BROOKINGS (9-15-26) — Policy changes at Brookings High School in recent years are yielding results.
During last night’s school board meeting, Brookings High School Principal Zach Thomas gave a presentation on new data he and his staff have been tracking… “One of the things we looked at last year and spent some time on with our staff is tracking Ds and Fs that students get. And keep in mind when you’re looking at this data, we added one additional class to our schedule last year — so not only did we decrease our total number of Ds and Fs at the high school, but we did that with all of our students taking one additional class, which makes it even more impressive.”
The school district tracked the number of students in each grade at the high school earning at least one D or F per semester from fall of 2023 through spring of 2026. Most classes showed improvement over that period. For example, the class set to graduate as seniors this year had 95 students earning Ds and Fs in the spring semester of 2024; 77 in the spring semester of 2025; and 58 in the spring of 2026. Most other grades experienced similar improvements as well.
Thomas attributes the higher grades to a couple different policy changes the past few years… “We did implement a mandatory study hall for freshmen and sophomores last year, and we’re very intentional about what that looks like and making sure students knew they had work missing in this class or you have to make up a test here. The other piece is just a more structured academic time, so we replaced ‘Bobcat Time’ last year with a student responsibility block, and I think some of the intentional structure that we created there also helped.”
Brookings also banned student cell phone use last year, requiring students to lock up phone in what’s called a Yondr pouch during the day. Thomas said that’s also having an positive impact… “It’s hard to ignore having students put cell phones in the Yonder pouch. I think our attendance ties back to that. I wish we had better data on just behavioral things that did not come up last year as a result of students not having access to their cell pones. In years prior, I can remember, ‘well Jimmy said this to me on snapchat during the school day,’ and so just not working through those things. And when you’re all in it together — one of the big fears students had was the fear of missing out — and when everybody’s in the same boat of you don’t have access to your cell phone, it’s just not as big of a concern.”
Thomas told the board attendance numbers have improved at the school as well. He said chronic absenteeism has improved 33.9 percent over last year with 103 fewer chronically absent students this year compared to last.
— Brookings Radio News
