The average school pep rally is filled with the roar of students, the bass of the band and the echo of stomping feet, but for this year’s first pep rally, it was the roar of thunder that filled the campus.
On Sept. 8, the first scheduled pep rally of the year was canceled due to inclement weather. As thunder and lightning approached campus, principal Robert Frasca initially decided to send first-lunch students to their seventh-period six minutes earlier than scheduled, hoping to keep everyone indoors once the storm hit. For the next half-hour, the school entered a code-yellow lockdown in order to keep students and teachers within their designated hallways, extending seventh-period for an extra 30 minutes. In order to put the school back onto a regular block schedule, Frasca released students for second-lunch at 12:02, where he announced that the afternoon pep rally would be canceled.
“At that time, I had to think about a lot of things,” Frasca said. “I’m looking at the radar trying to figure out how long we were going to be stuck before we could go to a second lunch, and then what does that push back?”
Besides the obvious dangers that the weather held, Frasca also worried about the cleanliness of the campus and gym floor, which had been resurfaced the weekend before. This, along with the risk of students commuting through the storm, led Frasca to make his final decision.
“Teenagers…don’t make the best decisions. I noticed like a lot of our kids, when it’s pouring rain and things like that, they think it’s fun to walk through puddles and walk through the middle of the pouring rain—they don’t always understand the impact and the danger of lightning,” Frasca said. “I just don’t want them making a poor choice walking through the old courtyard and then heaven forbid something happens.”
In addition to the physical dangers of the storm, Frasca also feared that holding the pep rally would leave certain class periods at a disadvantage. Due to the long Labor Day weekend, the black-schedule block periods had already lost significant class time, and with the delayed schedule for weather, it was ultimately decided that class time had to come first.
“That was the main reason why I decided to cancel the pep rally, because I just could not put our sixth-period class in that kind of a shortage of instructional time for the week,” Frasca said. “If it had been a normal five-day week, I might have held off on that decision a little bit more.”
Although the pep rally cancellation brought disappointment to many, students now have an extended opportunity to fill out the required parental permission forms. Due to recent state law, all school activities, including those within school hours, must require a parental authorization form. The pep rally form was created and sent out by assistant principal Christy Tybitts-Bryce during the first week of school and was set to be due by 12 pm on Wednesday, Sept. 6, two days before the scheduled pep rally. For students who may have forgotten to have this form signed, the rescheduling of the pep rally was a blessing in disguise.
“I’m kind of relieved the pep rally was rescheduled,” senior Carter Raymond, who did not get his form signed, said. “Now I’ve been given another chance to make the most of my senior year.”
Despite the deadline extension, some students are still unable to get the permission form signed at their parents’ discretion. Students who do not have their form signed, whether it is by choice or accidental, will be sent to the cafeteria during the pep rally where administrators will supervise. In order to see which students have or have not had their form signed, administration will send sixth period teachers a list of which students cannot attend the pep rally, in theory, making it easier to authorize who can enter the gym and who may not. However, due to many students filling out the forms multiple times, administration faced difficulties in organizing the submissions.
“For this pep rally, it was a nightmare—some people filled it out three times, some people filled it out and didn’t realize they filled them out,” Frasca said. “It’s been a huge, huge frustration for us.”
In total, between 1800 to 1900 students filled the permission form out, according to Frasca. Despite 75% of the student body submitting the form, many still felt confused and upset about the process, prompting administration to deal with negative reactions and feedback.
“Friday morning, we had some parents that were very rude—we had one that our secretary had to hang up on because she was cursing [at her,]” Frasca said. “I’ve already had parents complain to the district because they thought they could just catch us doing something wrong because they were just mad at us for other things that have happened. It just puts us in a difficult place—we’re trying to do the right things to make sure we’re in compliance.”
According to Frasca, the pep rally will soon be rescheduled either for the home-game against Winter Park on Sept. 29 or for home game against Harmony on Oct. 6. Students who participate in the pep rally spirit activities look forward to the rescheduling of the rally, hoping no weather or schedule delays will impact the event.
“I can’t wait for it to get rescheduled and as a senior I’m really excited for football season and more pep rallies to come,” senior Jenna Hecker said.
Overall, administration anticipates the pep rally authorization process to have more bumps along the way, but hopes that students who wish to participate will be given the chance to do so.
“I definitely think anytime you add barriers or hoops that people have to jump through that they didn’t before, it is easy to forget to do something that you just meant to do,” Frasca said. “I’d like to believe that most parents would say, ‘Well, that’s not a big deal, it’s just a school pep rally, why am I even doing this to start with?’ but all it takes sometimes is one.”
