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In an announcement on Friday, Sept. 20, the Mount Vernon City School District revealed its 2023-2024 graduation rate had climbed to 79.9 percent, a level not seen in over 20 years, according to the district.
The rate increased 5.6 percentage points over the previous school year, officials added.
Graduation rates for individual schools in the city were recorded as:
- Mount Vernon High School: 82.7 percent;
- Denzel Washington School of the Arts: 93.5 percent;
- Mount Vernon STEAM Academy: 90.7 percent;
- Rebecca Turner Academy: 21.9 percent. District officials commented: "Most of these students would not have graduated had they not had the opportunity to attend RTA."
Acting Superintendent K. Veronica Smith said the improvement is a "source of great pride for the district, and it shows that we are on the right track academically."
"Through intense data management, personalized instruction, and the commitment of our teachers and staff, we were able to do something as a district that has not been accomplished in decades," Smith added.
Many of the improvements were attributed to data monitoring and implementing interventions with students based on this data, officials said.
The district also put an emphasis on "social-emotional learning," which enlisted the help of interns who handled tasks in offices to allow counselors to spend more time focusing on students.
The graduation rate improvement follows a tumultuous 2023 for the district, during which it was placed under investigation by the United States Attorney's Office for the Northern District of New York, which subpoenaed the district for records related to federal grant funding of certain programs.
Following this news, in February 2023, the district voted to "administratively reassign" Superintendent Waveline Bennett-Conroy and instead appoint Smith as the district's Acting Superintendent of Schools.
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