Seminole Schools report small graduation gain, district leaders pledge deeper review

Seminole County Public Schools officials reported a modest increase in the district's graduation rate and outlined steps to investigate remaining gaps.

Mr. Rice, district staff, told the school board on Jan. 21 that the district "graduated almost 5,000 students last year, which is an increase of almost 300 students," even as statewide measures shifted. "As you'll see we graduated almost 5,000 students last year, which is, an increase of almost 300 students," he said.

The presentation noted pandemic-era anomalies in earlier data and the state's recent change to concordant-score requirements. Rice said the district's rate rose by 0.1 percentage point while the state's reported rate rose by a larger margin. He said the district is auditing coding and transfer follow-up and examining concordant scores after the first year of the higher state standard. "A couple of things I want to point out'. . . due to the COVID pandemic there was some emergency orders that were put in place and so you see the data both for us and for the state increased significantly," Rice said.

Rice presented several numeric details: Seminole officials said the district previously reached as high as 95.5% during the emergency period, the state peaked at 90.1% in that same period, and that last year 3.8% of students did not achieve concordance compared with 4.4% the year before. He also reported that, for the class of 2025, the share of students still needing a concordant score for graduation fell from 16.1% at the same point last year to 11.1% this year.

Board members thanked staff and emphasized continued examination of data and targeted interventions. Member Dellinger said she was "certain . . . your team is already digging into the data, student by student," and noted the need to address coding and monitoring of interventions. Member Davis asked whether the graduation figures include summer completions; Rice said the rate includes students who walked the stage before the start of the next school year.

District staff said specific follow-up will include reviewing how transfers are coded, additional outreach to families, and targeted supports for schools with lower rates. Rice said staff will "pull the data and really extrapolate where we see some trends" and identify where more support is needed.

Board members repeatedly described the report as a progress update and directed staff to continue the detailed data review. The presentation closed with board questions and examples of school-level improvements that staff said they will analyze further.

Less-critical meeting items that evening included routine recognitions and committee reports.