The head of Evansville’s public schools delivered an upbeat assessment of the EVSC.
Superintendent David Smith touted rising enrollment, student success stories, and outstanding teachers during his State of Our Schools address.
Smith showed Evansville Rotarians a chart that indicated local students who stay in the EVSC do better than their peers across the state…
"As you can see, the longer we have the students the better their performance. There is no other district that can say that."
Smith pointed to the district’s “weighted grading system” that takes into consideration the difficulty of courses when determining grade point averages.
He also praised the under-construction McCutchanville Elementary School. Smith told reporters it’s on schedule to open in August…
"It's a $27 million state-of-the-art facility. It will be ready for school this fall. We'll have over 750 students there."
WNIN asked the superintendent for his response to the Evansville City Council not taking any action on school safety…
"It certainly is the jurisdiction of the EVSC. And while I applaud their attentiveness to that issue, we have a phenomenonal relationship with law enforcement agencies, we have our own police force, we spend more than a half-million dollars on additonal personnel, safety personnel."
The EVSC High School Honors Jazz Band performed at the conclusion of the address at Tropicana.