Thirty thousand Illinois high school students drop out of school every year. Locally the social consequences are visible in our unemployment and high crime rate.

Wednesday a group of Rockford-area school and government leaders joined a national conversation on ending the dropout crisis.

"When this is described as a crisis, that is a very accurate description," says Laurie Preece, of the Rockford Charter Schools Initiative. "Every 26 seconds in the United States, a student drops out of school."

That adds up to 1.2 million kids a year vanishing from our nation's schools. To fight that dangerous trend, around 40 Rockford-area school and community leaders boarded a bus Wednesday morning for a trip to the America's Promise Alliance Dropout Prevention Summit in Bloomington-Normal.

The state-wide participants heard strategies for keeping kids engaged from experts like Colin Powell's wife, Alma Powell.

"Quite frankly, it is our future," says Powell. "If we do not keep young people in school. If we do not have them prepared to meet the challenges, what's gonna happen?"

Members then broke into regional groups to develop a shared vision and values for how to tackle the dropout crisis. Rockford Mayor Larry Morrissey says the process depends on a unified effort from city, county and district leaders.

"The district and city, we want to be able to have collaboration, sharing data," says Morrissey. "Whether it's dealing with truancy or other issues that we can examine, that helps us to coordinate, strategize and apply resources the way we need them."

The Rockford-area participants are planning another meeting for the first week in December, bringing more voices to the table, including local students. Organizer Laurie Preece says it's key to get kids involved and invested in their own futures before they become dropouts.

"These students are more likely to be needing social services, needing unemployment benefits and they're going to be a net consumer on the system, rather than a net producer," says Preece.

Dropouts from the class of 2009 are estimated to cost the U.S. $335 billion a year in lost taxes and wages.

This was Illinois' first ever Dropout Prevention Summit. Other states around the country are taking part in similar events.