Mobile County Public Schools opened the second full week of September with a district update that stretched from a fourth-grader’s published novel to a countywide push on classroom attendance, and it closes with an annual college fair that will put representatives from more than 30 colleges, universities and workforce training programs in front of the district’s seniors.
The weekly roundup from the school system, the largest in Alabama, also included recognition for Advanced Placement students at LeFlore Magnet High School, the release of the back-to-school issue of the district magazine, the return of the district’s Game of the Week sports broadcasts, and the naming of five National Merit Semifinalists at Davidson and Baker high schools.
Taken together, the items sketch the rhythm of early autumn inside a large public school system: ceremonies that reward last spring’s academic results, logistics for the events that shape what comes next, and a steady reminder to families that the most reliable predictor of how a school year goes is whether a student is in the building.
Attendance Awareness Month Puts the Focus on Showing Up
September is National Attendance Awareness Month, and MCPSS officials used the observance to restate a point that sounds obvious and turns out to be difficult: consistent attendance is essential to academic achievement and to successful learning.
The district’s framing is practical rather than punitive. Students who miss school repeatedly have a hard time keeping up with lessons, building skills and staying connected to their classrooms and classmates. Absences compound. A child who misses the introduction of a new math concept does not simply miss one day of instruction; that child returns to a classroom that has already moved on, and the gap widens across the following weeks.
School officials thanked parents and guardians for getting students to campus on time each day and ready to learn, and they have reason to. The district said that through parent support and the work of school staff, MCPSS was recently recognized nationally by Attendance Works for reducing chronic absenteeism to 12.8 percent.
That figure carries more weight than it might appear to at first glance. Chronic absenteeism is generally defined in education policy as missing 10 percent or more of the school year for any reason, excused or unexcused. In a standard 180-day calendar, that works out to roughly 18 days, or about two days a month. The measure deliberately counts excused absences alongside unexcused ones, because the academic effect of a missed lesson does not depend on the reason a student was gone.
Attendance Works is a national nonprofit initiative devoted to reducing chronic absence, and it has spent years pushing districts to track the measure as a leading indicator rather than a compliance statistic. Chronic absenteeism rose sharply across American public education following the pandemic-era disruptions to schooling, and bringing the rate down has proved stubborn work in districts of every size. A district of Mobile County’s scale reporting a 12.8 percent rate represents a meaningful amount of ground recovered, and it is the kind of number that moves only through thousands of individual mornings going right.
A Fourth-Grader With a Book to His Name
The district’s highlight of the week belonged to a student who has not yet reached middle school. McDavid-Jones fourth-grader Owen Colter wrote a book titled “Owen Carter: Recruited,” and it is now available online.
The story follows a fictional boy with ADHD who enrolls at a spy school and lands in a world of adventure and high-stakes missions. That premise is a familiar and durable one in middle-grade fiction, and the choice reflects something the district noted about the author: Owen loves to read, and he set himself the challenge of writing a story that he would want to read himself.
It is a good instinct, and a widely recommended one. Writers are routinely told to write the book they wish existed, and a fourth-grader arriving at that conclusion on his own — then finishing the manuscript, which is the part most aspiring authors never manage — is worth noting. There is also something quietly pointed in the choice to build the story around a protagonist with ADHD. Books in which a young reader recognizes his own experience on the page are not always easy to find, and Owen wrote one.
Away from school, according to the district, Owen also enjoys working with small engines. Between the manuscript and the carburetors, he appears to be a fourth-grader who likes to finish things.
LeFlore’s AP Scholars More Than Double
LeFlore Magnet High School, the district’s only magnet high school, is celebrating the second year of its revitalized Advanced Placement Scholars program, and the early returns are strong. A total of 12 LeFlore students earned top AP scores last spring — more than twice the number from the previous year.
Those students were set to be honored at the school’s Academic Excellence Awards Ceremony, held at 9 a.m. on September 10 in LeFlore’s new theater.
