DeKalb Schools Satisfied With Grad Ratings, Want ‘100 Percent’

DeKalb County Schools saw a steady number of graduates in 2018 but look to strive for better numbers next year.

Patrick Cripps is the Director of Schools for the DeKalb County School District. He said although the district’s current rate of just over 93 percent isn’t bad, the district won’t be completely satisfied until every student graduates on time.

“It’s a hard process to get 100 percent of them to graduate just because of transitions and people moving in and out of the district,” Cripps said. “That’s something that we always have to look at, but our teachers here at the high school have done a great job. We’ve got programs in place to get students caught up that may be failing classes or may be behind in credits. We have after school programs that students can attend and they can make those credits up or do grad recovery with those.”

Cripps said increasing the graduation rate involved examining each student individually and creating a plan specifically for them if they need improvement.

“We don’t look at it as a ‘subgroup this,’ or ‘subgroup that,'” Cripps said. “We take each individual student and we try to meet their needs and what we can do as a school system to meet that need to make sure that student is one, a quality education, and two, making sure that they graduate.”

Cripps said parental involvement is crucial to student success and can ultimately help improve the districts graduation rates.

“That’s something our teachers have done really well [is] contacting parents,” Cripps said. “The more we can get our parents involved with it, staying on top of their students as well as our teachers, the better the students are going to have support to feel like they’ve got to do it or somebody’s watching over them to get that accomplished.”

DCSD ranked fifth in the Upper Cumberland in overall graduation rates, behind Fentress, Van Buren, Clay, and Pickett County schools. The district ranked the highest in the region among schools with graduation classes of over 100 students for 2018.