The unofficial numbers are in, and as some may have feared, Limestone County students who were seniors when schools shut down last March graduated at lower rates and were less likely to be college or career ready than in previous years.

Limestone County Schools Superintendent Randy Shearouse shared a three-year comparison at the Limestone County Board of Education meeting Tuesday. Shearouse joined LCS in June, nearly three months after the shutdown, but he offered insight into what contributed to the lower rates.

There’s “probably not a lot of time to catch students that we normally would have worked with to help them graduate,” he said. As for College and Career Readiness, “you probably had students that didn’t finish credentials, quite honestly, and there are a lot of different credentials to look at.”

Those include SAT scores, ACT scores, military enlistment and certifications earned at the Limestone County Career Technical Center.

“Hopefully, we’re going to see a bump after this year, when we have kids for the whole year,” Shearouse told board members. “That sudden stop in the school year, I’m certain, had an impact on that.”

He said the system would be focusing on getting the numbers back up this year and continuing to improve rates from year to year.

“We believe every student should be college or career ready, and that’s something important we need to look at as a system,” Shearouse told the board.

Not all bad

While graduation and CCR rates for the system as a whole were down, with 3.35% fewer seniors graduating and 10.4% fewer ready for college or career compared to the 2018-2019 school year, some schools within the system reported higher rates than in non-pandemic years.

Tanner High reported the greatest jump, moving from an 84.42% graduation rate among the class of 2018 and an 86.11% rate for the class of 2019 to 90% for the class of 2020. Ardmore and Clements were the only other two in the district to report an increase from 2019 to 2020 despite the pandemic, with Ardmore climbing 0.87% to 95.65% and Clements rising 0.55% to 92.96%.

East Limestone reported the highest graduation rate for a county school at 97.28%, down 1.64% from the 2018-2019 school year. On the other end of the county, West Limestone reported the largest drop and second-lowest rate among county schools, falling more than eight percentage points to 86.21%.

West Limestone also reported the largest drop in its CCR rate, from 95.2% in the 2018-2019 school year to 74.14% for 2019-2020. These drops could in part be the result of poor internet access in the area, which was a point of concern for officials across the district as schools scrambled to shift in-classroom learning to a pencil-and-paper packet or virtual instruction. In some cases, students were left trying to complete schoolwork with just a smartphone.

It wasn’t just one part of the county that reported a decline in CCR, either. LCS as a whole reported a decline of more than 10%, with all but one high school reporting a decline of 6% or greater.

Elkmont High was the only school in the district to report an increase, rising from 87.5% in 2018-2019 to 88.99% in 2019-2020.

Other business

Graduation and CCR rates were only a portion of Tuesday’s board meeting. In other business, board members approved the following:

• Athens Bible’s use of the Tanner High baseball field through April 30 for baseball games and practices;

• Five resignations, seven contracts, five new hires, four leaves of absence, 141 supplements and four volunteers;

• Donating LCS property currently being used by the East Limestone Volunteer Fire Department to the ELVFD;

• Ardmore High purchasing Sideline Communications Equipment from Westcom Wireless;

• Paying $64,572.97 to Lock Step Technology for switches at the Career Tech Center, Blue Springs Elementary and Creekside Elementary, using coronavirus relief funds;

• Johnson Elementary’s service agreement with Aramark;

• Entering into an agreement with Athens City Schools, Decatur City Schools, Hartselle City Schools and Morgan County Schools to form the North Central Alabama Child Nutrition Program Joint Cooperative Agreement; and

• Memorandum of understanding for a partnership between LCBOE and the Alabama Elk River Development Agency for the development of an elementary school on up to 40 acres of AERDA property next to Elkmont Rural Village.

Visit https://bit.ly/LCBOEagenda for a complete agenda, including a detailed list of personnel actions.