120 SPHS Students missing?

It's 9:00 am...do you know where your high school students are?

A "Concerned Citizen" was wondering about the recent numbers of high school students posted. Concerned Citizen (do you get a visual of the "Smoking Man" of X-Files fame?) asked a very simple question. Concerned Citizen pointed out that the official "3rd Friday" (of September) count of Sun Prairie High School students was 1733. Then, the March 2008 official total of 1674 students was released. Finally, High School principal Paul Keats issued a revised HS honor roll student count indicating the total was now 1613 students.

We understand that the boundary issue has weighed heavily on the minds of the district. Also put aside for a moment any questions of whether a reduction of this magnitude suggests we didn't even need a new school (current HS capacity is about 1816). Do we need to call an Amber Alert for the 120 SPHS students that are missing since September? Where did they go? Has Sun Prairie High become Sunny Prairie-dale High? Are there dark forces at work here?

Thanks to Alice Murphy, Assistant District Administrator for Instructional Programs, the mystery has been answered. Between September and January, we lost 41 students from the original 1733, taking it to 1692. Then 18 HS students graduated early in December, taking the total to 1674 students for the 3/31/08 count. The difference between the total of 1613 students (reported after the honor roll fiasco) and the 1674 (61 students) represents those students who received 1 or more "incompletes" for a class, thus excluding them from calculations to determine whether or not they were qualified for the honor roll.

Mystery solved. While it's clear that the number changes during the school year, we can say that as of May 1, 2008, there were 1670 students attending SPHS (9th: 461; 10th: 412; 11th: 411; 12th: 386). [Source: School Board mtg package enrollment information] An additional 68 students attend the SOAR, alternative high school.

Much thanks to Concerned Citizen for looking at the numbers in such detail! We only become more knowledgeable when we ask questions. Isn't that what we're teaching our students? One of the problems with computers and technology is that these wonderful databases only provide us with data based on the query we make (the age old IO problem). Perhaps, in addition to hard coding the honor roll criterion into the query, we might also want to ensure that the total count is based on ALL students, not just those without "incomplete " grades.