As ARHS enters the last term of the school year, Principal Sean Bevan reflects on semester one and outlines goals for the end of the year. 

What are some of the most important things you and your team would like to work on this semester? 

“We will be finding out in the next several weeks whether or not the Algonquin athletic project will be funded…That will really dictate a great deal about what the rest of the year looks like, including how we plan for parking, how we plan for graduation, what the fall sports season looks like, what the timeline for completion of the athletic project is and all of those things…And then, in terribly unglamorous news for students, we’re doing this re-accreditation process. So, every 10 years, every high school and college goes through a process of examining what’s working about their school, what’s not, and they write this lengthy report that a team of educators reads to provide us feedback on things we might want to think about.”

What do you think went well during the first half of the school year? What things do you think could be improved or continue to be worked on? 

“One of my hopes this year was to talk with staff more about lesson planning and less about the structures of school that [students] experienced in the pandemic…This year, we’ve been having a lot of conversations about attendance, which we talked about a lot early in the year, as well as bell schedules and cell phones. I’m happy where we are on that, but it hasn’t really allowed us to have some of those instructional conversations about what teaching and learning look like best. I think we’ll have time to do that more this semester.”

What do you think students and teachers should be most excited about going into the rest of the school year?

“I think we can all look back with a sense of pride that we rebounded really nicely from the pandemic… I give our students a great deal of credit that they all just came back with a sense of purpose and came back to work…I think if someone just came into our school and hadn’t known we were in a pandemic right before this year, it would feel like a very ordinary year in a lot of ways.”

WiFi connectivity has been an ongoing issue this school year. What are some of the things you and your team have been working on so far in response to this and what are some of the things you are planning to do? 

“That continues to be a challenge and it’s very frustrating. It’s frustrating right from every student in the building to the teachers and the administrators. Our technology team continues to work on it. As I understand it, it’s an issue with multiple sources, so there’s not a singular solution that will fix it easily…What I’m understanding is there’s been some small, incremental improvements but not the enormous, immediate improvement that we’d all hope for. So they’re going to continue to work on that and continue to give me updates on it.”

In addition to WiFi issues, there have been problems with the intercom system and bells. How are you and your team working on this and what are some of your plans to fix these issues?

“The team tells me that they’re not totally sure why that continues to happen. It might be related to the network issues. The bells and the intercom are serviced by an outside company, so they come in to help us. That can be hard when you have somebody from outside the building who isn’t totally familiar with all of your technological systems. They’re trying to troubleshoot what they think might be the issue, which might also be related to our existing issues, so I think they’re kind of intermingled.”

Many students and community members are currently thinking about the proposed athletic complex, Gonkplex. What are your thoughts on the complex? If it doesn’t go through, what are your next steps?

“I’m hopeful that it gets funded because I think our athletics facility just isn’t up to the same high standards as the rest of our building and teachers and the quality that we want. Also I think that it’s just not healthy or safe or ADA compliant…I’m also excited that there will be pieces of that new facility that would be new to us. As for what we are going to do if it doesn’t get funded, I think we’ll just have to come back to the drawing board and try to find ways to make it work with our current facility. However, there’s just not too many ways we can continue to renovate this very old facility. It’s not so much if we need to do a renovation, it’s when.”

Is there anything else you would like to add?

“I’ve been here at a time when the school has undergone a great deal of change. We went from the Tomahawks to the Titans, and that seems like a long time ago but it wasn’t…In three years we’ve seen a great deal of change, and I’m hoping next year we can have another year where it’s stable and kids are having an enjoyable high school experience.”