The counseling department is continuing its individual meetings with students, transitioning from the classes of ‘22 and ‘23 toward the Class of ‘24.

Mrs. Gretchen Watko ’00, the director of counseling, said, “The sophomore and junior meetings are a little bit longer than the freshman meetings. It is important to discern what their strengths are, what their interests, and what their goals are, as it can lead into a more enhanced career and college research.”

Watko mentioned that counselors “did a presentation in religion classes for grades 10 and 11 and we assigned some tasks to complete in Naviance, and that’s why those meetings with them are a little bit longer, too, because we are going over those tasks that they’ve completed.” 

Some popular classes Watko noted included the new religion electives, faith in films and world religions; AP Psychology; ceramics; tech theater; and broadcasting .

She mentioned that these meetings are fairly urgent. Watko said, “We have to get through all of our freshman, sophomore and junior meetings by the time we go on spring break because the administration uses all of that data to determine how many sections we need next year for each course. And within PowerSchool, you build the master schedule.”

Along with scheduling for next fall, Watko said, “Summer school registration just opened yesterday. Students can register on the academic page of the website. The interesting part about summer school this year is that some classes are going to be all in person, some are going to be all online, and some are going to be both” 

These class offerings include heath, PE, journalism, speech, debate, composition, economics and government. Along with these, ceramics is available. All of these courses will be either college prep or academic level.

After spring break, Watko said, “We still need to work with the incoming families to get their schedules done. That will happen in April. Hopefully, the end goal is for us to have an idea of what the master schedule would look like by the end of May.”