On a mid-week day in mid-December 2008, Boston Day and Evening Academy's room 209, usually used for board meetings, student assessments, awards dinners, and other occasions requiring an intimate atmosphere, smelled like Chinese food. These second-trimester students at Boston Day and Evening Academy (BDEA) were having a reunion after just a few weeks apart. That these students--all overage for high school with combinations of attendance, learning, and disciplinary issues--were in school at all is significant. But the remarkable thing about this particular gathering was the number of students. Of the 40 students who enrolled at BDEA in the first trimester of 2008, 38 were still in school. This had not always been the case. Typically, the end of the first trimester found Student Support staff shifting into overdrive trying to track down students who hadn't been in school for weeks or months, and recruitment went into a kind of perpetual orbit, trying to recruit and enroll new students to take the place of those who had slipped away. As the team at Boston Day and Evening Academy (BDEA) expanded its cycle of inquiry to include faculty, test assumptions, and identify challenges, they began to recognize the need for additional services for new students which would get students to "buy in" to BDEA's culture as soon as they enrolled in order to prevent the disconnect that leads to withdrawal. The outcome was the creation of BDEA Seminar, a program that acquaints students with school culture, allows them time and guidance to transition to a new curriculum and new school culture, provides extra support in literacy, and offers individualized wrap-around services to help the student to feel ownership in the school.