Admin Corner: October Insights from the Office
Kennedy Ellis
As October comes to a close and Hamilton students and staff have completed nearly two months of school, Charger Press did a follow-up interview with Hamilton principal, Mr. Bauer, on his current perspectives.
In regards to the newly enforced policies at Hamilton, Bauer stated he is seeing positive changes all throughout Hamilton High School. These changes are both directly and indirectly correlated to what has been implemented, and Hamilton administration continues to carefully track this data. One observation that Bauer wanted to share was that multiple students have come up to him to state that they’ve noticed how the new phone policy has resulted in them talking to their peers more than if their phones were available to them at all times.
Bauer acknowledged that while the changes can be hard to adjust to, many positive results have started to be realized by staff and students. He stated, “I think the biggest negative is misunderstandings which turn into anger. But I know at the end of the day that the reason we are doing these things is for students to have better focus.” He stressed that the changes being made are based on research and data, reminding students that there is a time and a place for phones, but class is not one of them. This change has directly shown improvements not only in the work that is being done in class but the class environment itself, an observation supported by many Hamilton teachers.
Many of the new changes instituted this year have directly impacted the way Hamilton runs, one of these being attendance. Bauer stated, “Overall, absence markings are down 20% in the first month than they were last year.” Hamilton will be continuing to track this data (attendance and student achievement) to study the effects of the various policies, and this data will be shared with the community.
Even amidst the success of the policy implementation, there is room for new goals to be set in place to help further the administration’s agenda to make Hamilton the best it can be and live up to its full potential. Both in and out of school, Bauer’s goal is to have Hamilton's student body be good human beings. He states, “I think it matters to me more that [students are] good human beings and focus on high citizenship, bringing back the Charger Way.”
The goal of bringing back the sense of community through citizenship is something Bauer and the admin team actively work on. One of the ways they are working on accomplishing this is by hearing what the students have to say and what changes they want to see throughout Hamilton. Currently, Bauer is working to better communicate with the student body by creating a group of different representatives throughout the student body of Hamilton. This will allow a clearer path for students of all types and backgrounds to have an open forum with administration to share their beliefs about what needs to be done to make Hamilton a better place. The group will be the principal’s advisory team and is in the process of being structured as the article is being written.
In the interview, Bauer was asked how he felt the adjustments were going over with the students, and he stated, “This has been a really good start to the school year; you are all doing really good work, and I applaud the student body and hope to keep it up.”
Check out our last article in this series: Admin Corner: Insights from the Office (September).
