The DeKalb County High School graduation rate continues to improve.
Jonathan Fontanez, Supervisor of Instruction for grades 7-12, told members of the board of education Thursday night that according to the state, the preliminary graduation rate is 90.6%. “The state has released our preliminary graduation rate and I want to put the emphasis on the term ‘preliminary’ as the state is conducting last minute calculations of appeals on our students. The preliminary graduation rate that we have received at this time is 90.6%, which indicates that 90.6% of our students are graduating from high school. That is well above the track that we are mandated by the federal government to be on and compared with other school districts across the state, we are fairing very well additionally. I look for this preliminary graduation rate to actually be adjusted just a bit to the better as a result of some additional appeals that we submitted based on requirements, etc.”
Fontanez adds “We have some wonderful programs in place that our teachers are utilizing that are being quite effective with our students. Our students are working very diligently. They’re working very hard on their academics and our teachers are doing a fantastic job of teaching new and more rigorous contact standards that are assessed by new and more rigorous assessments. The curriculum is not a slouch curriculum. It is one of the top curricula in the nation, so our students are fairing very well and we want to commend all of our teachers and students and we know our parents are playing a huge role in that as well with the community support that we have. We appreciate the support of the school board as well.”
Meanwhile, DCHS Principal Kathy Hendrix is urging students needing credit recovery to take care of that as soon as possible. ” I’d like to encourage all parents to talk to their daughters and sons and if they need credit recovery, any after school help, we have this available for them.”
” We had a lot of students who waited until the spring semester last year and we were overflowing with students out there trying to get everything done. They need to get started on it right away so they can get this completed and go on with the rest of their schedule without having to re-take some classes because after so long if they haven’t gotten their credits made up, we’ll put them back in the class even though they should have gotten their credit recovery done in a certain period of time. If they fool around and don’t get that done, we have no choice but to put them back in those classes. So we want the parents to talk to them and if you can, get them out there. We have transportation available. Ms. Crook will be there starting Monday in the morning at seven o’clock so we have after school help in the morning and afternoon. We have people there til five o’clock everyday and Mr. Ferrell is there until six p.m.”
‘We also have on-line classes and some distance learning classes. If your child’s ACT test results haven’t been up to where it needs to be, we actually probably could get them enrolled in an ACT prep class, which we don’t currently have there but we could do that through our distance learning program. We have all kinds of things out there for them if they will take advantage of it.”
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