At Sunset High School, the Class of 2013 graduation rate will be near 70%, MORE than a doubling of the 33% graduation rate from the Class of 2006! Remember, this calculation is the percentage of the full original 2009/10 ninth grade enrollment represented in the number of diplomas to be granted to that Class of 2013. It is not the TEA rate which is usually much higher.
At Sunset the current enrollment is 579 ninth grade students with 522 seniors! That is the largest senior class on record! When was the last time you heard of an inner city high school that is over 2,000 students, with a poverty rate leaving 90% of students on free or reduced lunch programs, with their enrollment so well balanced between the 9th grade and 12th grade? This is wonderful progress! Sunset staff are to be congratulated!
Quintanilla Middle School, where the School Time-Capsule Project started in 2005, now has the lowest reporting rate of discipline problems for any middle school in District One in DISD. Quintanilla is a 1,200+ student middle school with a poverty rate reflected in 95.7% of students receiving free or reduced lunches. Students rated as LEP due to Spanish being their primary language represent 50% of the student body.
Quintanilla had only had one student pregnancy this past year! A "normal" pregnancy rate was 4 or 5 pregnancies. Last year was 2. We are making real progress! Planning for the future, and it appears letters from parents about their dreams for their child which started in 2009 at Quintanilla, are the best birth control!
Finally, Quintanilla is the highest rated DISD south side non-magnet middle school in the 2013 Children at Risk school rating report: http://childrenatrisk.org/research/school-rankings/northtexas/. Only 5 of the 33 other DISD middle schools had higher ratings. They were all in North Dallas with much lower poverty rates in their schools.
