By Linda Conner Lambeck

WESTPORT — The students who will be the Staples High School Class of 2026 spent a year and a half of middle school combined at Bedford Middle School when mold issues forced evacuation of Coleytown Middle School.

In March 2020, the then-sixth graders were also sent home, along with everyone else, when COVID struck. Instruction took place remotely.

As seventh graders, instruction was a hybrid format — half in person, half remote.

Now, as ninth graders, how are they doing?

Without a state-standardized test to go by, school district officials sought other measures, such as Grade Point Average, PSAT scores, attendance, referrals to special education and faculty recommendations for honors and Advanced Placement courses.

The results, surprising to many, show it appears the class is not any the worse in spite of the disruptions.

“The numbers tell us that macro-level performance metrics of our ninth-grade class appear to be on par with prior cohorts of ninth graders,” Assistant Supt. of Schools Anthony Buono told the school board on Monday.

At the end of the day, the class of 420 students is performing on par with previous years, the board was told.

While the report doesn’t tell the whole story of individual students, Buono said it provides an overall snapshot of the class.

The first-semester unweighted GPA of the freshman class is 3.6025, which is better than the three preceding classes.

PSAT scores show this year’s ninth graders, taken in March, reflect a slight decrease from the previous three years, but are deemed a typical variation by staff.

“In line with recent years, approximately 85 percent of students in the class of 2026 met standards in both evidence-based reading and writing and math,” the report states.

The number of honors and AP recommendations for the class headed into sophomore year was 232 compared to 257 the year before. Still, within normal year-to-year fluctuations, staff said.

Average daily attendance for the class was 95 percent, compared to 96 percent the year before.

Referrals to special education — 23 — rose from 16 the year before, but the number of students deemed eligible for the service was consistent with past years, said Staples Principal Stafford Thomas.

Many of the referrals, the board was told, came from parents.

Thomas said the number of students asking for, and seeking, academic or mental health support was also checked.

Like special ed referrals, the number of students checked for eligibility was greater, but the number ultimately enrolled in academic support remained consistent with past year. This year, in the first semester, it was 33 students out of a class of 420 students. In the second semester, that number was 34, up a bit from previous years.

The board was warned that students in the class are not all the same. Some students moved out of the district, others moved in. School-wide, there are about 100 new families at Staples this year, Thomas said.

Board Chairwoman Lee Goldstein said she liked that the district is looking to indicators other than test scores to measure how students are doing and asked if the district was satisfied with the measures used.

“Does this capture your impression of how the ninth-grade class is doing?” asked Goldstein.

Thomas said he believes it did.

He did note that students in the district, even before the pandemic, get a high dosage of tutoring, both in and out of school. He estimated somewhere between two-thirds and three-quarters of all students have regular tutoring of some kind.

Board members called that number “pretty shocking.”

Most of the data is based on reports from district counselors, Thomas told the board. It is hard to tell if the number seeking extra help is more or less than before the pandemic and if it will continue, he added.

Thomas called the demand for extra help great, and the internal capacity to offer it finite.

In-house help includes tutoring provided by teachers during free periods or after school.

Help is also provided as eighth graders move up to high school. Thomas said 93 percent of this year’s freshman class attended orientation before the start of classes.

There is also now something called Link Crew, a group of upperclassmen who mentor underclassmen and give them a sense of belonging.

Thomas said the biggest things the freshman class needs to work on are executive function skills, learning how to consume information, study and what is expected of them.

Board Vice Chairwoman Liz Heyer asked about attendance numbers.

Thomas called attendance numbers key, and this year, he said there is an increased emphasis on creating connections and providing students with extracurriculars.

Goldstein said she’d like to see the performance indicator review done over time and with more grades.

Supt. of Schools Thomas Scarice said it would be interesting to come up with composites across other grades.

Staples PTA Co-president Elena Caggiano called the report surprisingly more positive than she would have thought they would be.

“These numbers look pretty good,” Caggiano said. “But we are a district of high-achieving parents.”

She questioned if the report missed how students in the middle are doing, having heard reports of all students in certain classes struggling.

Caggiano said she chalks up the difficulties to a lack of preparedness, students coming in lacking specific skills or knowledge not imparted during COVID.

 “I hope that we watch this cohort … as they go into 10th grade,” she said.

Freelance writer Linda Conner Lambeck, a reporter for more than four decades at the Connecticut Post and other Hearst publications, is a member of the Education Writers Association.