Admin Corner: End of the Year Insights

Photo from Hamilton School District.

Kennedy Ellis

With the school year coming to an end there are many things we can reflect on, not only as a student body, but staff as well. The 2024-2025 year had numerous changes with the start of a new administrative team in the early fall of ’24. Throughout the course of the year we have been able to hear from the administration and their opinions of these changes directly through Admin Corner. With the year coming to a close, I was able to meet with Hamilton Principal Mr. Bauer one final time to recap the year and how all of the changes implemented have directly affected the student body at Hamilton. 

When the year first started, many voiced their concern on some of these policy changes taking effect. When the first Admin Corner was published, the main concern on everyone's mind was the new phone policy and what it would be like for the students at Hamilton. But as the year progressed, the concern turned into acceptance which led to numerous positive changes at Hamilton. 

Bauer stated, “We have started to gain the trust of some of the students because we do want the best for them.”

Through the year, Bauer has noticed how keeping phones away has been able to create a better environment and closer to the goals he envisions Hamilton to have. Besides the growth with the cell phone policy implementation, the staff has also seen continuous growth in the academic progress of students.

Bauer states, “Hamilton has been on a trend of just continuing to improve in that area and based on the early returns of some of our standardized test scores, we are seeing a lot of positive growth.”

Continuing on positive things Bauer has seen growth on in this past year at Hamilton, he stated how he was very impressed with the involvement in sports and clubs at Hamilton. He is excited to see how the end of spring will go for clubs and sports. The goals that were set and the expectations at the beginning of the year are continuing to be met not only in academics, but the involvement of the student body. 

Though many goals have been accomplished, there is always growth that can be had. When Bauer was asked what things can continue to be improved upon to bring Hamilton to its highest potential, he stated how one of admin’s newest concerns that they would like to focus on is the traffic in the parking lot. 

Bauer states, “We don't have a ton of accidents but you know, even one or two is too many.”

Finally, Mr. Bauer’s other main concern is keeping the safety standards up at Hamilton. He states, “We’re looking at even just the flow of traffic out there…and then inside as well when we do our drills, really looking at opportunities for tightening up things so that we don't have a real safety concern at any point.”

To conclude, this year has been an incredibly successful year for Hamilton in not only academics but community. Bauer’s final statement as the year comes to an end is, “Talk to us about something that is a concern or something you want to start or something you want to make better. We're going to do our best to make time for you and work with you, even if it's not the exact vision that you might have had, to find a way to move it forward. That’s something that not everybody sees, but I think the word has kind of spread that we actually want to help, and that's been a nice thing. That's what we've said from day one, but getting people to actually believe that took some time.”