BY DANI TIETZ
dani@sjodaily.com
St. Joseph-Ogden High School was recognized as one of the state’s best last week, according to the Illinois Report Card.
Recognized as an “Exemplary” School, St. Joseph-Ogden joins nearly 11-percent of all schools in the state that receive the top ranking.
St. Joseph-Ogden moved up from the “Commendable” category from 2018, where about 75-percent of all school fall.
With 457 students, enrollment at SJ-O has held steady since 2015 when the district had 462 students.
The district has 4.8-percent low-income students, which is the lowest number the high school has seen in the last five years. Since 2015, low-income enrollment has declined steadily from 9-percent.
The report shows that chronic absenteeism, meaning students who miss 10-percent or more of school with or without a valid excuse, remained the same over the last two years at 9-percent.
Chronic truism rates, 5-percent or more of school days per year without a valid excuse, has also remained low since 2015 at 1 to 0-percent.
High School drop-out percentages increased slightly whereas 0-percent of high school students dropped out in 2015 and 2016, one-percent drop-out in 2017 and 2018 and 2-percent dropped out in 2019.
A five-year look at 4-year graduation rates showed them holding steady. In 2015, 92-percent of the class graduated within four years, in 2016 it rose to 98-percent and in 2017, 96-percent graduated in four years. The 4-year graduation percentage dropped again in 2017 to 92-percent then finds itself at 96-percent in 2019.
As a class, 94-percent of freshmen were on track to graduate in 2019. The percentage was at 92-percent in 2018.
St. Joseph-Ogden students see above-state-average scores on their SAT test. In 2017, students received an average score of 541.5 on the English Language Assessment (ELA) part of the test and a 556.2 on Math.
Math scores rose in 2018 with an average of 563.7 as did ELA scores at 546.3. In 2019, SJ-O students scored an average of 538.4 on ELA and 567.5 on Math.
A little more than one-third of the SJ-O student body in grades 11 and 12 have taken college courses for credit and/or AP courses over the last two years.
Since graduating in 2019, 86-percent of Mahomet-Seymour graduates have enrolled in college. That number is up from 2017 and 2018 when it was 72 and 85-percent, respectively. In 2015, 58-percent of SJ-O graduates enrolled in college within 12 months.
The district spends $9,687 per student enrolled.
The St. Joseph-Ogden School District was designated at a Tier 2 school for Evidence-Based Funding in 2019. At $3,654,661 Evidence-Based Funding Resources, they are at 68-percent capacity to meet the $5,399,381 Adequacy Target.
Average class size at the high school has been right at, but below the state average, since 2015. In 2019 the state average is 22, and classes at SJ-O on average are at 21.
The Mahomet-Seymour School District, which has a total of 30 teachers has a student to teacher ratio of 17.1 at high school level. The state average is 19.1.
The teacher retention rate, the 3-year average percentage of teachers returning to work at SJ-O is at 93-percent and has been there since 2017 as it rose from 88-percent in 2015.
On average, teachers St. Joseph-Ogden High School see a lower salary than their state-wide counterparts. This has held true at least since 2015.
Currently, on average, SJ-O teachers are paid $44,378 per year. The state average is $67,049.
Teacher absences were down in 2019, coming in at 93-percent who miss fewer than 10 days per year. In 2018, the percentage was at 87-percent and in 2017 94-percent.
In 2017 and 2019, 100-percent of SJ-O teachers received Excellent or Proficient designations on their evaluations. 96-percent of teacher received the highest rating in 2018.
SJ-O High School is below the state average of administration to student ratio. The state average of admins to students was 173:1 in 2019, and the ratio is 152:1 at the high school.
Average administrator pay is close to the state average. In 2019, SJ-O administrators made an average of $101,265 whereas the state administrators made an average of $109,592.
