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Despite decreasing two points on their state report card, Straughn High School principal Donny Powell said he is proud of his staff and students and is eager to improve.

On the 2017-2018 Alabama State Report Card, SHS scored just shy of an “A” at 89. On the 2018-2019 report card they scored an 87, but still are in the high “B” range.

“We did improve significantly on our chronic absenteeism,” Powell said. “Mr. Cobb, our assistant principal, works very hard trying to make sure that our students are not considered chronically absent.”

All of the other scores stayed close to the same as last year’s scores, but Powell said academic achievement is what they need to focus on.

“This is the area that we can try and get a couple more points,” Powell said. “Everything else, we are almost maxing out the category.”

For the last five years, SHS has improved their ACT score.

“Every single year they have gone up,” Powell said. “We have been working on that and have put several strategies in place to try and improve that score and it has paid off. We stay above the state average and we plan to keep on improving that score. Our goal is to get it above a 20 and we are at 19.4 right now. With that we will be able to get our report grade a little higher.”

Powell said that he is incredibly proud of his staff and students.

“They work hard every day that they come in,” Powell said. “The closer that you get to an ‘A’ the easier it is to drop points. So, I am still very proud of everyone here at Straughn.”