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Aug 7, 12:00 PM EDT

Pasadena school dogs chronic dropouts

By CHRISTINA HOAG
Associated Press Writer

PASADENA, Calif. (AP) -- School has long since started for the day when Jose Ramirez pulls up to a small bungalow and yells out to a tardy student. Anthony Gonzalez limps to the door.

"It's after nine, man, you got to be in school," Ramirez tells the 19-year-old, who dropped out of school after a gang shooting four years ago left him paralyzed on one side.

It's part of Ramirez's job as a "chaser" at Learning Works! Charter School, which pushes Pasadena's most hardened dropouts back to school by using former dropouts to hunt them down.

Graduation numbers are hopeful, but problems still abound: Kids getting high on field trips, girls abandoning babies in the day care room, a student who poked holes in the giveaway condoms, cops arriving with arrest warrants.

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