Warsaw Community Schools has set a goal to have a 96% graduation rate for the 2023-24 school year. Dr. David Hoffert is shown addressing the 2023 graduates. Photo provided by Warsaw Community Schools.

By Jackie Gorski
Times-Union

WARSAW — A goal for Warsaw Community School is to have a 96% graduation rate for the 2023-24 school year, the school board heard Monday, Nov. 13.

Peyton Scharpenberg, counselor at Warsaw Community High School, also shared graduation rates from past years. For the 2020-21 school, the graduation rate was about 90% with the graduation rates for both the 2021-22 and 2022-23 school years at about 96%.

There are several requirements students have to meet in order to graduate.

The first deals with getting enough credits in order to earn a general diploma, Core 40 diploma and academic or technical honors diploma.

Students also have to show employability skills, which is fulfilled by completing an experience and filling out a reflection from the experience. Scharpenberg said that requirement can be done through a variety of ways, such a project-based experience or it can be something like a sport, club or 4-H.

The third requirement students have to fulfill is to show their post-secondary ready competence. Students can do this by earning an honors diploma, earning a certificate or obtaining a certain score on the ACT or SAT. For the ASVAB test, a student who has taken it within the last two years and earned at least a score of 31 can use the test to graduate.

If a student has attempted three different options in the third requirement and is unable to use one of them toward their graduation requirements, Scharpenberg said the student can qualify for a waiver as long as the student has a GPA of a C-minus or higher and a 95% or higher attendance rate with no unexcused days. Board member Randy Polston asked if it was possible the students on the waiver could be moved on the pathway. Scharpenberg said yes.

This year, it is estimated 238 students will earn an honors diploma, 202 will do a career pathway at the high school and 26 students will use the ASVAB test. About 150 students met the college-readiness bench mark on their SAT and three students will use that to help them graduate.

There are about eight students that may be fifth-year seniors since they may not graduate before Oct. 1. Of those eight, one of them is at Gateway Educational Center and two are recent transfers to WCS, with one having 11 credits and the other having 24.
Also, the board heard from OrthoWorx Talent Director Erin Serafino about DiscoverMe, a program for eighth-graders. DiscoverMe is a partnership between WCS and OrthoWorx and the program was in October.

Serafino said the goals of DiscoverMe is to expose students to local manufacturing careers and to help students understand the local orthopedic industry.

During DiscoverMe week, students were able to tour the Warsaw Area Career Center and see a local manufacturer and Ivy Tech.
Also, doing the program, students listened to guest speakers from companies like Zimmer Biomet, IMD, Paragon and DePuy. The students did hands-on activities in the classroom.

Serafino said before DiscoverMe, 10.1% of students said they were thinking of careers in manufacturing and 20.3% were thinking of careers in engineer. After the program, 15% said they were thinking of careers in manufacturing, while 22.7% said they possibly were thinking of careers in engineering.

Serafino said teachers and students did give feedback and it will be used to improve the program.

In other business, the board:

• Approved a 4% raise for support staff starting Jan. 1, as well as a $300 stipend for support staff.
• Heard from Luisa Davis, director of counseling at WCHS, about how the process of scheduling classes at the high school was done.
• Approved the continuation of network support services with Winona IT for $78,000.
• Heard prom is tentatively scheduled for May 11 and senior semi formal is tentatively scheduled for Feb. 17.

The next meeting will be Dec. 18.