SHS Graduation Rate Increase Sought

            The Town Board of School Trustees adopted the 2008 school curriculum that gave the principal discretionary powers to intervene with graduation. The administration wanted to provide more flexibility to keep students from dropping out. The action is based on two factors.

Speedway requires 48 credits to graduate while the state’s standards are 42 credits.      Superintendent Andrew Wagner said it is unfair to the students whom transfer into this high school during the second semester of their senior year thinking they have sufficient amount of credits to complete the 42 credits to graduate.  Other special circumstances included chronically ill students and incarcerated students.

The second factor is the newly instituted state graduation rate guidelines.

These new guidelines posted Speedway High School’s official graduate rate less than 87 percent. Only Eighty-six students qualified as a successful graduate out of 101 students during the four-year period of 2002-2006.

            Wagner preferred to use the terminology “a four-year completion” to describe the new tracking process than calling it a graduation rate. The state legislature and Department of Education instituted new guidelines defining graduation rate.

            Wagner explained why not all of the 101 students completed the four years. Three students dropped out of school, and four students can’t be located. Five students elected to obtain a GED, and three students were retained. The new guidelines require a school corporation to follow a student’s academic path from the time that student enters as a freshman to the time four years are completed. The state has given each student an identity number so that student can be tracked if he enrolls in other school systems within the state.

The student must earn a diploma within that four years or he does not qualify as a “successful” graduate. The new guidelines even omit the honor student who can graduate in three years. A GED is not acceptable nor a certificate to accommodate severely disabled students.

In other business: Wagner informed the board that tax bills could go out as late as August because of the difficulty and confusion with the trending method to reassess property at market value.

If late tax bills go out, it would have dire consequences on local governments that rely mostly on property taxes to operate. “This could cause cash flow issues,” he said.

Tax bills normally are sent to property owners in May and November, so the local governments can receive the state’s payments in June and December.