District climbs from 19th to 13th in state rankings

The Sarasota County School District achieved a graduation rate of 92.5% for the 2023-24 school year, the highest level in the district’s history, “excluding the 2019-2020 graduation rates, when the FLDOE [Florida Department of Education] waived the [state] assessment requirements for graduation” because of the COVID-19 pandemic, District staff has announced.
“This historic achievement highlights a steady upward trend that has propelled the district from 19th to 13th place in the state rankings,” a district document points out with emphasis.
The graduation rates for the 2023-24 school year rose for all of the district’s traditional public high schools, that document adds, putting all of them higher than 90%.
“Notably,” the document continues, both Pine View School in Osprey and Suncoast Polytechnical High School in Sarasota both achieved a rate of 100%.
The state average for last year was 89.7%, the document says.

Among other key points in the document were as follows:
- Booker High School achieved a 5% increase in its graduation rates over the previous year and a 7% improvement over five years, attaining a level of 90.6% in 2023-24.
- Sarasota High School saw a year-over-year increase of 6.7% — from 2022-23 to 2023-24, with the graduation rate for the latter year at 93.2%, “its highest in five years.”
- North Port High School achieved a 3.3% uptick over the 2022-23 school year rate, reaching a level of 90.8%.
- Venice High Schools’ rate was 96.9% for 2023-24, which was up 1.4% from the previous year’s mark.
Among yet other details, the report points out, “English Language Learners (ELL) saw the most substantial improvement, with a 15.8 percentage point increase for [2023-24], achieving an 84.5% graduation rate.”
Hispanic students achieved a 90.1% graduation rate, up 6.1 percentage points year-over-year, the document adds.