By Sadie Woodruff, Staff Writer — This year, the high school has introduced a new plan to help its students succeed, the student success period.

“Student success period was developed to meet a certain house bill requirement, mandated by the state to make sure that students receive college and career readiness. Another big part was the mentoring with students and teachers,” academy principal Jared Buck said.

The new student success period is designed to be an extra period that will enable students to learn about college and other options at school. Using an adjusted schedule makes time for the period to be a half hour every Friday. It is added between fourth and fifth period, taking place in the students’ fifth period class.

“I think student success period can be a good thing but it can also be a bad thing because, it takes away time from classes but we are also doing something useful with that time,” sophomore Taylor McAngus said. “Some of the teachers complain about time being taken away. I feel like it’s not very successful, regardless of what it’s called because, the whole entire time students talk about whatever and we get off topic easily, but that enables us to bond with others.”

To achieve a level of comfort when it comes to connection between staff and students, staff members and students helped with the ideas for what they will do throughout the year.

“We will do things such as a door decorating contest, for students to bond and also get to know the staff, that is our main goal. To have a go-to person,” Buck said.

The student success period was added in place of last year’s after school eighth period program. Students would be placed in a classroom, for those who stayed. The students couldn’t be given a guarantee that they would have a teacher that they already did during the day. The period was supposed to be run the same way but with the number of participants, it did not go as planned.

“We want the students to be able to have a bond with a teacher that they already have, that was an issue last year. Transportation was also a big issue. We couldn’t force students to stay since we couldn’t offer it. So, since that didn’t work after school, we did something during the school day,” Buck said.

During the fifth period students will meet the house bill requirement, and be able to do some activities with your fifth period teachers and classmates. Counselors are also going to use this time to provide college information to students.

The expectation matrix is also a new addition this school year. The expectation matrix is general school rules created based off of the student surveys that students filled out at the end of the year last year. The matrix includes expectations for students on what to do to be respectful, responsible, and cooperative in the hallways, classrooms and the cafeteria.

[Updated Aug. 12, 2017: This article has been reformatted for consistency.]