Academic Excellence: Students Honored at Manassas Park Middle School

 Parents, teachers and the community honored hundreds of Manassas Park Middle School students at the Second Quarter Honor Roll Recognition Ceremony Friday. The auditorium was mesmerized by guest speaker Lewis Forrest, the director of the Early Identification Program at George Mason University as he gave the students advice and motivation on staying focused and working towards their goals.

“I am continually impressed with the maturity level these kids show,”  Manassas Park Middle School Principal Eric Neff said. “I'm proud of what they have accomplished.” With the help of their parents, teachers and the community, many of the students celebrated today have overcome many hardships." Almost half of the students are on free or reduced lunch, he explained. Forty-four percent have learned English as a second language—most in the past four years.

But Neff will be the first to admit that sometimes the focus on academic excellence mired with other challenges. “Often times there is so much focus on the Standards of Learning tests (SOLs) at the end of the year, that other goals are overshadowed,” he said. But recognizing the importance of high academic achievement is just as important, he said. So for the past three years the school has regularly held honor roll ceremonies at the end of the first three quarters and a grade level recognition ceremony at the end of the year.

Since the ceremonies started there have been a consistent rise in the number of kids that are honored. On Friday about 226 of the 651 students who attend the school were honored for making a grade point average of 3.5 or above. Of those students honored 30 percent or about 70, have a perfect 4.0 grade point average. The numbers continue to go up. While parents and teachers strive to motivate their students and their efforts are affective, Nuff said the numbers are improving for a second reason: The honorees. “The best ambassadors we have are the students,” he said. They tell their classmates about the ceremony and the awards breakfast and that gives the students something to strive after, he said.

Although they might not have noticed it, everyone who filed into the auditorium passed under a sign which read: “Manassas Park Middle School, building a better world one student at a time.” In many ways, Friday's event was a celebration of this; a time to recognize all the hard work and efforts not just from the students, but from the staff, parents and community at large that helped each of the hundreds of kids make the honor roll.