Temperatures in the Verde Valley remain at summer highs, but for students at Mingus Union High School, summer vacation is over. Students in all four grades came back to school on Thursday, Aug. 2. Freshmen had their first day on Wednesday, Aug. 1.
“I know for sure it’ll be different,” Malia Hines, a junior at Mingus, said of the coming school year. Hines is looking forward to being the president of the auto club in the coming year, and hopes to get good grades in order to graduate with qualifications to go into auto repair.
Members of the school board touted programs like the auto club as part of what makes Mingus great.
“I’m nothing less than impressed by some of the programmatic changes that the administration put in place,” MUHS District Governing Board member Steve Gesell said. “99 percent of these programs were not in place when I was in high school.”
The biggest programmatic change coming to Mingus in the coming year is the introduction of the “power hour,” a longer lunch break that will give students more freedom, and will allow students who need help on schoolwork more time to meet with teachers outside of the classroom.
“The intention behind Power Hour is to provide a one hour block of time during the school day to allow for additional academic support,” wrote Mingus principal Genie Gee. “If a student is not passing their classes, half of power hour is dedicated to mandatory academic overtime. Students will work with their teachers to get their grades back on track. If a student is passing, they have a variety of options to manage their time during Power Hour and they also have the opportunity to visit teachers and seek out academic assistance if needed.”
“I love this model because it eliminates barriers, makes the most of school hours, and allows time for students to conduct their school business during the school day. Power hour is a reward model and social time tends to be the best currency in high school.”
“We stole this idea from Desert Edge down in Phoenix,” said Mingus Superintendent Dr. Penny Hargrove, joking that the best education ideas are often stolen. “They’ve had some great successes — increased graduation rates, along with some more energized students, kids who are trying and pushing themselves harder than they have in the past.”
The administration is proud that it has managed to add in this extra time for social interaction or academic advisement without having to lengthen the school day from its previous length of 8:20 a.m. to 3:20 p.m. This was accomplished by subtracting five minutes off of class periods, decreasing them from an hour to 55 minutes.
In Hargrove’s view, this change will end up making up for the lost class time with more productive classes.
“If we’re working with our kids who need the extra help outside of the classroom it’s going to expedite what we can teach in the classroom,” said Hargrove.
In addition to the power hour, the other major change at the school will be the addition of lanyards for all students and teachers showing they belong at Mingus. Nine new teachers and one new counselor will be joining the high school staff as well.
Even beyond the changes to lunch period that could affect academic instruction, this could be a contentious year of big changes at Mingus. Currently, the school district is engaged in a lawsuit over the planned vote on school district consolidation with Cottonwood-Oak Creek and Clarkdale-Jerome that could lead to the elimination of MUHSD as a separate district. The school board argued that the consolidation would lead to financial damage to the school district and its programs.
But Mingus’ administrators said they hope to keep students separate from the political issues swirling around the school.
“There is a time and a place for political conversations,” Gee wrote. “We are all invested in the outcome of the issues being addressed, but our students need us focused on their learning needs and that’s exactly what we intend to do.”
For students entering school, focus remains on the usual things that concern high schoolers — academics, friends, sports, and other teenage things. Cassandra, a freshman, expects that this year, her first at the high school, will be different from her time in middle school.
“We’re going to find out who our real friends are,” she said.
