Hello Armadillo supporters. By the time you read this article, we will have started school and gotten back to the swing of things at good ole SSHS.

We have some new things going on around here for the 2011-2012 school year. We are starting the first ever Academic Booster Club for SSHS. This organization will be functioning to help advance the cause of "Academics being our number one focus" at SSHS. Having been an old head football coach and AD, I know how important Extracurricular Activities are. I understand what kind of impact that teams, clubs and all other organizations have on students lives. Many times, it may just be the one extracurricular activity that keeps our student returning to school everyday. That being said, if we cannot get the needed knowledge and skills to our students in a timely fashion, with some level of relevance, the likely-hood of our students really being successful in the future is not very good. If you have any questions about this new organization, contact SSHS and ask for Mr. Martin, principal.

We also will be adding a new program to the regular curriculum of SSHS. "We know that our students many times will perform better in lots of ways if we can just dangle certain carrots in front of them," said Mr. Martin. We will be instituting the "PRIDE" program this year. It will have components for the students to fulfill that are tied to grades, office referrals, attendance, and financial debts that they incur. For each of the nine weeks, we will be "bumping up the stakes" for that grading period's eligibility. TEA causes our standards to bump up continually. Therefore, we will try to "RAISE the BAR" with our students so that they can get used to higher expectations.

SSHS is still looking for folks that posted some outstanding scores on the ACT or SAT while at SSHS. It does not even need to be in the perfect category. If you know of a past student that did a great job on these college entrance exams, let us know and we will check in the permanent records file and see how thy stack up to everyone else.

We also are trying to start a mentoring program where we get our own SSISD employees and several community members to check through the criminal record checks that TEA mandates, to match up with students to be able to go over topics and issues that are pertinent to today. "I am sure that this will be a huge task for us, but one that will pay back huge dividends once we get all the kinks worked out," says Mr. Martin. If you are interested in being something special in a student's life, please call the high school and ask for Mr. Martin. Our plan is to use mentors about 30 minutes every three weeks or so.