'You're not going to get anywhere ...'

RUSSELLVILLE - There are two months of high school left, and Russellville senior Bo Mansell is already dreaming of college biology and chemistry classes.

On Saturday, Mansell visited University of Alabama administrators, who will consider the Russellville senior class president for a scholarship program. Mansell already has plans to study medicine.

As his high school career winds down, Mansell credits teachers and guidance counselors for pushing students toward college and careers. It's an obvious choice to many students in a community with challenges of high unemployment and a growing immigrant population.

"Most kids here know that you are not going to get anywhere without a high school education," said Mansell, walking past row after row of black lockers on the Russellville High School campus.

That's a message Russellville administrators say students seemed to have taken to heart with solid test scores and one of the region's lowest dropout rates. The numbers are surprising to some who have long considered Florence and Muscle Shoals schools main draws for families moving to the Shoals.

Muscle Shoals Superintendent Jeff Wooten says that while his system boasts the lowest dropout rate at 4 percent, he isn't shocked that Russellville is also low.

Wooten has a broad perspective, having worked as principal of Russellville High School before to coming to Muscle Shoals last summer.

"(Russellville) is a school district that does an all-around good job with its students," he said.

"The community there, like here in Muscle Shoals, expects a lot from the school system, and those high standards are met."

The low dropout numbers have been achieved despite what some school officials may have once considered a burden on public services. Children of a growing Hispanic

population working in fields and powering the large poultry industry also have swelled classrooms across Franklin County.

At Russellville, Betsy Alonso is part of the 17 percent of Hispanic students in schools in Franklin County. The Mexican teenager also is living the American dream in many ways.

Her mother sells cosmetics, and her father builds trailers to provide for five children.

At home, her mother, Ignacia Alonso, reminds her eldest child not to worry about anything other than her schoolwork. The family will find a way to send Alonso to college, the teen's mother says.

"She has the desire," Ignacia Alonso said. "If she wants to get ahead in life, she needs an education." Alonso is a top student at Russellville, making consistent A's and ranking in the top 10 percent of her class.

In the past four years, Alonso said she has seen Hispanic girls who have given up on high school too easily because of their immigration status or the prospects of not being able to afford college.

With many families supporting relatives in Mexico's shaky economy, boys also have been lured by hourly jobs that can provide steady income for relatives here and across the border.

Alonso said she and her 15-year-old sister have not taken for granted the struggles her family is making for them.

"Our parents want us to be something in life," said Alonso, who dreams of being a child psychologist. "They don't want us to work like them; they want a career for us.

"They are trying to do everything possible for me to study."

Emilio Sahurie can be reached at 740-5803 or emilio.sahurie@-timesdaily.com.