

He knew the school had put a price on his head.

Sure enough, the car did a U-turn and zoomed back. Out leaped 39-year-old Bronson, with 48-year-old Ekenberg right behind her.

Lynde knew he was about to return to school.

“If I could have gotten away, I probably would have,” the 18-year-old said. “There really was no way out.”

The women immediately signed him up.

A day earlier, the bounty hunters had nabbed two other dropouts, Ryan Law, 17, and Nick Farrier, 18.

The three young men admit they are grateful for another shot at school.

“Donna and Marie really made it easy,” Law said. “They set it all up for us. They drive us around.”

When one plan doesn’t work, Ekenberg and Bronson try another.

“We run this student contact just short of harassment,” Bronson said. “We let them know contact is part of what we do, and they agree to it. … If you lose contact for two weeks, you have two weeks of nothing happening.”

The recruiters say almost all young people want more education, even after encountering repeated, heartbreaking failure in public schools. One student chalked up 33 F’s in four years, yet he kept going.

“They are wounded people,” Bronson said. “It is a great, great gift that they trust us.”

One of Bronson’s sons and Ekenberg’s daughter are among the 40 students the women serve. Bronson, a high school dropout herself, recently earned her master’s degree in deaf education.

The district’s 3.5 percent dropout rate is about half the state average.