BELLE — Belle High School Principal Garret Haslag on June 28 told the Maries R-2 Board of Education that even with phone calls home and parent conferences last school year, students’ grades still fell below passing at a high rate.

“We did have a decrease in the number of students with Fs but saw an overall increase in the number of Fs,” Haslag said. “A lot of times, even with phone calls home and parent conferences I did not get as much participation as I thought we would get as far as parental support.”

The high school plans to combat the high number of failing students with an available advisory period.

“One thing we are going to do next year is to extend our advisory period and (shorten) the lunches,” Haslag said. “We will track each advisory teacher and the students for Fs and Ds.”

Haslag said they have four advisory teachers set aside for strictly intervention purposes. He said the advisors should be able to meet with students to find out not only why they missed assignments but if they understood the assignment and the instructional pieces.

“Having an actual 40-minute advisory period — let’s say you had six assignments in six classes and you couldn’t get them all done,” Haslag began. “Some weren’t supposed to be homework but you were overwhelmed and you had absolutely no time in the school day to do it. You play a sport, you get home at about 6 o’clock, dinner at 7, there was very little time in the school day to do anything outside of class time.” 

Haslag said the period allows time to eat a snack and have instructional time with teacher support to combat falling behind.

“Because I really do feel like at the core of it, it is the responsibility and time,” Haslag said.

Haslag explained that the situation could be as simple as daily 20-minute assignments that have added up over 10 days and are suddenly a big deal.

“It adds up very quickly and giving them extra time with teachers should help,” Haslag said. 

Board President Joey Butler II asked if there were certain subjects that were worse than others.

“Not necessarily core subjects, but there were certain teachers and that will go into my conversations between myself and them and what the underlying issue was,” Haslag said. “Was it too much work? Was it the instructional practice? Lack of engagement due to instructional practice? I do have that on file and those are things we will look at next year specifically.”

Butler wondered if students are missing an educational piece from the middle school that is causing failure at the lower-level high school grades. 

Director Dawn Hicks asked Haslag if they are seeing it more in the lower grade levels from students coming in from the middle school.

“Almost every time,” Haslag said. “Freshmen classes have the highest rate of failure.”

Haslag explained that the second goal is to increase graduation rates within the district. Passing grades have a direct correlation with graduation rates.

“Usually the graduation rate sits around 89 percent,” Haslag said. “My goal is higher, shoot for 94 percent. We have got to be at the state average at some point.”

In May, Belle High School graduated 52 seniors during the commencement ceremony. There were 243 students enrolled at the high school during the 2021-22 school year.