How can a student miss 60 school days or more and still pass? New numbers coming out of Baltimore City Schools are showing it’s fairly common.

FOX45 News received data for 53 of Baltimore’s roughly 160 schools. Here’s what the data show:

Augusta Fells Savage High School in West Baltimore, during the 2022-23 school year, had 305 students. Of those 305 students, 111 of them were not promoted to the next grade, while 194 were promoted. Of those 194 promoted students, 70 missed 60 school days or more. Those students missed at least a third of the entire 180-day school year.

At Mergenthaler (Mervo) High School, in northeast Baltimore, of the 1,627 students in the school, 634 were not promoted — 634 students failed. And of the students who were promoted, 173 missed 60 school days or more.

“If the kids aren’t in the classroom, they can’t learn regardless of how good a teacher may be, regardless of how good the curriculum may be,” said Carl Stokes, a former City Council member and charter school operator in Baltimore, told Fox45 News. “It’s a huge problem because it says that the kids are coming out of class, out of a semester, out of a particular grade, or even out of school entirely, undereducated.”

The attendance data obtained by FOX45 News is not public. It was generated from a lawsuit filed by Baltimore resident Jovani Patterson, and financially backed by Sinclair Executive Chairman and Baltimore Sun co-owner David Smith, against the Baltimore City Board of School Commissioners. In the lawsuit, which was settled on Nov. 13, Patterson alleged Baltimore City Schools failed to properly educate generations of students. The data was released following the filing last month of a motion to intervene FOX45 News and the Baltimore Sun, seeking to unseal the school attendance records and other “confidential documents.”

The data shows the problem is not limited to high schools. At the Historic Cherry Hill Elementary/Middle School, 573 students were promoted in the 2022-23 school year; 116 of those students missed 60 school days or more.

The numbers are similar at Franklin Square Elementary/Middle where 19% of the students who were promoted missed 60 school days or more. At Dr. Bernard Harris Sr. Elementary, 18.5% of the promoted students missed at least a third of the school year.

“It’s pretty stunning, because you know that the kids are being promoted, who have not had a proper education. They just can’t miss a third of the school year and be able to move forward,” explained Stokes.

Baltimore City Public School System administrators declined an interview, but they did send a statement concerning attendance that is nearly a page-and-a-half long. It said, in part, “City Schools has worked tirelessly to improve student attendance,” and “the Board of School Commissioners refuses to give up on students with imperfect attendance.”

The statement explained there are many reasons why a student could miss a significant amount of school yet be promoted. The student could have disabilities or health issues that impact attendance. Or, the student, according to City Schools, could have participated in “summer school or other credit recovery programs.”

“I think a lot of these credit recovery programs are bogus,” Stokes told Project Baltimore. “These kids are realizing that they don’t have to do the work.”

Credit recovery programs allow students to quickly make up work they missed. The programs are often held on Saturdays or after school. One of the main problems with credit recovery programs, according to Stokes, is that they send the wrong message to the students who do attend class every day, that others can skip class and be promoted by participating in credit recovery programs.

“To the kids who have good sense, they’ll figure out quickly: Why come?” said Stokes.

The individual school level data FOX45 obtained is for about a third of the public schools in Baltimore City. FOX45’s legal counsel, Chase Bales, has filed a public records request to receive the attendance records for the remainder of the schools. “We are committed to obtaining these records for the benefit of the public and will take all necessary steps to ensure that the requirements of transparency are met,” Bales said in a statement.

Have a news tip? Contact Chris Papst at cjpapst@sbgtv.com.