The 2021 Illinois Report Card, an annual report released by the Illinois State Board of Education, backed away from giving each district a designation this fall after an unusual 2020-2021 school year due to COVID-19.
The report, though, continues to break down each district’s finances, expenditures per students, teacher retention, attendance, enrollment and salaries in an attempt to help constituents gauge the district’s progress.
With 431 students, enrollment at SJ-O has dipped since 2015 when the district had 462 students.
The district has 4-percent low-income students, falling from 7.8-percent the previous year.
The report shows that chronic absenteeism, meaning students who miss 10-percent or more of school with or without a valid excuse, rose from 4-percent in 2020 and to 9-percent in 2021, a trend that was seen state-wide during the COVID-19 mitigations.
A five-year look at 4-year graduation rates showed the district 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, bounced back at 96-percent in 2019 and was at 94-percent in 2020. The 2021 data shows that the graduation rate went back up to 96-percent.
As a class, 92-percent of freshmen were on track to graduate on time.
The district spends $11,000 per student enrolled.
At $3,846,044 Evidence-Based Funding Resources, St. Joseph-Ogden is at 69-percent capacity to meet the $5,584,457 Adequacy Target.
The St. Joseph-Ogden School District, which has a total of 31 teachers, has a student-to-teacher ratio of 16.1 at high school level. The state average is 18.1.
The teacher retention rate, the 3-year average percentage of teachers returning to work at SJ-O is at 94-percent, up from a steady average of 93-percent since 2017.
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 $48,129 per year. The state average is $70,705.
SJ-O High School is above the state average of administration to student ratio. The state average of admins to students was 157:1 in 2021, and the ratio is 144:1 at the high school.
Average administrator pay is close to the state average. In 2020, SJ-O administrators made an average of $106,630 whereas the state administrators made an average of $114,208.
