Q. How do you think your first semester went?

A. Wow. Well, there’s a lot of things that happened this semester, but in general, I think it was a pretty successful semester. A lot of good things happened academically. A lot of things happened with performing arts. We had a lot of high moments.

Q. What are you planning to change this year?

A. I don’t know what I’m going to change yet. There are so many great things happening. And the majority of the students seem very responsible.

Q. What have you learned about Pioneer in this first semester?

A. There’s so many things for so many different types of people here, and that our families really are very supportive, if you’re honest [with them] about things. And if you have good rationale, people are very understanding when you share in truth, and you stick to it.

Q.  When we talked in the fall, you wanted to focus on tardies and absences. How did that go?

A. We’ve been doing things more one-on-one, which helps a little bit more. So instead of penalizing the whole building, we target and intervene with that specific, small group of students, and that’s where the improvements are happening.

Q. How do you plan to enforce the closed campus rule?

A. Hopefully we’ll have the station at the at the flagpole entrance where students can come in, and they can just check in and if they come in late, we can have some conversation.

Q. What are you going to change and emphasize in this next semester?

A. I think we just need to be consistent and stay the course. Keep working on the things that need to be resolved, which is having students in class on time, having students at school early, so they can be in class on time. Having a safe environment where there’s not a lot of disruptions, like fights and yelling matches and things like that.

Then I think, I’m gonna step back. One thing we will do is increase the awareness of the opportunities that students have when it comes to social emotional health. A lot of our students don’t realize all the assistance that we do have here, and that’s how they end up making poor decisions. They don’t know what what processes we have, or what resources we have here, so we have to help students make sure that they’re aware of what we have to offer. You know, we have peer intervention, we have the Reset Room, we have the Counseling staff that can help them and can guide them socially and emotionally. We have the Ross Clinic, we have so many things here. And students just aren’t fully aware.

I think if we make things more visible, broadcast things a little bit more, then they might go that route instead of disrupting their lives and disrupting the building.

Q. What is your overall goal as principal of Pioneer?

A. I want to make us one of the top high schools in the state.