Congratulations to Alpena High School students for improving some key statistics on attendance, tardiness, and behaviors.

Reporter Julie Goldberg’s story in Wednesday’s edition gave us a long list of statistics worth celebrating.

From the 2017-18 school year to the 2018-19 school year:

∫ Referrals dropped from 705 to 502.

∫ The number of times students skipped class dropped from 215 to 53

∫ Attendance improved from 92.8% to 95.03%

∫ The number of times students were marked tardy fell from 4,213 to 732.

Certainly, Alpena High staffers deserve much credit for their work pushing students along in their behaviors. They reached out to parents, did a better job monitoring hallways, and reacted to data on student behavior in a timely manner to get things moving in the right direction.

But none of that would have mattered if the students hadn’t responded appropriately, so we send those kids congratulations.

The first step to a successful school year is showing up for class on time, to make sure you absorb all the information your teachers need to impart.

Alpena High kids did a much better job of that in the school year that just ended.

Good work, kids, and keep it up!

(THE ALPENA NEWS)