Hartselle High School has renewed its Blue Ribbon Lighthouse status for the next five years June 20 by meeting all nine Blue Ribbon Schools of Excellence categories.

The categories include technology integration, changes to the school organization and culture and challenging the standards of the school and curriculum. Blue Ribbon Schools of Excellence, a non-profit organization, encourages active teaching and learning, as well as partnerships with school, family and community partners.

“They survey the parents, students and the staff, so every stakeholder and constituent is involved in the renewal process,” Hartselle City Schools Superintendent Dr. Dee Dee Jones said. “Blue Ribbon gathers those results and gives the school feedback if there is something to work on or address.”

One improvement that is popular with Hartselle students is the integration of Google Chromebooks and Google Classroom. “The kids love (Google Classroom),” HHS Assistant Principal Jerome Ward said. “You don’t have to write down what is for homework in your notebook now. You can look at it on Google Classroom and even submit it electronically.”

Hartselle Principal Jeff Hyche said the biggest changes occurred before the initial Blue Ribbon award. “If you look back ten years ago, it was more of the graduation exam and some of those things that have gone by the wayside,” Hyche said. “Now it’s much more focused on being college and career ready, and that doesn’t necessarily mean just grades on a low bar test like the graduation exam was.”

According to Ward, attaining and renewing Blue Ribbon Lighthouse status was a group effort. “We are family,” Ward said. “We all have to work together. We’ve had good leadership, not just from the top but within our departments as well, working toward our vision and strategic plan.”

What is important about what they have been doing is not the recognition, but the difference a quality education has made in HHS students’ lives. “One of the things the parents praised us for was that their kids were prepared to go to college after leaving Hartselle High School,” Jones said. “They felt like they were given many opportunities — they were more than ready for college.”

“They had labs and other opportunities that they weren’t even offered in their friends’ high schools,” Jones said. “The students were showing their friends from other high schools how to do a biology lab because they had already had experience with that here at the high school.”

“It’s also about looking at the needs of the workforce and the needs of the college students,” Hyche said. “For example, we had students come back and tell us that they did hybrid or blended classrooms in college, so we tried to implement that.”

HHS also changed the function of the library. There are still books, but they also have a student-run Redstone Federal Credit Union branch in the library. There is also a student-run coffee bar that helps pay for the Chromebooks. “It’s more like a student center at a university now,” Hyche said.

“Students are going to the library now,” Jones said. “It’s the hub of the school.”

Other schools are also impressed with what HHS has achieved. “We have visitors from other school districts who come here to see what we’re doing, and I think we have a lot to share with people,” Jones said. “I had somebody tell me that they have taken what we did at our library and implemented it at their school.”