The General Assembly finds and declares that large numbers of students need additional support in order to be successful in school, graduate and become productive citizens of this Commonwealth and that too many students leave school without the benefits of positive adult role models, career goals or skills needed to support strong families and communities. It is the intent of this section and sections 2597.2 through 2597.6¹ to promote the development of educational mentoring programs to provide positive adult role models to students, establish a dropout prevention grant program to reduce the number of school dropouts and to promote the collection of information on dropouts for the purpose of developing local programs designed to prevent current students from dropping out.