Hancock Education Makes the Honor Roll
- by Lisa Monti and Christiana Richardson
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Like the proud parents of an honor student on graduation day, supporters of quality education in Hancock County have a lot to feel good about. Our public and private school students, teachers and administrators are high achievers in not only academics but the arts and athletics as well.
Despite being underfunded by the state in recent years, local educators have worked wonders with what they had (and just imagine what they could have done with their fair shake of funding from the state!). Take a look at these well rounded accomplishments: |
Talk of the Town
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Bay -Waveland School District
- Bay High School, which ranked 13th out of 249 high schools in Mississippi for statewide testing scores, has the highest graduation rate on the Mississippi Coast and the third highest rate in the state. And for the last three years, it's also had the lowest drop-out rates in the three coastal counties.
- The school won the Bronze Award among Best High Schools in America for four years, according to US News & World Report. The 2014 graduation class of 135 were awarded $5.5 million in scholarships. In 2015, 114 graduates pulled in an astonishing $8,374,566 in scholarship offers, setting a new record at the school and topping last year's record by nearly $3 million.
- Forty-five percent of students go on the attend two-year community college and 35 percent attend four-year universities.
- Scholarship carries over into athletics at Bay High, where all varsity team members have a 3.0 or higher grade point average. Recent honors include award winning efforts by the dance team, basketball and soccer teams, cheerleading squad and tennis team which keep crowding the school’s trophy cases.
Hancock School District
- The Hancock County School District’s testing scores ranked second out of 249 high schools and the high school was a top performer for three years in a row.
- Hancock’s graduation rate was in the top 5 for the Coast and the top 15 percent of all districts in the state. The 2015 graduates earned $6.1 million in scholarships. Among 2015 graduates, 48 received highest honors for 4.0 and greater grades; 36 students earned honors for 3.5-3.99 averages.
- More than half of the county’s high school grades enrolled in two-year community college and 36 percent opted for four-year universities.
- Outside the classroom, Hancock High students earned honors for band, dance, art, basketball, Junior ROTC, football, volleyball, fast pitch softball, bowling, golf, track, tennis, cross country and swimming.
St. Stanislaus and Our Lady Academy
- Accolades go to the county’s private schools as well. At the all-boys St. Stanislaus, approximately 90 percent of 2015 senior class earned college scholarships totaling more than $10.5 million. SSC seniors were accepted into 84 colleges and universities.
- Our Lady Academy is a parochial school, the only all-girls Catholic high school in the state. The class of 2015 had an average 25.7 ACT scores - higher than state and national averages. OLA’s 34 graduates in the class of 2015 earned more than $2,685,000 in scholarships, averaging $79,000 per graduate.
Take a look at this amazing documentary created by students from Bay-Waveland Middle School, Bay Saint Louis! This documentary was created for the 2015 Literacy Forum held at their school. The focus of this forum was the Civil War.
