A recent report of school performance scores from the Louisiana Department of Education has caused an uproar at Salmen High School.

The Slidell school, still bouncing back from Hurricane Katrina in 2005, was given a score of 75.4 percent and a one-star rating. This was the first year hurricane-impacted schools such as Salmen received a score, but according to assistant principal Terri Wortmann, the reported number doesn’t accurately reflect Salmen’s status.

“A high school’s performance score is made up of an assessment index of 70 percent and a graduation index of 30 percent,” she said. “We were missing that second component.” The graduation index is composed of a point system awarded for various criteria, such as academic endorsements, awards, certifications, and so on. Factored in is a cohort member count, which is all students who entered the ninth grade at any given school in any given year and who are tracked through 12th grade. Due to Katrina displacement, many seniors at Salmen were not four-year graduates as such and could not be included in that count under state rules.

Wortmann reworked the numbers to include last year’s graduating class in a memo to members of the PTSA. The resulting figures bumped the score up to 91.03.

“That brings us up to a two-star rating,” said Wortmann. “It’s still low but looks a heck of a lot better than what’s been published.”

With so many schools still suffering the effects of the 2005 hurricanes, Wortmann feels a new form should have been utilized that reported each component, or lack thereof, separately. This would have made the scores much clearer, she said and would not have had such a negative impact on the district.

“I spent a lot of time this summer convincing parents that Salmen is a good place to go,” said Wortmann. “This makes that much more difficult.”

School Board Superintendent Gayle Sloan is asking that the state exclude Salmen’s scores from future publication until all components are available to be part of the calculations.