North Texas H.S. Determined To Enroll Every Senior In College
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TARRANT COUNTY (CBS 11 NEWS) - The senior class at Haltom High School is working on something no other senior class has done before, at this campus.
Principal Clarence Simmons is challenging students to see a higher education... and by February all of the senior class will have applied for college.
Adriene Salgado is the college adviser at Haltom High. "It's just amazing that these students are putting so much initiative in and that they're willing to come to me and ask for help," she said.
"It doesn't matter where you come from. It's where you get," says 17-year-old Luz Delgado.
Sixty-five percent of the students on campus are part of the free lunch program. Many are the children of parents who didn't graduate from high school or attend college.
"I want to be a teacher, a math teacher -- middle school," declared 17-year-old Taylor Morales. She says her greatest motivator in school was her middle school math teacher. "I feel that's a really good age where you can really influence how they think and how they see things and encourage them to work harder in school."
Morales has been accepted at Abilene Christian University and Tarleton State University.
Darian Gamez has been accepted at Texas Tech and the University of North Texas.
Delgado has applied to the University of North Texas, University of Texas at Arlington and she is working on her application to Texas Christian University.
All three high school seniors say their greatest motivation has come from their parents.
Gamez said, "I wanted to do it for them and I wanted to do it for me, also, because it's a big deal."
There are 549 senior students at Haltom High School. School officials say, so far, 75-percent of the class has applied to at least one college and 75 have been accepted.
So far, 375 students have had at least one meeting with the college adviser. Most have been in Salgado's office numerous times, to ask questions, get advice and request help on the process. Nearly all of the students will be looking for financial aid.
Salgado says some of the students will go to a four-year university, some plan to attend a community college and other students will enroll in a trade school.
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