Behavior slowly improving in the new semester

Ripley High School has been a school of excellence and good behavior for many years. We had a small number of school fights, fewer people in I.S.S, less of “Schedule B”, and many more students were passing their classes. What changed, and why are we noticing things are no longer the same?

        

Newspaper staff, upper classmen, and many students as a whole believed it was due to freshman behavior. We have had five fights just this school year, and we usually do not have that many until the end of the school year. We have had one incident of harassment, bullying, or intimidation. Also, we have had six threats of injuries, which is double what we normally have. Not all of these problems were due to freshman, but the majority of students got in the fights are freshmen. In past years, we have had trouble with classes not picking up their trash, cleaning up after themselves, but it got way worse when this school year started. What class is newest to Ripley High School? The class of 2022 has had worse behavior than older students have experienced their whole four years of high school. Due to this behavior, everyone was being punished. The whole student body lost privileges like sitting in the gym at lunch and getting out of boost. The school was put on Schedule B for many days. The seniors’ last year of school has been not something to celebrate.

This semester things have already taken a drastic change for the better, and we have had no more fights so far. The student body has started working together and is discovering how good behavior affects us.

To be fair in the future, the school can have the students who cause discipline issues work off their punishment by cleaning up after lunch, doing extra class work, making them do school work they haven’t. I.S.S. or suspension can cause other problems. If they miss school they are just going to be farther behind. Students that cause these issues probably need an adult to talk to, someone to vent to, and someone to really stress that behavior not being acceptable.

When students say that they go to Ripley High, we do not want others thinking “oh that’s that school that had four fights in two weeks”. This semester’s behavior is leaving a much better mark on our school. Bad behavior was not only stressing students, but also teachers, counselors, parents, and definitely the principals. The lack of this concern was causing everyone else to suffer, and stress does not mix well with school. As a whole, the freshman class needs to keep working on thinking before they act. So far, students have been behaving better as a whole.  Ripley High School should be the greatest it can be, but actions speak louder than words and hopefully a change can keep being made.