This year Mill Creek High School celebrates its 20th anniversary.
Jason Lane has been a principal for 11 years of the 20 years and since then he has seen various changes in and outside of the Mill Creek community. He goes on to describe, “I think in the course of 12 years, we’ve lost about 30 trailers. When I got here we had 52 or 53 trailers at our high point as far as student population, two different times during my tenure here, we hit a little bit over 4,000 students. So it was 4,000 students and they redistricted about 600 kids over to Mountain View. Then we grew back to 4,000 again, and then they built Seckinger High School, which opened two years ago. And that took about 1,300 of our kids. So on the physical side, we’ve seen those changes from student populations, the loss of trailers, and the building of new schools.”
Right now there are about 2,750 kids based at MC. Regarding the course of staff members over the years, obviously a lot of people have come and gone. However, there are still about 25 staff members, that includes teachers and custodians, clerical, existing since the beginning, all 20 years.
Lane states, “We have two other ones who were here at the very beginning but left for one or more years, but they’re back. In which I think is kind of cool to think that they feel it’s a good enough place to work and be they’ve chosen to stay here for all 20 years.”
Education wise, Lane has insured Mill Creek students have a whole new system on learning in new and innovating ways. Taken on courses like Steam and stem. Making the learning more real world applicable.
That push will continue because that’s what you as students need is to understand why you’re learning the material, and I think we need to continue working on that, by making learning relevant,”said Lane.
He adds, “We’ve done a lot of things in the past 11 years, from just trying to increase the rigor in the classrooms to encouraging our teachers to try different things. Whether it’s project based learning, we developed the EPIC program, which is centered around, hands on learning. And that push will continue because that’s what you as students need is to understand why you’re learning the material, and I think we need to continue working on that, by making learning relevant.”
The class of 2024 will be the 20th graduation class of Mill Creek and as of right now there are no set celebration plans for this occasion but details are soon to come. The senior class is still a little bit larger than the freshman class. As of right now the graduating class is around 750, because upper-class men got to choose whether they stayed or went.
In regards to the celebratory plans for the class of 2024, Lane noted, “We’re looking at trying some things that maybe we can bring back for the senior class that we haven’t done in quite a while. Talking with a Senior representative about little things like that.”
In Lane’s opinion one of the biggest challenges Mill Creek has gone through would be the division of the school after the opening of Seckinger High School. Lane expressed, ” I know our community has been through that before because of the Mountain View split off from us. I wasn’t here for that. I know. It caused a lot of fear in our staff of who was gonna get to stay and who was who was gonna have to leave. I know from the student side. I’ve met with hundreds of kids and almost 50 phone calls from parents, am I gonna be able to stay here? Will my kid not have a ride? So I know from my end, I think that’s probably the biggest thing that I dealt with that affected everyone was the splitting off of secondary high schools that took about a third of our students out of the school.”
Before two different middle schools would feed into MC and then when eighth grade moved up to high school and they would be meeting new people. Now students moving up are moving to high school with the same people from middle school.
“I don’t personally root for Sekinger High School but those students over there, most of them were Mill Creek students. I still take pride in their graduation rate last year. They opened up their school with a 90% or 91% graduation rate. But those were our kids,”vocalized Lane.
Lane is close to retirement and wants to achieve a few thing before he does. This includes, “So I would say we definitely want to continue that work and within that work, we’re talking about not only making that you’re learning and the things you’re doing in classrooms more relevant, but we also want to continue pushing the development of critical thinking skills of interdisciplinary connections and that’s where you see like what you’re learning in math. Now I understand this and over here makes more sense upon this connection.”
Some new things going in around the school that will be a surprise all in itself. Such as the digital marque will be located under the principal photos int the front entrance, this will hopefully be arriving by the end of the year. Mill Creek and Osborne will eventually be losing its monument it will be replaced by a new one located at the top of the gravel parking lot. It is permitted for both Schools. Lane mentioned a student experience piece that will be following with the other slow changes.
Lane adds, “We are working on creating some spaces in our media center, sort of a redesign . Also trying to make it kind of a more of a college feel. We’re developing some study rooms in the media center by putting in some windows and some doors to where you can go in there and reserve a room that might seat six or eight people. And you and your friends can study in a quiet place during lunchtime.”
Lane is doing so by taking an existing Office, and re-using it for other needs that will benefit the student population. In addition, there will soon be a place for the Sema initiative with 3d printers and different things that students have access to. The updates will include the school store as well. You may have seen the 11th and 12th grade clerks and principal relocate to a new office not too far away that used to be a empty computer lab.
The front office will have the biggest and most impactive changes. The new second set of doors will always be locked, as well as the front office. The space right before the front office will be where the existing table will be, for parents and guardian who may need to drop off student belongings at. Where the existing drop off table is will be a new set of doors where students and staff make entry in and out to access the front office.
Lane is a for all types of principle fighting to make sure students want to come back, knowing students don’t get the choice to go to school or not, and working to make learning more connectable and relevant.
