On Dec. 9, the 2023 freshman class gathered in the cafeteria to discuss some recent alarming news: 451 students were failing one or more classes. There has also been a total of 218 discipline referrals, 1,622 full-day absences, and about 2,195 tardies. 

Although this is rather news for the majority of students and teachers alike, freshman counselor Austin Cannon says differently. “This [talk] was mainly for a realization [for] them to understand the importance of credits and to get caught up in core classes.This becomes especially important in sophomore year.” 

As for the reasoning behind this, Mr. Cannon thinks that “It’s that middle school mentality that they’re  coming in with. They haven’t had that moment of realization yet, that light bulb to go off in their head to say ‘Oh, this actually does matter.’  And I have high expectations for all my students, and I try to push them into a positive direction. And this [meeting] was to make them realize that passing these classes is important. It’s not just social hour all the time. That’s why we are here, to learn.” 

On the other hand, 447 freshman are passing their classes. There are also 26 freshman with perfect attendance, 284 freshman with no tardies, and 24% of students are taking AP  or honors classes. Mr. Cannon expresses, “There can be a couple of lessons to take away from this. First being that it’s not too late. It’s the first semester, although it’s finished, there is still a large percentage of [freshman] that are not going to finish where they want to. But, hopefully they tried to get their grade as high as possible for the end of the semester, and to take away the lesson that it’s not too late to get back on track.”