Recently administration decided to divide student discipline by last name rather than grade level. The change is a big one, since they’ve only governed by grades in the past.

“We’ve been evaluating for several years about the best way to serve our students and make sure we have equity among our administrative staff,” head principal Brad Bailey said. “It gives us an opportunity to know all of our students and not just a specific group.”

According to Bailey, the switch was pushed even more due to the loss of an administrator last year because of budget constraints.

“We had to reshuffle some positions around within the administrative staff,” Bailey said. “As a result of that, we decided to try and go with the alphabet.”

Another up side of the new divide is the similarity to they way the Academic Advisement Center operates. The alphabetical separations are almost identical between principals and advisors.

“We thought it’d be better this way since it seemed productive with the academic advisors,” Associate Principal for Student Management Richard Stahl said. “The students will know each year what’s required of them from the last year.”

The major factor in the decision was the leaders of our school being able to for connections with a more diverse group of the student body than the respective grades only.

“I think it’s fantastic because we get to maintain relationships with students for years at a time rather than you see someone [for their grade only],” assistant principal William Harris said. “Now a student gets to work with their principal for all four years of high school and it helps to build that relationship because it’s not necessarily all about discipline. It’s about relationships.”