Day 18 of 180. The 2018-19 school year is underway, and presenting important and inevitable firsts of its time: the first year with lanyards, the first year with class teams, the first year with a 1:55 release time, and now the first FOCUS Friday with many more to come. Perry Meridian has already made plenty of changes, and in order to keep up with the exponential growth of the school, so will our student newspaper. The new FOCUS season will be one of development and change.

As we are bound to the past and all its faults, it is our responsibility to keep growing and improving where we see fit. The FOCUS has inserted itself into Perry culture over the years and we plan on keeping it that way.

The publication has gone through a plethora of changes in the past, such as going from black and white to color, from a newsletter to a full paper, and with more, of course, to come this year. But the intention of the publication has always been and remains consistent: to inform.

The pages our readers flip through every issue are a physical representation of the efforts to keep our community bonded and knowledgeable. And, with over 2,400 students in the building, we have our work cut out for us.

We hope to gain your trust in this student-driven publication through the quality of our stories and journalistic integrity. However, we know there is always room for improvement, and we encourage all students to let us know how to better represent our school by emailing us with your concerns, ideas, and opinions at: [email protected]

This year, the FOCUS is a new entity. We are contrived of a new staff, a new adviser, and a new drive to recognize and write objectively on the pressing matters of the school.

The FOCUS staffers will always rely on each other, but more so we rely on the students of Perry Meridian. We thank you, our readers, for not only giving us an audience to boast about in our stories, but for giving us a reason to write. Without students going out and being extraordinary in every sense of the word, we would have no purpose.

Everyone has a story, and we are those who hope to tell them.