City School, based on information obtained in 2014, had a chronic absenteeism rate at school was 51%. Moreover, it dropped two years later, but by 2019, it had spiked to 83%. If a student has more than 20 unexcused absences in a year, they are in fact considered chronically absent. Throughout the state, that is 19% of students. In all of City Schools, it’s 42%. At Augusta Fells, 83% of students were chronically absent in 2019, but the school somehow recorded a 48% graduation rate.
City School Fallout
At Augusta Fells Savage Institute, a west Baltimore school which is under investigation by local and state officials for grading irregularities. Now, Project Baltimore has uncovered more surprising failures at the school. See the above information citing the statistics.
Personal Stories From Parents of Children Attending the City School
Moreover, seven children of Diane Turner’s have attended August Fells. At first, She said, everything was okay at the school. As time went on, things changed. “Everything just began to just go haywire,” said Turner. “There has to be a better way or system. I really don’t think that this was the right way,” said Tiffany France. “There has to be a better system or a better way. I don’t think that this was the proper way,” said Tiffany France. She is a Baltimore City mother whose son went to Augusta Fells in 2019.
Absenteeism: Failure Points to the School System and Parents
According to his transcripts, that year, France’s son was late or absent 88.5 days. Project Baltimore found that her son was one of the hundreds of Augusta Fells students that was not going to school. 83% of Augusta Fells students were chronically absent. That equals 360 of the 434 students enrolled.
Therefore, Marta Mossburg, a former visiting fellow at the Maryland Public Policy Institute and an education columnist, said: “It doesn’t make sense.”
Mossburg questions how any school can allow so many students to miss class. She also questions how a school with 83% chronic absenteeism can graduate nearly half its students.
“The school has the responsibility. It also lies within the parents to make sure their child is going to school. The communication was clearly way off here,” Mossburg told Project Baltimore.