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To the Editor:

I was very interested in the data provided in the story published May 7 regarding the updated graduation rates from the Minnesota Department of Education (MDE) regarding both the Austin Public School District (APS) and State of Minnesota Graduation Rates. I’ve always been a numbers person, and I’ve found data sets like this particularly interesting.

I also appreciated the decision to include, for comparison, the graduation rates of the other Mower County high schools for the past two years (2024 and 2023).

While I understand that this was data provided by MDE for public school districts, I was disappointed that the one non-public high school in the Mower County area was left out of the list: Pacelli Catholic School. Pacelli has maintained a 112 year-long tradition of academic excellence nurtured by the Catholic Educational Tradition. For both of the years in the dataset, Pacelli’s graduation rate has been 100%. All 16 members of the Class of 2023, and 12 in the Class of 2024 crossed the stage and threw their cap on Graduation Night.

For the sake of comparison, I feel that the Pacelli graduation rate should be noted.

Respectfully-

Nick McGrath

Austin, MN