City Year Milwaukee Executive Director Jason Holton is leading a corps of 60 volunteers that will work with Milwaukee students this school year.

Jason M. Holton knows it’s going to take a lot of time, a lot of work and a lot of focus, but he believes it can be done — so he and a group of 60 young volunteers are rolling up their sleeves to help at-risk Milwaukee students stay on the road to graduation.

The 17- to 24-year-old volunteers have signed up for City Year, a national service organization affiliated with AmeriCorps. Holton has been associated with the organization for five years and is now executive director of Milwaukee City Year.

The 2010-11 school year will be the first time Milwaukee students will have City Year corps members in the classroom. Holton promises the volunteers will "put their all" into helping kids remain on track.

"They want to change the world," he says. "They want to have the effects that take nine to 10 years to change, but they want to do it in 10 months. And I love that about them."

They will be concentrating on middle and high school students who are on the cusp of achievement, but have at least one risk factor that could derail their success. Holton points to a Johns Hopkins University study that found if a child has one "off-track" behavior — such as spotty attendance, behavior issues or difficulty performing in the core subjects of English and math — the student is 75 percent more likely to drop out of high school.

There is often a stigma attached to getting extra help in school, Holton says, but City Year mentors are "Near Peers." They are old enough to command students’ respect and young enough to understand what makes kids tick.

"Getting tutored by a corps member becomes cool," Holton explains. "And it’s another adult figure telling (students) they can’t wait to see them at school. They’re there at the first bell and the last bell."

City Year corps members work with each school in a different way, Holton says, but usually the volunteers are matched with a teacher and will provide some in-class support. If a group of students in that class is lagging behind, for example, the mentors will work with those students to help them keep up with their peers. There are incentives for the entire class to demonstrate pro-social behavior, and students who are "doing the right things" to encourage leadership and consistently attending class are recognized.

Holton notes that across the country 1 million students drop out of school every year, "and that’s why we have to do something." City Year, founded in 1988, has 20 affiliates across America, and is seeing results in the schools where corps members are working. In Chicago, for example, reading levels improved; in Cleveland, fourth-graders in City Year schools improved math proficiencies dramatically; and in Philadelphia, suspensions dropped by 40 percent.

City Year volunteers, who receive a small stipend for rent and food, have idealism on their side, even though the task may sometimes seem daunting. Some are high school graduates, some are college grads, some defer graduate school in order to participate.

"This young generation is saying, ‘I want to do something and I want to do my part.’ For a lot of corps members, that becomes a life of service," Holton says.