The 2024-2025 school year officially began on Monday, August 26, 2024!
All of Community High School (CHS) gathered in St. Andrews Church, right across from CHS, to commence the beginning of the school year with the opening day ceremony.
“It’s really fun to see all the new people,” Brook Fagan said. “You get to see people you recognize and people you know, kind of like seeing them grow up and become like students at Community.”
Students sit in their designated forums and hear scattered sounds of people fleeing to their seats. The opening ceremony serves as a space to invite everyone into the atmosphere of CHS.
In the previous 2023-2024 school year, CHS elected our Forum Council President and Vice President for the following year. The then -elected presidents run the forum council and get to begin the opening day ceremony. As CHS students were seated, Jacqueline Boynton and Clara Freeth, the Forum Council Presidents, and Lucia Page Sander, the Forum Council Vice President, kicked off the opening day ceremony by introducing themselves.
Forum Council Presidents then announced each grade, prompting each grade to yell enthusiastically, displaying their school spirit.
“The juniors definitely shouted the loudest,” CHS junior Vivienne Simmons said. “I don’t care what anybody else says.”
After introductions, CHS senior Claire Lewis took to the stage to read aloud a poem. When finished, her exit was accompanied by applause, and the Forum Council Presidents began announcing the different staff departments of CHS. Each staff member danced and pranced down the aisle to music alongside their colleagues.
After all the staff members came in, Dean Marci began to welcome all the new and returning faces, establishing CHS’s norms for the school year.
CHS senior Grieta Ham read another poetry reading for the school. Ham’s poem touched on mental health and taking care of oneself, leading Boynton to explain how CHS will be implementing TRAILS (a mental health curriculum) in forums in order to put “an emphasis on mental and emotional health”.
Lastly, CHS club leaders introduced themselves: Film Club, CET, Forum Council, Dance Body, Mock Trial, Food Club and Ecology Club, to name a few.
Ace Ennis, a CHS freshman reflected on the overall experience of the opening ceremony.
“[It was] really good,” Ennis said. “A little confusing, but pretty easy to navigate for the most part; solid work, but a very welcoming school.”
CHS sophomore Caitlin Dick-Ruiz compared this opening day experience to her freshman year one last year and understood Ennis’s experience.
“Well, I felt a lot more relaxed than last year,” Dick-Ruiz said. “I mean, last year I wasn’t really stressed per se, but it was a new school and a new environment, so it was weird being there. But this year, I was like, “Oh yeah, this is familiar”.”
Once clubs were done introducing themselves, the 2024-2025 CHS opening ceremony was over, and students were dismissed. They shuffled out of St. Andrews in long lines, returning to their forums to begin their first day of the 2024-25 school year.
