LYNN — Data presented by Superintendent Dr. Patrick Tutwiler at Thursday night’s School Committee meeting showed that 74.8 percent of the school district’s students graduated last year.
The numbers reflect a slight increase, or half a percentage point, over 2018’s graduation rate for Lynn Public Schools.
While Tutwiler said the school district’s existing four-pronged approach, which is aimed at preventing students from dropping out, has helped keep the graduation rate relatively steady for the past six years, he would consider it a failure if that trend continued in five years.
“You can’t continue to do things the same and expect a different outcome,” said Tutwiler. “You have to employ a radical shift. I don’t want to come to you in five years and show a graduation rate in the mid-70s. That would be a failure on my part.”
When pressed by School Committee member Jared Nicholson for a target to strive for, Tutwiler said he thinks the school district is capable of having a graduation rate in the low-80 percent range in five years.
Tutwiler said the current four-pronged approach — Educate, Monitor/Identify, Support/Intervene and Alternatives to traditional schools — is based on addressing risk factors that often lead to students dropping out.
Students are considered to be “at-risk” if they fail a course in ninth grade; are chronically absent or tardy; are held back a grade; are disengaged in the classroom; are frequently disciplined for breaking school rules; are from a low-income family; have extraordinary work or family economic needs; abuse substances; or are older than the average student in their grade.
Tutwiler said the district needs to take a different approach to better address the “hierarchy of needs” of those at-risk students.
For instance, he said there needs to be a significant increase in mental health support, and the high school day should be designed differently to better accommodate students who work full-time and can’t be in class during the traditional times.
“We need to do something differently and we’re this close to coming up with a schedule that accommodates those students’ needs,” said Tutwiler, referring to the high school design initiative. “Things like the After Dark Program at (Lynn Tech) are a game-changer.”
The After Dark Program allows students to take core content classes at Lynn Classical and Lynn English High schools during the day and then take vocational courses at night, he said.
While Tutwiler said there was some cause for celebration with the data, there were some concerning trends revealed.
For instance, there was a slight increase in Lynn’s graduation rate last year, while other large urban school districts, such as Boston, Brockton, Lawrence and Springfield experienced a slight dip.
Lynn Vocational Technical Institute saw a slight increase last year. Tutwiler said the school’s four-year graduation rate of 89.5 percent is higher than it has been in 13 years. There’s been a nearly 30 percent upswing since 2006 when only 60 percent of the school’s students graduated.
Lynn Classical saw a substantial increase — 82.5 percent last year compared to 75.3 percent in 2018 — but Lynn English and Fecteau-Leary Junior/Senior High School both saw decreases.
Lynn English had just a 70 percent graduation rate last year, which continued a steady decline over the past four years, and puts the school at risk of being in automatic “turnaround” status with the state. Schools with a graduation rate of 66.7 percent or lower are automatically deemed to be in trouble with the state, based on their performance.
Fecteau-Leary, an alternative school, saw a significant decline. Its four-year graduation rate was 19.4 percent last year, which marked a nearly 15 percent decrease.
While Tutwiler praised the work that led to Classical’s 7 percent increase, which has been in turnaround status with the state, calling it a “wonderful outcome,” he said Classical’s substantial increase and Fecteau-Leary’s significant decrease are interconnected.
Four years ago, then-Superintendent Dr. Catherine C. Latham addressed the district’s significant influx of English Language Learners (ELLs), one of its two lowest performing subgroups, by placing a large number of those students at Fecteau-Leary for space concerns.
Some of those students would have attended Classical otherwise, and a majority of those ELLs have dropped out since that time. While most other aspects of Fecteau-Leary’s graduation data remained steady last year, Tutwiler said their ELL graduation rate was zero, which “brought their data way down.”
School Committee members praised Tech and Classical’s performance and were supportive of alternative approaches, particularly a redesigned high school schedule and After Dark Program, that were suggested as ways to increase the district’s overall graduation rate.
