North Cook News

The Maine Township School Board was recently provided insight on how Illinois has fared academically amid the COVID-19 pandemic.

Shawn Messemer, assistant superintendent of curriculum for Maine Township High Schools, went over some of the results of the state’s report card released toward the end of October during the Dec. 5 board meeting. While the schools in the district experienced a “steady downward trend” due to the pandemic, they have bounced back in math.

“That's something that a lot of other school districts have not seen,” Messemer said. “In fact, they've seen that continued trend down both in English and math. However, I was super excited this year to see that we've started to climb back in that math space in a way that a lot of other districts have not done.”

Messemer told the board all three of the high schools had received Commendable status, under the top 10% who receive exemplary, the same status they have all received the past three years. The three schools have an average 94% graduation rate. The district is working on lowering the remediation rate for community college which is down almost 30% since 2017. Students from Maine take remediation courses much more often than other districts even though all other numbers match up better than many high schools.

Messemer also revealed one of the areas in which the Maine district is under the rate of the state is chronic absenteeism, which is when students are absent 18 or more days with valid excuse. While all schools in the state have been struggling with this issue since the pandemic, Maine is continuing to focus on bringing students back into the school.