Adelante High School Principal Gary Litke keeps a motto on his office wall that reads, “It is what it is.”

The slogan isn’t a shoulder-shrugging, throw-in-the-towel type of resignation. To the contrary.

“It means, we can’t change what happened, we can only change where we go from here. No excuses,” Litke, 59, explained.

It’s just that outlook that has helped Litke connect with his students – and help them get their lives back on track – for more than a decade at the Roseville continuation school. He’ll retire next month, after nearly 30 years as an educator in the Roseville Joint Union High School District.

“It’s a loss,” said John Montgomery, the district’s curriculum chief. “He’s has a passion for kids, special kids. Alternative education has been kind of his life.”

Adelante, in business since 1966, serves about 200 high-school students who are at-risk for dropping out. Students come there with too few credits, or with academic and social needs that weren’t being met in a traditional high school. Many of them “have no support outside of school,” Like said.

Litke, who describes his own upbringing as “like Mayberry,” was drawn to youth challenges early. After receiving a bachelor’s in psychology from UCLA in 1972, he went to work at a group home for emotionally disturbed children. A master’s degree followed in 1978, and after a stint at a boys ranch, he joined the district to head up its Success High School, a small continuation school for ninth and tenth graders, in 1979.

In 1988, he joined Adelante as the assistant principal, and took over the head job in 1995.

In this line of work, “You have to have a great sense of humor, which he does,” said Bob Noyes, a former continuation school principal in Lincoln and now the personnel director for the Western Placer Unified School District. “He’s as good as it gets.”

Litke is quick to point out that while some students may have discipline issues, they are not “bad kids” – the No. 1 misconception, he said.

“We get all the kids who the regular high schools have not been successful with, and we deal on a much more personal level with them,” he said.

Sometimes it’s very personal. In years past, Litke has taken in homeless students for a night at his Grass Valley home before placing them with authorities; last week, one students’ bag – the student’s entire worldly belongings – was taking up floor space in the safest place available – the principal’s office. The student was “couch-surfing,” Litke said.

What they all have is a future, Litke tells them. Adelante alumni have gone on to become successful workers, entrepreneurs, businesspeople and even educators teaching in the district.

“Some people say that these kids are not with saving. They’re just like your kids,” he said.

But what Litke is most proud of is the school’s efforts to boost achievement over the years. The school has received the state’s Model Continuation High School award three times – in 1991, 1998 and 2003.

In response to data showing more than 70 percent of Adelante’s students would fail a basic high school math test, teachers and administrators developed their own high school exit exam years before the state-mandated one in 2006.

Today, no student has failed to graduate because of a poor showing on the state test, Litke said.

After Adelante, Like said he intends to spend more time focusing on his hobbies – golf, photography, fishing. But perhaps most of his time will be taken up working on an ancient yellow school bus he recently purchased from the district and plans to restore into a kind of education-inspired camper.

“You can take me out of the school but you can’t take the school out of me,” he said.