Chelsea school district administrators reviewed some of the final school indicators of success tied into the district’s overall strategic plan at last week’s school committee meeting.
Assistant Superintendent of Schools Dr. Tamara Blake-Canty reviewed the June numbers for attendance, the school drop-out rate, and the number of students taking AP and early college courses for the 2025-26 school year.
“Our daily attendance ending in June, year to date, we are at 89 percent at the district level,” said Blake-Canty. “We continue to work toward our goal of reaching 95 percent.”
The attendance rate is the highest level it has been at since the 2020-21 school year, where it hit 90.8 percent.
Blake-Canty also reviewed the number of students who took AP and early college classes for the 2025-26 school year.
“For AP courses, we started the school year with 442 students and ended the school year with 427,” she said. “In terms of calculus courses, we started the school year with 115 students, ended the school year with 110 students.”
For early college courses, the district began the school year with 264 students and ended with 343.
“More students are taking early college courses instead of AP and calculus,” Blake-Canty.
The 442 students enrolled in the AP courses took a total of 719 AP exams, with 39 percent of the students completing the exams with a higher test total of a 3, 4, or 5, according to Blake-Canty.
“For our high school dropout rate, we started the school year with 1,683 students,” she said. “We had 87 students who dropped out, and that gives us (a dropout rate) of about 5 percent.”
The number of students who dropped out last year is in line with the 2024-25 school year, and lower the number of high school students who dropped out in the three years previous to that.
“For our mobility rate, at the end cumulatively, we had 479 students who came into the district; we had 367 students who exited the district,” said Blake-Canty. “We were able to hold on to 112 students.”
School Committee member Dr. Sarah Neville asked if the district was looking at revamping its strategic plan and indicators of success in the coming year.
“On this strategic plan, we had returned from Covid,” said Superintendent of Schools Dr. Almi Abeyta. “We are doing what we call a refresh; the priorities will remain the same.”
Neville said the school committee and administration may want to return to the strategic plan in the next year or two and tweak some of the indicators of success.
“Maybe we could have the data be a little more meaningful for readers of this report,” said Neville. “For example, when you have the number of students enrolled in AP courses, you have the number of students enrolled in calculus courses, the number of students enrolled in early college. I have a lot of questions, like what is the total number of students, and those are also hard numbers to look at in isolation because sometimes a student will maybe choose not to take early college because they are in AP, or things like that.
“Maybe there is a different data point we could look at, like the percentage of students who are enrolled in at least an AP course or a calculus course or an early college course or any other kind of creative ways to look at these to give you an easier to understand picture of these trends.”
School committee member JAKE Small said he agreed there were some opportunities for improvements in the way the data is collected and reported.
“I think that sometimes we can’t see the things that we are working on, but also, sometimes we can’t see the things that are going really, really well,” said Small.
Small pointed to the increasing number of students involved in AP courses and achieving higher scores in the AP exams as one example of a positive trend.
“This is a point of pride for our city and for our school district, and 39 percent, while it sounds low, is actually meeting average and maybe slightly above average for our state,” he said. “Real kudos to our students who are engaging this really rigorous coursework, meeting the mark, and doing a great job.”