Attendance at NG takes big jump over last four years

By Editor | July 6, 2026 |

By Carmen Ensinger

In his report to the North Greene School Board at the June 24 meeting, High School Principal Brett Berry reported that the final attendance at the end of the year has significantly increased over the last four years.
“According to our calculations, our final attendance this year is 93.63 percent, up from last year’s 92.69 percent,” he said. “In 2023-24 it sat at 92.65 percent and in 2022-23 it was at 90.50 percent so that is a big jump in a four-year period for students attendance and we are really happy to see that.”
For the month of May, and specifically for the senior class, which is notorious about skipping school, because, well, they can, Berry said he was kind of shocked by the totals.
“Our student attendance for the month of May was 95.66 percent, while our staff total sat at 94.78 percent,” he said. “If you break it down into classes, our seniors, granted they are only in school for like seven days in May, but they were there 99 percent of the time, so they were ready to be here and wrap things up.”
Since the board made most of its new hires in April, that has given them time to get settled in, which Berry said is a good thing.
“Since we hired them in April, they are full ingrained now in everything we are doing over the summer,” Berry said. “They all have their laptops, they have their keys, their coming to the trainings and they are in their classrooms working, they are painting so to have them integrated this soon is I think the right way
Berry said a lot of work has been going on at the high school during the month of June and since school let out for the summer.
“We have created several different office spaces and moved several other offices,” he said. “A lot of big things are happening to create room for our support staff that are coming down. We have an office for Sam; we emptied the high school office athletic PE storage area to create an office and we emptied a closet to create an office for the school resource officer.”
Berry had nothing but praise for the custodial staff.
“They are really getting after it and doing things,” he said. “They are doing the things we are asking them to do and being very diligent about their work and wanting to do it right, which I am enjoying seeing. They want to make the school look as good as possible.”
Elementary Principal Samantha Bushnell also had some positive numbers to pass along as far as end of the year attendance goes.
“Our attendance has also improved,” she said. “We have kind of broken it down from the last four school years. Last year’s attendance, overall was 93.35 and this year we are at 94.74, so we are very close to 95 percent, which is well above what our school goal was. Also another notable improvement was the number of suspensions from last year to this year has gone down significantly.”
Bushnell said the proficiency level in English Language Arts is above 50 percent in grades fourth through sixth.
“We have not seen those numbers since 2018,” she said. “We are pretty excited about that. Tells some of these foundations skills – because these current sitting fifth graders were our COVID kindergartners so they lost a lot of valuable foundational instruction and the current fourth graders are the first kids that have had that science of reading approach to teaching phonics from kindergarten on so we are seeing some of that pay off.”
There have been several things done at her building as well.
“The cafeteria has been painted and the PTO is working on getting us a new marquee,” she said. “The locker installation that was scheduled for mid-June has been pushed back to July due to the guy mis-measuring and stuff.”
She also said the hallways are currently being painted and they are waiting for some extermination work to be done. The hinge on the back cooler is ordered, but they are keeping in touch with them about it. Plans are to put an awning over the door to help with water in the multi-purpose room and she has reached out to their new maintenance director, Anthony Willeford, about putting on new shingles on the pre-k shed.