Seniors are not taking advantage of opportunities Friday, May 29, 2009 By Solimar Rodriguez/Staff Reporter/column - Advertising It’s time for all of our “Class of 2009” seniors to graduate. Wait a minute let me rephrase that and say “just a few.”     This year approximately 100 seniors won’t graduate due to not passing the Florida Comprehensive Assessment Test (FCAT). It doesn’t seem too bad right? One hundred out of 842 seniors, hmmm….if you look at it in that way, of course not.       But when you calculate that for every eight kids in the class, one is not graduating, the statement does not sound so good. Well that’s the reality ladies and gentlemen and there are no excuse seniors.     We, as seniors, were notified since the beginning of the school about Graduation requirements. The main requirement was passing the FCAT or getting ACT or SAT waiver in which if you get a fifteen on the ACT either on math or reading; or a 350 on the SAT math or 410 on the SAT reading the counselors waive it and the FCAT is overwritten. After that everything thing else follows: credits, GPA (grade point average), attendance, community service hours, and paying off senior debts.      Personally, I was a guilty senior in the beginning of the school year because I didn’t pass my math/reading FCAT by just a couple of points.     Yet, I did everything in my power to get help to pass the FCAT and I was finally successful. I took my SAT and ACT just incase I didn’t pass the FCAT so I could get the waiver, but in March I was told I had passed the FCAT math.     What happened seniors? Did the Senioritis     disease hit you this year? It probably did, I warned you in the first issue to be careful with the senioritis disease.     Opportunities were given from the start to get tutoring classes in FCAT math or reading for free. For me that was a good deal.     Teachers volunteered to tutor students without any cost. In which in most places outside from school they charge to tutor for FCAT.     It was help that we as seniors should have taken advantage of.

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