The new Superintendent of East High School had told WXXI News recently his immediate goal was to get as many students as possible in attendance at East for the first day of school, on September 8th.
It looks like he made some progress in that direction.
Nelms released a statement saying that the attendance rate for grades 6 - 8 on Tuesday was 91 percent.
Attendance for grades 9 - 12 was 74 percent, so altogether first day attendance was 79 percent.
East High School is being run by the University of Rochester as part of a special model designed to improve issues that include poor test scores and graduation rates.
Nelms refers to the first day attendance as "mixed results" and he says an ongoing challenge at East will be with the excessive number of ninth graders who have been failing and repeating grades. Nelms says a number of resources are being used to get students back on track and re-engage students who may not have attended school last year.
