Mission Statement Of James City School District

Analysis of Mission Statement

The James City School District is located in James City, North, Dakota, a community of roughly 16,000 residents. The community is homogenous with roughly 95% of its citizens identifying themselves as white. The school district is the ninth largest school district in the state and serves 2,300 students. The district consists of five elementary schools, one middle school, one high school, and an alternative school (AdvancEd, 2013). The mission of James City School District is “Learning for All.” The staff of the school district helped to develop this mission statement after an AdvancEd review process in 2012. The school’s mission statement and vision were targeted in the areas of review because the staff felt

In 2014-2015, 83.9% of James City seniors graduated compared to the state average of 86.3%. These two averages are obviously close and do not raise alarms until one looks at the groups within that 83.9%. Females averaged an 87.2% graduation rate compared to the males’ average of just 80%. More telling is the 66% graduation rate among the low-income students and the 56% of IEP students (North Dakota Department of Public Instruction [NDPI], 2017). These graduation rate statistics point to populations James City School District is failing. To truly say “Learning for All,” the school district needs to work on improving graduation rates for the students most at need. The connection between poverty and low graduation rates is nothing new and it is a problem James City shares with much of the United States. Messacar and Oreopoulos (2013) cited several factors for the low graduation rates including conflicts at home and financial difficulties. Students living in poverty often face issues outside of school that their middle-class peers do not which lead to disengagement and, eventually, dropping out of

The School Attendance Review Board (SARB) is already working on addressing excessive school absences, which is often an issue with low-income students. SARB is a group consisting of administrators, counselors, and teachers who attempt interventions with the student and their families to ensure that minimum attendance requirements are met. This SARB program is only in place, however, at the middle school. The high school does have attendance requirements and consequences for excessive absences, but they do no have a program that involves families such as that of the middle school. If the high school adopted a program similar to the SARB, perhaps their graduation rates would improve. Messacar and Oreopoulous (2013) also suggested that mentoring programs for low-income or at-risk students might help to provide positive role models for students, such as administrators or educators. If students know that there is someone who has high expectations for them, they are more likely to be engaged and have lower rates of absenteeism and tardiness as well as increased rates of graduation. If James City public schools were able to create and follow through with some form of mentoring program for those students in need, perhaps they, too, would see their graduation rates