LINN — At the Osage County R-II School District Board of Education meeting on June 20, High School Principal Erin Sassmann reported that most of the 49 seniors who graduated this year are pursuing higher education.

“Thirty-three of those students received A-plus scholarships,” Sassmann said, “We gave out, or the community gave out, $663,484 to our graduates to go on to something farther on than us, and 41 of those students are going to continue their education at some sort of higher level learning facility. So that was really exciting.”

Sassmann also reported a great end to the school year. “I can’t say enough about how hard our teachers worked, (or) how our students worked,” Sassmann said. “It was just an amazing end.”

Middle-school enrollment is up eight students from last September, with high-school enrollment unchanged. “Hopefully, it’ll keep going in that direction,” Sassmann added. “One thing I want to praise our teachers (for) is the use of our Wildcat time this year. That’s that 28 minutes at the end of the day that we use for some kind of tutoring, homework, or time to go to other teachers to get help.

“We have cut our Ds and Fs by half from this time last year,” Sassmann continued. “So, I’m very impressed with our teachers and how hard they’ve worked with those students. I think Wildcat time made a difference, and we’re going to keep doing that again next year.”

Sassmann told the board that one thing staff learned last year was that lunches were a little too short, so they will be adding five minutes to each lunch shift to allow students more time to eat. 

Sassmann also noted the middle school will have a policy change for the 2025-26 school year. Any student who is failing two or more core classes (ELA, math, science, and social studies) will be asked to attend summer school for remediation. Students who choose not to attend summer school will be held back.

“It’s something that we’re going to be starting in the 25-26 school year — not this school year, but the next one,” Sassmann explained. “But I want to kind of get a forecast out here that this is coming in our middle school.”

The school intends to expand constant contact with parents and will call parents of failing students every quarter to make sure they are aware of their child’s grades and the potential impact and to discuss what assistance is available to help students repair their grades before the next report card.

Summer school for course remediation will follow a more stringent lesson plan than the current summer school enrichment classes, and students will be required to pass to move on to the next grade.

“My biggest worry is if these students keep failing courses in middle school, and we don’t help them now, by the time they get to high school, those are the students that are going to get behind their cohorts,” Sassmann said, “A lot of times, those are the kids that aren’t going to graduate because they’re going to start getting so far behind, they’re just going to throw their hands up and be like, ‘Oh, I can’t catch up. I’m done.’ So, we’re trying to catch them a little bit early, make sure they’re caught up and ready to go so that they can be successful in high school.”

“We hope we don’t retain anybody,” said Superintendent Bob James in response to questions about consistency between elementary school and middle school policies.

“And that’s our goal,” Sassmann said of providing parents with information and resources like teachers did last school year. “We talk to them about progress at (the) quarter, so hopefully these parents will realize, ‘Oh my gosh, my student’s started to get behind. Let’s bring them to tutoring. Let’s do some of these other things that we have.’ So, we’re hoping we won’t have to retain one student.”

More from this meeting will be presented next week.