While achievement and grad rates are solid at South, school attendance rates tell a different story.

With the Oregon Department of Education’s release of South’s At-a-Glance Profile for the 2022-2023 school year came a realization among the administration that action was necessary.

While GPAs are rising and graduation rates have remained well above the state average – two statistics to be proud of – South students’ attendance rates are going down.

Kee Zublin, South’s new principal, described his concerns with school attendance in an email sent home to parents in October, as well as certain steps the school is taking to address these problems.

“We are extremely concerned about our attendance rates,” he wrote. Students attending at least 90 percent of the time is the benchmark for regular attendance, and last year, only 58 percent of South students met that benchmark.

However, even as South faces severe issues with attendance, student GPAs have sharply risen. This is not only a trend only at South, but rather one seen across the country. 

“Even as students have taken higher-level courses, their GPAs have steadily risen — from an average of 2.68 in 1990 to 2.94 in 2000, 3.0 in 2009 and 3.11 in 2019,” Chalkbeat reported in 2022.

Though average GPAs have undergone radical changes across the country over the past thirty years, South’s grade inflation is perhaps even more pronounced. In 2019, the average graduating senior from South graduated with a 3.41, 0.30 GPA points higher than those at the national average. Just four years later, South’s graduating class of 2023 held an average GPA of 3.53, 0.12 points higher than in 2019. To put this statistic into perspective, over the 10 years between 2009 and 2019, national averages rose only 0.11 points – 0.01 points lower than the four-year average change for South.

Graduation rates at South over the same periods of time show similar trends. South’s graduating class of 2013 completed high school at a rate of 76%, around 8% higher than the state average. Over the following decade, both the state average and South’s rose in tandem. In 2023, South seniors graduated at an astounding 90% – a statistic boasted highly by the current administration – while the state average was 81%.

“Some great news is that our graduation rates continue to surpass the state average by almost 10 percent,” Zublin wrote in his email in October. While the graduation rate is itself an important performance measure, attendance remains a concern that the administration seeks to address.

In his email, Zublin outlined the measures that South is taking in response to those issues:

We have hired a Student Success Coordinator, whose primary role is to support our attendance initiatives. 

We have reintroduced and reinforced a hall pass system.

We are holding meetings with families to establish partnerships to support students in getting to class on time.

We are creating attendance contracts for students who are struggling to get to class.

Nelson Cornejo joined the South staff at the beginning of the year as the 9th Grade Transition Coordinator. In October, he was hired on as the Student Success Coordinator as part of the school’s response to the low attendance rates. Now, he works with students across the school.

His job includes working to enforce many of the policies and plans Zublin listed in the email, including attendance contracts, general communication, and more. 

One policy outlined in Zublin’s email was the new hall pass system, which involves teachers signing off on slips of paper before students leave class. 

Some students have noted inconsistencies in this policy’s enforcement.

“I’ve never had someone ask me if I had a hall pass, said South sophomore Leah Nosce about the new system, “but teachers always give them to me.” 

Nosce also has noticed that the new hall pass policy has pushed students who are skipping class into the bathrooms during the day, highlighting one potentially overlooked impact of the new policy.

With many students not in class when they’re supposed to be, steps to fix the problem must also extend beyond the school’s halls.

To improve these low attendance rates, there has been increased communication with parents, students, and teachers, Cornejo explained. The school has also created attendance contracts for students who are struggling to get to class.

Attendance contracts are agreements with students who chronically struggle to get to class. If students are roaming the halls during class time they will first receive a warning, and then get in school suspension, where they can do schoolwork, Cornejo explained.

The final step listed in Zublin’s email was about staff presence in hallways throughout the school day. 

Students at South have likely noticed administrators saying hello in the mornings, or stopping by their classes.

South sophomore Lily Yao said that the increased presence of school officials in the hallways throughout the day makes her feel “more connected to our admin.”

Finally, when it comes to students skipping class because they feel they can do the work at home, Cornejo has one thing to say. “Just because you can doesn’t mean you should,” he stated. 

Zublin echoed this sentiment in his email, writing “when students are absent this much, they miss out on much of the richness of in-person learning.” He continued, explaining that even if students can access the work on Canvas, they can miss out on peer collaboration, become used to high levels of absenteeism, and become isolated from their peers.

All in all, these statistics leave students, staff, and parents alike with many questions on how to address the attendance problems. With many current actions being taken by the administration, and collective efforts from the South community, only time will tell if these create real change.

By Basil Dracobly and Aria Lynn-Skov