TEMPLE, Texas — The Temple Independent School District graduated a higher percentage of its seniors than it had in the last 13 years according to the latest four-year longitudinal graduation numbers released by the state of Texas.
Temple ISD graduated 96.9% of the students in the class of 2024 based on those four-year figures with Temple High School graduating 96.4% of its seniors in the class of 2024. Those figures were 95.7% district-wide and 94.9% for Temple High School in the class of 2023 and are essentially three full percentage points higher than the numbers posted for the Class of 2022. Temple ISD’s overall graduation rate was 94.0% for the Class of 2022 with Temple High School graduating 93.4% of that senior class. Temple ISD’s Fred Edwards Academy has maintained a 99 to 100% graduation rate each year over that same three-year period of time. The Class of 2024 numbers are the highest percentages posted by Temple ISD since Dr. Bobby Ott joined the district in 2012 and are also higher than the state-wide figures. Ott came to Temple ISD as Assistant Superintendent for Curriculum and Instruction before taking over as Superintendent of Schools for Temple ISD in 2018.
“Graduation rates that hover around 97% are unheard of, and this is a credit to our families, staff, and the opportunities of engagement and learning we offer through our various innovative programs in TISD,” Ott said. “Innovative programming, combined with a dose of tough love in procedures around merit-based open campus lunch and cell phone usage, provides a focused environment that allows students to truly take advantage of those offerings.”
The district attributes the continued improvement to relentless tracking of students by truancy officers, registrars, and campus leaders, to ensure that every student is receiving the personalized attention needed to graduate. Campus leaders are looking closely at every student in danger of dropping out to investigate the challenges keeping them from being at school. That consistent collaboration with families has created solutions to assist those students in getting back on track.
“We got very intentional in our tracking approach. We knew the kids by name and what support they needed,” added Dr. Jason Mayo, principal of Temple High School. “Credit to the relentless effort by our administration, truancy officers, and registrars, who went knocking on doors, calling parents, and thinking outside the box on how we can support students and families.”
The district expects to see additional increases in those graduation rates after implementing a series of new initiatives for the 2024-2025 school year. Those initiatives included a cell phone policy, social contracts to attend extracurricular events, parent communication, attendance committees, and the use of High Quality Instructional Materials (HQIM), and helped lead to significant decreases in absences by period, discipline referrals, and number of students failing one or more courses during the year.