The AP Scholar designation is awarded by the College Board to students who score 3 or higher on at least three Advanced Placement exams. AP exams are scored on a five-point scale, and a 3 is the threshold at which most colleges and universities will grant credit. The Advanced Placement program allows academically prepared high school students to take rigorous college-level coursework and, with a qualifying exam score, to arrive on a college campus with credit hours already banked.
The practical value of that is easy to underestimate. Credit earned in high school is credit a family does not pay tuition for later, and students who enter college with a semester’s worth of hours often have room in their schedules for a double major, a study-abroad term, an internship or simply a lighter load during a difficult first year. For students weighing the cost of a degree, AP results can translate directly into money.
The district framed the LeFlore program as one element of a broader college-and-career readiness push, and the system-wide numbers echo the school-level jump: district-wide, 369 Mobile County Public Schools students earned top scores on AP exams, a 26 percent increase over the previous year.
Five Named National Merit Semifinalists
Five MCPSS students were named National Merit Semifinalists on Tuesday: Khanh Do of Baker High School, and Andres Gonzalez Espana, Fouad Hujier, Tyler Macon and Brayden Sadler, all of Davidson High School.
The five are among just over 16,000 semifinalists nationwide, a group representing less than one percent of U.S. high school seniors, and they qualified by posting among the highest scores in Alabama on the Preliminary SAT/National Merit Scholarship Qualifying Test. Semifinalists can now compete for National Merit Scholarships, which will be awarded next spring.
Back-to-School Magazine Hits Schools and Businesses
The back-to-school issue of the district magazine has been published and is being distributed to every MCPSS school and to businesses across the region.
The new issue includes features on AP Scholars, summer internships, new principals and Staff Superstars. Print publications of this kind serve a specific purpose for a district the size of Mobile County’s: they reach households that do not follow school social media accounts, they land in waiting rooms and lobbies where residents without children in the system will see them, and they give schools a way to introduce new leadership to families before a problem forces the introduction.
Game of the Week Broadcasts Return
The district is again producing a football and a volleyball Game of the Week, with a different matchup featured each week. Readers who want to know which teams are being carried can check Mobile County Public Schools’ social media pages, where the weekly selections are announced.
The high school football Game of the Week broadcasts, which the district describes as award-winning, begin at 6:50 p.m. Live coverage is available on MCPSS social media pages and the district’s online video channel, and it also carries through local cable and streaming providers.
For families spread across a county as large as Mobile’s — and for grandparents, deployed parents and alumni watching from elsewhere — a district-produced broadcast is often the only way to see a game that would otherwise require a long drive and a stadium ticket. It is also a training ground: student broadcast and media programs frequently supply talent for productions like these.
College Fair Brings 30-Plus Institutions to the Mitchell Center
The week’s biggest logistical undertaking is still ahead. MCPSS high school seniors will attend the district’s annual College Fair from 8:30 a.m. to 1:30 p.m. on Tuesday, September 15, at the USA Mitchell Center on the University of South Alabama campus.
Seniors will be able to meet representatives from more than 30 colleges, universities and workforce training programs, and staff will be on hand to help with college and career planning.
The inclusion of workforce training programs alongside four-year universities is worth flagging. A single-day fair that puts a shipyard apprenticeship, a two-year technical certificate and a flagship university at tables in the same arena tells students something a course catalog cannot: that these are all legitimate destinations, and that the decision is about fit rather than hierarchy.
The district also set a benchmark for the current senior class. The Class of 2026 earned a record $1.2 billion in college scholarships, and MCPSS said the Class of 2027 is hoping to top it.
What Families Should Do This Week
For parents, the near-term takeaways are straightforward. Seniors should come to the September 15 fair with a short list of questions and a sense of what they want to ask admissions and workforce representatives — the difference between a productive morning and a browsing one usually comes down to preparation. Families of students at any grade level can treat Attendance Awareness Month as a prompt to check how many days their child has already missed this year, since chronic absence accumulates quietly and is far easier to correct in September than in April.
Weekly Game of the Week selections and viewing links are posted on the district’s social media pages, and copies of the district magazine are being distributed to schools now. Additional updates are published in the district’s weekly roundup.