Mt. Hope High School jumped up a grade during the most recent batch of educational evaluations assessed by state education officials, going from a three out of five star rating in 2021 to four out of five stars in 2022, according to the new batch of RIDE Report Cards that were recently released.

The Bristol Warren Regional School Committee heard a report from Assistant Superintendent Dr. Diane Sanna during their meeting on Monday night, which also revealed that Rockwell Elementary school dropped from a five-star rating to a four-star rating, Guiteras retained its four-star rating, and that Colt Andrews dropped from a four-star school to a three-star school. Kickemuit Middle School retained their same three-star rating from a year ago.

The RIDE Report Card is an evaluation method used to grade each school in Rhode Island for how its students are succeeding on standardized testing (both in achievement scores and in growth from the previous year), the rate of absenteeism for students and teachers, and the number of students who successfully graduate, along with numerous other metrics that can be accessed and analyzed on the RIDE and Bristol Warren School District’s websites.

“It’s important to remember that the data is based on the results from 2022, and a number of improvements are already in place since that time,” Sanna said during the presentation.

Here is a snapshot of how Bristol’s schools performed during the 2022 evaluations. Please note that a school’s star rating is assessed based on their lowest-performing metric — so, for example, if a school ranked high enough for five stars on six metrics, but ranked only high enough for four stars on one metric, their overall rating will be four stars.

Colt Andrews School

Colt Andrews dropped from a four-star school last year to a three-star school this year, due to only attaining a three-star rank in achievement and growth. Here are some of the highlights from the report.

• Student absenteeism: 38.5% chronically absent (meaning they missed 10%, or 18 or more days, of school)
• Teacher absenteeism: 18.7% chronically absent
• Growth/Achievement: 48% of students were proficient in ELA, while 56% were proficient in Math. 70% showed typical or high growth in ELA, while 81% showed typical or high growth in Math.

Guiteras School

Guiteras retained a four-star rating from the previous year.

• Student absenteeism: 17.3% chronically absent
• Teacher absenteeism: 7% chronically absent
• Growth/Achievement: 61% of students were proficient in ELA, while 50% were proficient in Math. 78% showed typical or high growth in ELA, while 64% showed typical or high growth in Math.

Rockwell School

Rockwell dropped from a five-star school last year to a four-year school in 2022. Rockwell’s case is interesting because they scored high enough on all metrics to retain their five-star ranking from a year ago (the only five-star school in Bristol Warren), however they were reportedly ineligible to receive the adequate number of points because the school did not have enough teachers to be graded on the absentee rates for teachers. All metrics besides that one were worthy of a five-star ranking.

• Student absenteeism: 17.4% chronically absent
• Teacher absenteeism: 7.2% chronically absent
• Growth/Achievement: 56% of students were proficient in ELA, while 55% were proficient in Math. 67% showed typical or high growth in ELA, while 70% showed typical or high growth in Math.

Kickemuit Middle School

KMS also retained the same rating from last year.

• Student absenteeism: 36.9% chronically absent
• Teacher absenteeism: 21.2% chronically absent
• Growth/Achievement: 44% of students at KMS were proficient in ELA, while 35% were proficient in Math. For growth, 60% showed typical or high growth in ELA, while 64% showed typical or high growth in Math assessments.

Mt. Hope High School

Mt. Hope was the lone school in the entire Bristol Warren district to jump up a rating, bolstered by their strong, five-star quality rating in ELA and Math growth, and consistent, four-star quality in all other metrics.

• Student absenteeism: 33.9% chronically absent
• Teacher absenteeism: 20.1% chronically absent
• Growth/Achievement: 72% of Mt. Hope students were proficient on ELA in 2022, but only 29% were proficient in Math. 87% of students showed typical or high growth in ELA, while 73% of students saw typical or high growth in Math.

On high rates of absenteeism

School committee member Carly Reich asked about the seemingly high rates of student absenteeism.

“I’m sure I’m not the only one that was aghast when I heard the chronic absenteeism rates for both the middle and the high school,” she said. “I’m assuming that has changed since we initially had those numbers, and I would venture to say I assume a lot of that has to do with student mental health.”

Dr. Sanna said that the absentee rates were the product of multiple factors, including Covid to mental health issues among a larger portion of the student population than in pre-pandemic years. She outlined a three-tiered system for trying to improve attendance rates throughout the district.

Tier 1 begins with district-wide awareness campaigns beginning at the start of the year and continuing throughout, with additional resources being made available through social workers and the schools for parents who might need more help getting their kids to school, for whatever reason that may be. Tier 2 involves a formal letter being sent to the homes of students who hit the 10% threshold of absences, along with a follow up phone call to parents. Tier 3 is a follow-up letter with additional monitoring of the student’s attendance progress.

“We’re hoping that all of that, especially the increased awareness of the importance of school attendance, will make a difference,” Sanna said.

Superintendent Ana Riley said that the absentee numbers had been decreasing since the winter break, when a high number of students were out due to various illnesses.

She also spoke of the ongoing effort to re-learn what an appropriate case for keeping a kid home from school who might be sick looks like; understanding that the perception of knowing the appropriate time to keep a child home from school has become undestandably warped since Covid began.

“We’re more familiar with the signs and symptoms of Covid than we were when all of that was first happening. We have plenty of free testing available, so if you’re worried about that, you can do the testing. But if it’s negative, we really need your child to come to school,” she said. “We’re really trying to get back into that routine of, unless your child has a fever or they’re vomiting or they have some other serious illness, they should be in school.

A sniffle isn’t a reason to stay home anymore.”