City school officials are working to boost the district's 39 percent graduation rate. But the outcome of an intensive districtwide effort to help students get their diploma is pitted against an unusual set of rules that the state uses to determine graduation rates. | About 42 percent of the district's students are set to graduate this year. Officials are hoping that number could reach 50 percent, but city schools have to account for a sizeable percentage of transient students who are no longer there, says Connie Leech, associate chief of secondary education in the city school district. | "There are students we have to include as not graduating even though they are not here for a whole host of reasons," says Leech. | If students were with the district for five months of the school year - even though they now live another state, have been incarcerated, or became seriously ill, for example - they are still considered city students, Leech says. | "If you have 12 kids out of 100 like that, you're already at 88 percent," she says. "But we are making progress with the students who are here."