La Salle-Peru High School Board adopts new district goals, reviews school report card

La Salle-Peru High School may have no underperforming student groups on its 2022-2023 school report card, but the board and administration are striving for more improvement.

The L-P School Board discussed Wednesday the 2022-2023 school report card, in which L-P received a commendable rating.

Superintendent Steven Wrobleski, who presented the report card during the meeting, said commendable means L-P has no underperforming student groups and the graduation rate is higher than 67%. This is the second highest designation out of five.

“L-P focused not only on academic success but also on mental health and social-emotional growth,” Wrobleski said. “We strive to forge strong bonds with families and community and to prepare our students to thrive in the next steps of their educational journey.”

L-P improved its graduation rate by nearly 2% going from 80.7% to 82.6%. The school remains lower than the state average (87.6%), which is up by 0.3% from last year (87.3%). L-P improved its SAT Scores in all areas; English Language Arts improved by nearly 6%, Math improved by more than 3.5% and science increased by 14%.

Ninth Grade On Track, a measure of freshmen who are on track to graduate, continues to climb following the COVID years and is up to 82.4% and faculty retention is steady at 92.2%, a value above the state average

While chronic absenteeism stayed above the national average of 28.3% it decreased by nearly 4% from 31.2% to 28.4%. Wrobleski said L-P will continue to work with students to allow them the opportunity to improve overall.

“It’s really digging deep into conversations with those students,” he said. “To get a better understanding of what’s preventing you from coming and we’ve sort of begun to do that.”

Wrobleski said not every L-P student is going to fit in a seven-hour traditional day and the school is beginning to gather more information on what students are struggling with.

“We’re setting a target here,” he said. “We want to make sure every kid in this district has at least one adult that knows them well and can connect with them. It doesn’t have to be a teacher, it could be an administrative assistant or a custodian.”

After reviewing the school report card, the school board adopted two new district goals for the end of the 2023-2024 school year, to reduce the chronic absenteeism rate and increase the four-year graduation by 2%.

“We believe through layers of support we’re going to keep kids coming back,” Wrobleski said. “That will also have a net gain on our graduation rate.”

For more information on the school report card visit, https://www.lphs.net/schoolreportcard