Summary:
Zip code 33936 in Lehigh Acres, Florida, is home to a single high school, Donna J. Beasley Technical Academy, a public school serving grades 9-12 with a small enrollment of 294 students.
Donna J. Beasley Technical Academy faces severe and urgent challenges that set it far apart from typical schools. The most critical issue is a catastrophic chronic absenteeism rate of 94.7%, meaning nearly every student is missing significant amounts of school. This is nearly three times higher than the Lee district average of 34.6% and the state average of 31.4%. This absenteeism crisis directly drives the school's extremely low graduation rate of just 35.3%, compared to the district's 89.8% and the state's 92.2%. Academic performance is also critically low, with proficiency rates near zero in several subjects like Biology and 10th-grade ELA, and an average proficiency of just 9% across all tests. The school has ranked in the bottom 5% of all Florida high schools for three consecutive years, earning a 0-star rating each time.
Despite spending $9,645 per student—a significant amount—the school is not achieving positive outcomes, indicating that the core problem is not a lack of resources but rather the fundamental challenge of getting students to attend. While the school's name suggests a focus on career and technical education, the data shows only standard academic test scores, with no evidence of technical program success. The school's performance is an extreme outlier, even within a low-performing district, suggesting it faces unique and severe challenges that require intensive, non-traditional interventions to break the vicious cycle of disengagement, absenteeism, and dropping out.
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