School System Records 80 Students with Perfect Attendance

A total of 80 students in the DeKalb County School System have recorded perfect attendance for the entire school year, to date.
Clay Farler Attendance Supervisor, says he wants to commend those students for their commitment. “We have some students every year who make it through the entire year of school without being sick enough to miss school or have any other thing to happen in their lives that causes them to miss school. We have several students at every school who have had perfect attendance through this entire school year and when I say perfect I mean they have been there every day for every minute of the day. They have not been late and they have not left early. At DeKalb Middle School, thirteen students have been there every day of the year. At Northside Elementary, thirty three students have had perfect attendance. At DeKalb West School and Smithville Elementary School, we have had ten students who have not missed any days. At DeKalb County High School, we have had fourteen students who have been there every day of the year.”
“We encourage students to be in school every day of the year. The first day of school is an important day and the last day of school is important and I want to thank all the students and their parents and guardians who have helped make sure that the students were in school to learn all they could. We normally have to go to school 180 days of the year but this year because of days missed for snow and other things, we will only be going 174 days of school this year.”
Meanwhile, Farler says each of the schools have exceeded the state benchmarks for attendance. “The state of Tennessee requires that every school in the state have an attendance rate of 93% or greater. At this present time in our schools we have a total of 2,917 students county wide and at least 93% of all those students have to be present on everyday of the school year. The rate at each of our schools is running quite a bit better than that.”
“At DeKalb West School, their current attendance rate is 95.4%, so that means for this entire school year, of the 161 days we have already gone to school (as of May 4th), their students have been there on average of 95.4% of the time.”
“At Northside Elementary, their current attendance rate is 96.2%.”
“At Smithville Elementary, their rate is 94.7%. That’s a little lower than some of the other schools, but if you remember, a couple of months ago we had a lot of illness in our elementary school so that tended to bring the total yearly average down a little. But that’s still a good average for the year.”
“At DeKalb Middle School, their current attendance rate is 95.4% and at DeKalb County High School, their attendance rate is 94.7% which is really good. Last year they (DCHS) had a rate of 94.1% for the full year so that’s running quite a bit better for the full year than it has in the past.”
The last day of school will be Friday, May 22nd. That will be an abbreviated school day and report cards will be given to the students. DCHS graduation will also be held Friday, May 22nd at 7:00 p.m. on the high school football field.