Manville: Saugus dropout rate not as bad as it seems

SAUGUS – The high school dropout rate is not as it appears despite what the Department of Education reports.The DOE showed dropout rates had jumped significantly in the 2005/2006 academic year from 2 percent to 6.5 percent but according to Superintendent Keith Manville those records weren’t quite accurate then and they still aren’t today.Manville said there is a short window to fix issues and they managed to miss it again. For reasons unknown, High School Principal Joseph Diorio was dropped from the DOE’s e-mail list, Manville explained. That meant Diorio did not receive notices regarding correcting inaccurate information on the Web site.Manville said they know the information is inaccurate because they checked it against their own records and their own enrollments.Manville said seven students listed as dropouts in 2007 were currently enrolled at the high school and were in fact in school. That led Diorio to look at other figures.Manville said two students listed as having dropped out in 2006 actually dropped out in 2005 and one dropout was a student no one had ever heard of. Another had transferred out of the district and was listed as being enrolled in school in New York.”A dropout is any student who has left school and is not enrolled in a school elsewhere,” Manville explained, “and the percentage listed is much higher than it should be.”Manville said the DOE has been helpful in trying to get the numbers adjusted; they simply haven’t gotten on the same page yet. In the meantime he just wanted School Committee members and anyone else perusing the DOE Web site to know the numbers were inaccurate.”We really don’t have a lot of dropouts anyway,” he added, “We’re at about 2 percent.”