Alexis James

Every year, Miami Palmetto Senior High hosts their Junior Parent Night, making it official that each class has become upperclassmen. The event gives the parents of juniors a rundown of the activities and preparations that happen for their junior and senior years. 

This year, the administration made a slight change, as they hosted the Junior Parent Night before the students received any new information. This ensures that the parents are very well aware and ready to prepare their children for junior year. 

“The parents actually get it this time first and then it will go into all the junior classes and give it to them. So the parents will get the information first which is different from seniors. And we will talk about everything juniors need to do in order to be ready for applications and how parents can support them. For example, a Scoir account, Common [Application], what they can do for the GPA, activities that they can do over the summer, etc.,” College Assistance Program Advisor Linda Dwyer said. 

The event is broken down into three parts: 

College preparation: 

The initial part of the presentation consists of Scoir sign-up, SAT/ACT preparation, community service completion, the senior profile and the summer before senior year (internships, work, projects, etc.). 

Graduation requirements: 

This includes a breakdown of the assessments that need to be passed to graduate, including the Algebra I End-of-Course Exam and Florida Standards Assessments as well as the ELA/FAST exams. The academic credits are four English credits, four mathematics credits, three science credits and three social studies credits. One fine arts credit, one personal fitness half credit and one physical education half credit or waiver are also required to graduate. As for electives, at least three years of foreign language credits need to be completed. Lastly, a minimum 2.00 unweighted GPA qualifies for graduation.

All of the credits and completion progress can be located on GradTrack, which is on the Miami-Dade County Public Schools student portal. All graduation requirements are dealt with by counselors, which are Luis Sanchez for last names (Bb-D), Tracy Pezoldt for last names (E-J), Cheryl Concepcion for last names (K-O), Angela King for last names (T-Z, A-Ba) and Lisa Mallard, department chairperson, who serves students with last names P-S. 

Activities and Events: 

This part of the presentation discusses fundraising for senior year through different events such as selling magazines, cakes and a specific fundraiser called Ready-Set-Fund, along with the regular fundraisers at restaurants and merchandise sales.

 Another aspect of the junior class events are the junior class trips, with one of them being the junior Florida college tour, where the juniors tour all the public universities in Florida.As an incentive for fundraising, the juniors also plan for a possible Disney trip at the end of the year. Lastly, the junior ring ceremony happens at the end of the year to celebrate the completion and passing on to the final year of high school.

The purpose of junior parent night is to give a fair preparation to junior parents for what is to come in their child’s junior year. Junior year is a year of preparation for senior year, graduation and more.