The Morgan Local School District improved from an 89.8 percent graduation rate last year to 93.1.

Johnson said through research she’s found the majority of students who drop out of John Glenn High School did not begin school in the East Muskingum district, they more than likely have come in at a later grade.

“What I mean by that is they would be students who may have come into our system under the foster care system, maybe they are transient kids who have moved several times,” Johnson said.

She said she pulled files of all of the students who have dropped out in the past five years and the majority of students fell into those categories. She said she and district administrators and teachers then began putting a support system in place for those students.

“That’s where the Care Teams became involved and we’ve also added Apex, which is an online credit program we have that students who are behind on their credits can take courses to catch up or if they’re absent for high percentages of time,” Johnson said.

Mark Neal, Tri-Valley’s superintendent, said there is programming in place for students who may “fall through the cracks,” like online classes they can take from home, for students for some reason or the other, have missed class.

“We’ve made a pretty conservative effort to target those students and make sure we find a way to keep them on track to graduate,” Neal said.

Passing the graduation tests are key, he said.

For the rest of the article, go to More students graduating