News Photo by Julie Goldberg The project-based learning classroom at Alpena High School is making progress after carpet squares were added this week. Principal Thomas Berriman said the goal is to have classes take place in the classroom on Aug. 27, the first day of school, even if the classroom isn’t fully ready.

ALPENA — Alpena High School is implementing new building strategies this school year to help make school valuable and safer for all students and staff.

Principal Thomas Berriman said the school will be focusing on three foundational values: respect for self and others, punctuality, and accountability.

The number one thing for referrals last year was students skipping class, Berriman said. Staff will be more strict this year when students are in the hallways after the bell rings.

Attendance was also an issue last year, so the school will have new rules to implement if students are missing school.

“We are going to start tying attendance to parking permits, so if a student has an excessive amount of attendance issues, which is more than eight absences, their parking permit will be suspended until they make them up,” he said.

Berriman said attendance will also be tied to school events. If a student has attendance issues, he or she won’t be eligible to purchase tickets to the events.

If a student misses one or more classes, a robocall will be sent home that night to parents.

“If a child is marked absent in a class, a robocall will go home at night informing the parent that their son or daughter missed a class,” Berriman said.

Hall passes will be implemented more and staff will make sure students always have hall passes. Students will be held accountable for reasons for needing a hall pass during class.

Berriman said he hopes the staff holds each other accountable when it comes to giving students hall passes and enforcing rules in the hallways.

“We all have to hold each other accountable,” he said. “Our staff punctuality is not really an issue, the respect piece is not really an issue, but it’s just enforcing that accountability piece and holding each other accountable because if we want to have this building-wide plan, we need to keep going with it.”

Another focus at the school this year will be school safety. Berriman said the staff needs to know who is in the hallways during class since the building is so big.

To help increase safety, all student parking has moved to the parking lot by Third Avenue. Students used to park in both the parking lot by Third Avenue and the parking lot by Garden Street.

“It’s limiting access points for students and it’s not to inconvenience them, it’s just to limit the ins and outs of the student body,” Berriman said. “We really want everybody to come in off of the Third Avenue side of the building and that’s really the reason why we’re doing that because we want to help the safety component of our building.”

Berriman said the foundational values were formed after surveys were done by staff, students and parents and discussions with stakeholders.

Staff will be informed about the new building strategies next week and students will be informed during class assemblies the first week of school. Berriman said it will be a team effort to implement the new building strategies.

Julie Goldberg can be reached at jgoldberg@thealpenanews.com or 989-358-5688.