Fountain Hills Unified School District completed a four-week summer school program last Thursday, June 23. The primary function at the high school this year was credit recovery, and administrators described it as smooth and successful.

Assistant Principal Jessica Kane used online learning platform SchoolsPLP to organize courses and set up attendance and grade trackers at the high school. This helped the teachers engage students where they needed it most, and they were also able to communicate with parents through SchoolsPLP.

TJ Buckley was the high school’s supervisor, and he made rounds in each high school class. According to him, behavior issues were minimal, and classrooms were seen as quiet places to work where teachers were available to help.

“Very successful, and the teachers have been very organized,” Buckley said. “The students have been working hard. We had a number of passed courses, so our percentages for pass rates were really high.”

According to Buckley, every student that completed their course passed. However, there were nine who withdrew from their courses, mostly due to timing concerns. Summer school courses were divided into “A” and “B” courses, and if a student took three weeks to finish part A, Buckley said they would withdraw the student so the time constraint wouldn’t cause a failure to part B.

Fountain Hills High School passed 59 courses and helped many students get closer to graduating this summer. Over the last three years, Fountain Hills has been an outlier in the state in that area. It has seen improved graduation rates whereas the state average has declined.

FHHS has had an above average graduation rate for years. According to the Arizona Department of Education Accountability and Research Data, FHHS had a 92.9% graduation rate in 2010, while the state average was 75.4%. In 2019, FHHS was down to 88.49% and Arizona was up to 79.2%.

The COVID-19 pandemic didn’t begin until late in the 2019-2020 school year, but Arizona’s average graduation rate dropped to 78.19% in 2020. The state average then dropped to 75.71% in the 2021. Those same years, the graduation rate at FHHS rose to 92.1% and 92.44%, respectively.

“There’s kids who are kind of behind, and they just need a little bit of help, a little boost,” Kane said. “I think that COVID year really messed some kids up in regard to being able to stay on top of things, being motivated to get it done. This year was a hard transition back to everything truly being full-on school again and some students really struggled with that aspect.”

The Arizona Department of Education has not published data for the class of 2022 yet, but the staff at Fountain Hills hope their efforts will retain student interest beyond this summer. Kane said completing summer school can be a positive experience for students, and she woke up to a student email on the last day of school sharing how happy the student was to knock some graduate requirements off their check list.

“Some of our students have quite a hole to get out of, as far as making sure they get the credits they need by graduation,” Buckley said. “I think we’ll see a little more engagement at the beginning of next year, because some of those hills aren't as insurmountable as they probably seem to students. Of course, we’re going to have to wait and see for that evidence, but that’s something we hope to see.”

Arizona has one of the worst high school graduation rates in the country, and it had the worst graduation rate in the country in the 2019-2020 academic year, according to USnews.com. The average graduation rate that year was 88.6%, but the staff at Fountain Hills can only keep their attention on their own students and keep focusing on making FHUSD an above average school district not just in Arizona, but in the country as well.