By Sharon Noguchi, Mercury News
Three Opportunity Youth Academies that opened this fall offer free online classes, guidance and a path to young people like Schmeing who dropped out of school but want to earn their diploma. Organizers hope to reel in some of what they estimate to be 8,000 dropouts ages 16 to 24 in Santa Clara County. The Santa Clara County Office of Education held a ribbon-cutting ceremony Friday at the newest of its three academies, this one tucked into a Gilroy strip mall. The innovative academies allow students to work at their own pace wherever they want. Furnished with couches, tables and computers, the sites deliberately don’t fit the image of a traditional school.
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