Dear Lansing School District Community,
I hope that this newsletter finds you well. As always, it is a pleasure to be writing to you all.
This week, I had the honor and privilege of presenting to the Lansing City Council. As you can imagine, a healthy and supportive relationship with the city's governing body is important for a school district. Though the Lansing School District is a separate entity with its own board, budget, and policies, working with the Lansing City Council can only be good for our students and community writ large. Thus, over the years, I have tried to get to know the council members as well as work with them around supportive measures for our kids, be it working together around traffic and safety issues to advocating for capital monies for our properties. This relationship has grown over the years, and thus, spending an evening with them, giving them an update on our construction as well as our academic success, was very positive for all of us. I want to thank the City Council for inviting me to speak and for supporting the district.
During the hour-long presentation and question and answer session, it was so great to apprise the City Council on all of the new projects the district is engaging in, be it the brand-new Mt. Hope School, slated to open August 2025, or the new Willow School, on pace to open August 2026. I was able to share pictures of the new track at the Hill Center, which will open in just a few weeks, with photos of the Newcomer Center, which already opened this Fall. The slide deck included pictures of the new Culinary Arts room at Hill and the new Pre-K classroom at Gardner. We discussed the new fencing around many of our schools and the millions of dollars of upgrades we have put into Sexton, including lights and pipes.
So many wonderful, new, and exciting things are happening in the district. However, the most wonderful data point I was able to share was our unaudited, preliminary 2023-2024 graduation rates. Now, I want to be clear: these numbers are not "official." The Michigan Department of Education (MDE) and the Center for Education Performance and Information (CEPI) still have to go through an audit process. The way it works is that currently, we are given our auditable numbers, meaning that CEPI sends us a data file with all the students in the cohort and what CEPI has as their outcome (graduate, still enrolled, dropout, etc.) Then, we have the next few weeks to go over the data set and appeal to any determinations we disagree with. But what this means is that the numbers CEPI has sent us are their current records. Thus, the likelihood of the overall numbers changing by much is pretty low. We, as a district, are not going to appeal many, if any, of the specific student outcomes, and we don't have any indication that MDE or CEPI have concerns about the current numbers. All of this is to say that in February when the fully audited numbers are released, and we are able to call them official, we don't think they will be much different than our preliminary/unaudited numbers.
Thus, I would like to present the unofficial, unaudited preliminary 2023-2024 graduation and dropout rates from the "GAD" report (that's the Graduation and Dropout report.)
District Grad Rate: 86.91% dropout – 6.62%
This means that we have raised the graduation rate by almost 25% in just three years. This is unprecedented. We, as a district and as a community as a whole, should be incredibly proud of this. There is no other single data point that encapsulates progress more than graduation rates. It is a culmination of 13 years of work for the students, the teachers, and the entire district. Not only did the graduation rate go up, but the dropout rate is at 6.62%, the lowest it has ever been and more than 10% lower than just a few years ago. We are serving all our students so much better than ever.
To call our 2023-2024 graduation numbers amazing would be an understatement. We could never have done this without everyone in the community helping to support the school district. I hope that everyone reading this newsletter takes this wonderful news to heart and feels that even in some small way, you had something to do with it. This win is for us all because of us all. Please take pride in this amazing success.
Now, I know there are some who might question this incredible increase in success and want to find fault. I understand that these numbers, especially in light of the last two decades, might seem "too good to be true." But I can assure you that these numbers are the direct result of hard work and determination from students, educators, and families. The hours of tutoring, the after-school mentoring programs, the weekend homework support- all of it added up little by little. So, over three years of focus and commitment, our entire district can see the results.
Over the last few years, we have invested in new positions like graduation specialists and created new programs like our Ebersole weekends. We have invested in new data systems that better allow us to know who is off-track and who needs just a little more support. And as far as our standards for graduation, please rest assured that in fact, the Lansing School District requires its students to have more credits to graduate than the state mandates.
I know that we still have a lot of work ahead of us to be an even better school district, but today, I hope that all of you feel proud of what we have accomplished. It is because of our entire community, believing in our students and staff, the long hours of struggle and support, and the incredible work of our educators, parents, support staff, community members, and, of course, the students that I can write to you today about the awesome graduation results. Congratulations to you all!
Thank you so much for all of your incredible support of our district. Together, we will do great things for the children of Lansing.
Benjamin Shuldiner, Superintendent
Lansing School District
