Dr. Mackey, state superintendent of education, told the Alabama State Board of Education that the states official 20-day count for 2020 showed about 9,800 fewer students than in 2019 and that roughly 3,025 of those missing students were kindergarteners.

"Of those 9,800, 3,000, a little over 3,000, I think 3,025 of them are kindergarteners," Dr. Mackey reported. He said local systems are conducting outreach to pre-K programs and families to identify students and that kindergarten is not required by law, which could affect whether some children enter first grade instead of kindergarten if families delay initial enrollment.

Dr. Mackey also said statewide enrollment had recovered somewhat since the official count: "As of this morning, our enrollment is actually up, over 220,000 again. So we've added about 3,300 students since the last day of the count back in October." He said that despite some recovery, the enrollment losses raise concerns about funding and instructional gaps, and that he and the governor had discussed possible hold-harmless approaches with legislative leaders.

On COVID-19 impacts to operations, Dr. Mackey described staffing strains that have prompted local systems to move to remote learning. He gave a rural example: "They only have 32 teachers in the school and 14 of those 32 were at home on quarantine. None of them had COVID but they were all home on quarantine and there's just no way to run a school when 50% of your faculty are on quarantine." He said the department is in discussion with state health officials about implementing portions of new CDC guidance where Alabama's epidemiology permits it.

Dr. Mackey reported positive statewide outcomes in academic completion measures: he said graduation rates and the college- and career-ready (CCR) rate are at all-time highs and the gap between the two is closing. He said the department's Office of School Improvement is contacting the bottom 25% of schools on CCR measures to provide strategies for improvement, with OSI leadership including Melissa Shields.

On compliance matters, in the meeting's legal report Dr. Mackey said four local school board members remained noncompliant with required training under what he referred to as the school board governance law and that their names would be entered into the minutes as noncompliers. He read into the record the names as provided to the board: "thomas Barnes of Colbert County School Board, joe Calvin of the Tuscaloosa County School Board, Charles are Dalit of the Homewood City School Board and john are ponder of the Talladega County School Board." Those names were recorded in the meeting minutes as read.

Dr. Mackey closed his report by noting personnel losses tied to COVID-19: "We actually have lost 2 teachers this week, have lost their lives after dealing with being in the hospital for quite some time with COVID," and asked the board to remember affected families.

He also summarized ongoing work on implementing the Alabama Literacy Act and expanding computer science education statewide.

The board did not take a formal vote on the superintendents report; the report was presented for the boards information and administrative follow-up.