Every Monday, students are expected to sign up for Academic Opportunity or AO times. AOs allow students to complete homework and get help from their teachers. In the past teachers have been able to have meetings such as AHS Fuel, First Friday, and NHS. This year AO has switched to strictly academic, meaning these clubs can no longer meet during AO. This has brought controversy among these groups, because some feel the groups would benefit from the meeting taking place during the day rather than before or after school. Some of these groups have lost student participation which has brought a toll on the activities they host.
Last year the Atlantic chapter of the National Honor Society (NHS) met before school or during AO, but this year they are only allowed to meet before school. President Ella Meyer said, “We haven’t had a bad turnout. But there have been members who do not come in the morning because it does happen so early, and they might live out of town, making it hard for them to get here early.” She also said that not allowing groups to meet during AO has caused a lot of stress on the advisors because “trying to find mornings that work when every organization is having meetings in the morning is a nightmare.”
The NHS advisor for this year is Anna Pauley, who said she feels “like [attendance] has been less than before [the restrictions] because students are already here for AO rather than having to come to school early.” Students sometimes forget about morning meetings especially if they can’t be held on the same day every week because of complications. She said she “wouldn’t be opposed” to having meetings during AO, but she understands that “they are trying to keep that time for academics.” To increase participation and interest in these clubs, Pauley said, “We should still have an activity fair, like we do for incoming freshman, but allow existing high schoolers to go as well,” considering there are new students and students change their interests throughout high school, and “they might not have thought about joining one of these groups as a freshman.”
AHS Fuel advisor Daniel Vargason said, “Our numbers have gone down quite a bit” because their club has not been allowed to meet in AO. He said that “usually our numbers go down “just a smidge” during the second semester. But with not having it during AO it has gone down drastically. Last year they had about 35-40 students come in every Thursday, and now that number has dropped to 10-12 students. He had “a conversation with Mrs. McKay early on, asking if we could continue to have them during AO at the beginning of the school year.” After he was told that they couldn’t he said, “I had to respect that decision” but he would still like to have them during AO. He said, “The decision was made and that was final.” Vargason said to increase participation, people need to encourage others to rejoin the club and encourage underclassmen to join. He said, “At the end of the day, it’s 7:30, it is not that early, and if people want to have a voice and have an opinion then they’re going to come in and do it.”
The president of AHS Fuel is Addie Freund; she said, “Student participation and involvement are down. I remember all of the desks were filled last year, and we even had some kids sitting on Varg’s couches in the back of the room.” At the beginning of the school year the participation started okay but as the year has progressed the amount of students that show up to the meeting has decreased. Freund said that instead of AO being a time of academics it has turned into a social time for a lot of students, and if students are struggling teachers tend to pull them in any way. She said, “If students have the option to go to an AO to socialize, they should be allowed the option to participate in a “spirit club” for lack of better terms. At the end of the day, when a student is struggling, they will get put into the place they need to be. Otherwise, it should all be fair game.” Freund said the best thing we can do to increase participation is to “show up” even if you don’t want to attend meetings. She said, “If we hold an event like TWIRP, we need students to participate to continue functioning as a club. Many students don’t realize what activities they would miss out on at AHS without Fuel.” There would be no more painting parking spots, no TWIRP volleyball or TWIRP in general, no organization for student sections, no March Madness (previously Midnight Madness), no decorations, themes, or powder at sporting events, and no reindeer games. She said the biggest thing we can do for participation is to talk about it, tell our friends to come to meetings, get out of bed in the morning, and if you are unhappy with themes for the student’s section or dress days for TWIRP, “come to the meetings and give us your input.” Finally, Freund said, “If the student body could participate then I think that could lead to more successes just because of the positive mindsets and enthusiasm energetic environments foster.”
