Honor Roll Assembly Rolls Back
In previous years Mount Vernon has held its ceremony in the morning with breakfast food like muffins and doughnuts and parents were invited to join their children in the celebration of their academic achievement...However, this year was the first annual Honor Roll Pep Rally with slight changes...

MV Teacher Gets Certified
On November 4th, minutes before 9:00am, teachers all over Mount Vernon feverishly pressed the refresh button on their computers so they could find out if they would be on the National Board for Professional Teaching Standards. When the clock struck nine, seven lucky teachers accomplished just that...

Under King, Spirit Surges
Students at Mount Vernon love to show support for their school and it is always very evident  at pep rallies and spirit weeks, and has improved immensely over the past few years according to Ms. King and SGA sponsors Mr. Peppel and Ms. McManus...

Box Top Bonanza
In late November, the SGA started the annual box top drive for all the grade levels at MVHS.  According to SGA President, Stefanie Bannon, "We've been doing this for a couple of years now." The box tops are collected by individual students and submitted to their sub-schools.  The goal is to earn spirit points for their class...

Lady Majors Serve Up A Winning Night
The jingling of bells and echoes of jolly laughter were not the only sounds coursing through Mount Vernon's halls this past Saturday, December 13th. On the contrary, the slight noise of stirring pots, scraping pans, and rebounding basketballs reverberated from the cafeteria. The Lady Majors basketball teams were preparing for yet another round of their heavy-hitter fundraiser...

Perfume Smells Like Trouble
From the fiery fever created by Ray Bradbury's Fahrenheit 451, to the stir of outrage at J.D. Salinger's Catcher in the Rye, scores of controversial books have been yanked from the hands of curious teens and emptied from lofty school library shelves for many years...

Tier Three Threatens Mount VernonIn September, the county released three possible levels of budget cuts called tiers, all which cut different programs. Tier one has the least damaging cuts, while tier three makes the deepest cuts and eliminates the most money from the budget...

Pelkey Fundraiser
From January 26-27, any and all juniors or seniors with 15 bucks to spare are invited to an all-night fundraiser.  The activity?  Video Games.  A lot of ‘em.  That's right, from 9 am to 9 am, students will be playing video games to raise money for Child's Play, a charitable organization...

Pancakes with Santa
The whole idea of the Pancakes with Santa breakfast is to raise money for the senior trip and banquet.  However for most of the seniors,  it wasn't just about being able to get money.  They actually have fun interacting with these kids and making pancakes; and so did the parent volunteers who have helped out over the years...

SAT vs. ACT: The Decision
One of the biggest factors on whether a student in high school can advance to collegiate level schooling is the student's test scores. Whether the student takes the SAT or the ACT, these tests could ultimately be the deciding factor on where they go to college...

The welcoming committee for the all-A honor roll students.

As most students at Mount Vernon know, Fairfax County is deep in debt, which inevitably means that schools like ours have had to cut back. One of the multiple changes that the school has had to make in order to deal with these issues is a change to the Honor Roll Assembly. In previous years Mount Vernon has held its ceremony in the morning with breakfast food like muffins and doughnuts and parents were invited to join their children in the celebration of their academic achievement. The students and parents would sit in the field house and listen to the guest speakers.

However, this year was the first annual Honor Roll Pep Rally with slight changes. Instead of just the honorees, the whole school attends including parents. The honor roll students come in like the athletes involved in MVHS sports do by grade point average. As always, the straight A students are honored individually, then each student goes to sit in the area with their class and parents. The students play Academic games and everyone gets involved as they cheer for their class, just as they would in a sports pep rally.

However, despite the fact that there have been few changes, there are mixed opinions about having a pep rally instead of the assembly. Some students like Tori Jourdan, stated that "pep rally's are more fun and it is better that everyone is included." Chelsea Superlas and Inno Espiritu agreed with Tori and liked the fact the whole school was involved this time.

Then there were other students like Kelly Cruz who stated that she preferred the assembly over the pep rally because she thinks that there are already too many pep rallies. Multiple students were in agreement with Scott Klein when he stated that "the assembly is better because of the food." When asked about their opinion on the matter, almost every single student who preferred the Assembly said that they wanted to be able to get food.

Being able to have breakfast at school at the assembly seems to play a key role in students' opinions about the change. Some even went as far as saying they would choose the pep rally over the assembly if there was food involved. Who knows, if the students are adamant about getting food, there could be the possibility of a fundraiser to change this if enough people would be willing to help and it is approved by the administrators. 

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As January 8th draws closer and closer, the impending threat of budget cuts continues to worry the students and faculty of Fairfax County Public Schools. "Every time I go to a meeting it just gets worse and worse," said Mrs. King.

In September, the county released three possible levels of budget cuts called tiers, all which cut different programs. Tier one has the least damaging cuts, while tier three makes the deepest cuts and eliminates the most money from the budget.

According to Mrs. King, the impression after the latest budget meeting is that  programs in tier three are likely to be cut. Tier three requires $219 million worth of cuts and takes out 1,500 positions. Academy buses that have fewer than five riders will be discontinued, salary step increments will have a six month delay, and class size will increase by 2.5 students.

Superintendent Jack Dale believes that, "If we must take the cuts outlined in tier three, it will take us decades to recover."

Nevertheless, some teachers, like Mr. Mussen, a Spanish teacher at Mount Vernon High School are accepting the fate of the budget.  Mussen said, "If you don’t have the money what can you do? You have to cut something..."

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