Waldport High School increased its four-year graduation rate to almost 94 percent for the 2014-18 school years, the highest rate among the Lincoln County School District’s high schools and 15 percentage points higher than the Oregon average.

Waldport High’s graduation rate of 93.88 percent for the class of 2018 was a 16.4 percent increase over the four-year period ending in 2017. Yachats is in the high school’s attendance area.

The Oregon Department of Education on Thursday released graduation and dropout rates for all Oregon school districts. The Lincoln County district showed an overall graduation rate of nearly 82 percent for students who started as freshmen in the fall of 2014. The district’s graduation rate went from 77.5 percent to 81.99 percent, an increase of 4.24 percent.

Statewide, 79 percent of students in the class of 2018 earned diplomas within four years, the state said, an increase of 2 percent.

Newport High School had a graduation rate of 83.8 percent, an increase of 4.1 percent; Toledo High a graduation rate of 79.2 percent, an increase of 7.2 percent; and, Taft High a graduation rate of 78.9 percent, a 1.7 percent increase.

For the district’s three charter high schools, the rates were: Eddyville, 100 percent, up 5.8 percent; Siletz Valley Early College Academy, 84.6 percent, up 3.6 percent; and Lincoln City Career Tech, 52.3 percent, down 14.2 percent.

Superintendent Karen Gray said the district’s improved graduation rates correlate with the state percentages and population growth.

“We attribute the rise in rates to a large focus of creating a caring school cultures last year, along with other supports we’ve put in place district-wide such as graduation coaches, increased career and technical learning opportunities and implementation of AVID (advancement via individual determination) in all our schools,” Gray said in a news release.

The district’s dropout rate is 2 percent, which means that of 1,700 students who started as freshmen in the fall of 2014, 34 did not complete the requirements to graduate. The state average is 3.55 percent.

Gray said the largest number of district dropouts were among students who are homeless or not proficient in English. The district says it has identified 280 students as homeless and 58 who are learning English.

“We need to improve support systems for our homeless students and those students who are not proficient in English during high school,” Gray said.