By Portia Williams
GREENUP, Ky. — The bell rang, the doors reopened, and classes began at Greenup County High School (GCHS) on Thursday. Jason Smith, principal at GCHS, said the 2015-16 school year is off to a great start.
“We have been very busy today, it is first day with our kids, and it has gone really well,” Smith said. “We start every morning with all of the kids in the gym, and do a welcome, and introduce our staff. It gives us an opportunity to get the kids a little organized. You’ve got 200 incoming freshman that have never attended school here before, so they get to meet everybody, and we dismiss them from home room one class at a time, and then we begin our day.”
According to Smith, the current number of students enrolled at GCHS is 846.
“The number is up a little bit from last year,” he said. “Its probably up about 20 students. I think we ended the year at about 825 last year, so we’re are up a little bit.”
There has been an addition also to the number of faculty members.
“We do have 14 new faculty members. We have 43 certified staff in our building, and 14 of those teachers are brand new,” he said. “We are very excited, and we think that we have made some very good hires. A hand full of the 14 are former students of Greenup County, so we are excited for them to have come back, they have gotten their education, and they want to continue in a school as teachers. It has been a really good summer putting the faculty together. We are really excited that we have some new faces that can bring some new perspectives, and some new ideas to the building.”
One new featured being added to GCHS this year is the Microsoft IT Academy. Smith said the academy will offer a plethora of opportunities for the student body.
“Probably, one of the things that we are most excited about is that the Kentucky Department of Education has created a Microsoft IT Academy,” he said. “It is going to end up creating about five new career pathways for our students from networking, to programming, and things of that nature, and one of our computer teachers is going to coordinate that for us. It is just going to offer our students a whole lot more opportunities in technology and those career pathways.
Overall, he said he and the faculty and staff of GCHS will be working to keep the school highly functioning.
“We are trying to sustain and maintain the things that we have implemented these last few years, and I think that we have done a pretty good job with that. We are trying to operate as business as usual, so we are looking forward to a great school year,” he said.
Reach Portia Williams at 740-353-3101, ext. 1929, or on Twitter @PortiaWillPDT.
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