This year AHS has new organizations, one of those being the Future Business Leader of America organization. FBLA President Makenna Schoeder said it would benefit the group if they could have meetings during AO. “People aren’t as willing to wake up and go to a meeting as they are to go to a meeting during AO.” She said, “If students have to go get help for classes they will still be able to do so.” She said that allowing FBLA to meet during AO would have been a good opportunity to grow and gain members.” Schroeder said, “Encouraging students that this is fun and could benefit them is the only way to increase participation.” Some positives of FBLA are “giving cords to participants for graduation, it’s a good club to have on your resume, and there is occasionally food at meetings.” Lastly, she said, “Not all kids need AO for academic help and this could be a good solution for them to be involved in something productive…Therefore if they have nothing better to do during AO they should do something beneficial to the school.”
Mary Jensen, the FBLA advisor, said, “It’s hard to find a time of day that works for everyone,” whether working around sports or other groups. She said she would prefer to be able to have the meetings during AO to allow for more participation. Jensen said it would help students more with time management with “other activities, homework, family time, and work.”
FCCLA, or Family, Career, and Community Leaders of America, is also one of the new groups this year, and their advisor is Rebecca Wallace. She said, “I believe it would benefit our FCCLA chapter by being able to meet during AO. Everyone is already at school, so I wouldn’t have to work around sports and extracurricular activities.” Though, she doesn’t know exactly because this group hasn’t been a thing until this year. She said it would be more “ideal” if they were allowed to meet during the school day. Wallace also said it would be great if they could advertise the group more to get people to know what it’s all about and get more students to join.
Allison Berryhill holds First Friday for her journalism students on the first Friday of every month. They used to do this during AO so that every student had the opportunity to experience it. She said, “I know our numbers have been down, maybe even by 50 percent.” Also, her new JP students haven’t been coming because they “don’t know what to expect.” She said that groups should be allowed to meet during AO because group involvement is a “huge part of student development,” and would help “them feel more a part of AHS.” She said she doesn’t think it’s very fair to “say that if you want kids to be involved that they have to come to school early.” She said, some kids ride the bus and kids that have transportation issues, kids who don’t have flexibility, these students are getting excluded from these extracurricular activities. She said, “The major reason for our numbers drop is just logistics. Kids can’t always make it here at 7:30 in the morning,” but during AO, everyone could make it because it was during the school day. Berryhill also used to host a Creative Writing club, and those meetings have come to a halt because there is no time for them to meet. She said she feels as though this club specifically should have the chance to meet because, “it helps strengthen writing skills,” and makes these students better writers. She said it didn’t qualify as academic, but she “would argue that it was academic.”
Our very own principal Heather McKay said that although she would love for groups to meet during AO, it is just not something that can happen until NWEA and ISASP testing scores improve, until then AO is strictly focused on academics. She said, “There are no enrichments or clubs to meet during AO, everything needs to be academically based.” During PD on Wednesdays, the faculty meets in groups and discusses which students need help on a certain subject for that week. She said during the 4th quarter, “Based on the test scores we have gotten from NWEA, [they] are going to be creating specific groups based on their areas of focus.” She doesn’t think the goal for AO changes has been achieved yet, noting the nuance in this goal. Through learning what NWEA offers the school, she has been learning “so much” along with everyone else. She hopes that we will see more change during the 4th quarter and see the improvement they are working toward. She said clubs are not allowed to meet during AO because the intention is to be academic-centered, and she said clubs have a lot of life lessons and values, but the school needs to make sure everyone – students and teachers included – stays focused on academics and improving test scores. She said that people should still take part in these clubs but for right now it has to be outside of school hours. She said the data is what is going to drive her decisions, the data from winter has been more positive, and she has started to see the increase in scores already. McKay said, “As long as that’s the trajectory,” it’s going to give her “more grounds to want to offer more enrichments again during AOs.” but she has a responsibility to make sure academic growth is happening.
Although some people feel like it would be beneficial to have meetings during the school day as McKay said, she has a plan and hopes that it doesn’t affect the groups too much. he still feels that these groups are very important for life skills and other development skills but feels that they shouldn’t take time away from academics. Until she sees improvement in the test scores she will continue to keep AO this way or develop it further, but if testing scores improve then she might reconsider groups being able to meet during AO.
