Scholarship applications fill many seniors’ plates, and trying to hunt scholarships down is time consuming. Seniors spend most of their time preparing for graduation and the stress of finding scholarships is another item on their list of things to worry about.

AVID, a college readiness program, welcomes a scholarship that will be offered to seniors starting this 2015-2016 school year. The scholarship, offers a sum of money to one senior who has given all their effort to working their hardest. This is the first year anything like this has been offered to seniors at DHS.

“This scholarship is being offered to qualifying seniors who are well-rounded, but not necessarily the person with the highest GPA,” English and AVID Teacher, Lauren Smith said. “It’s for the student who has worked the hardest in the school and pushed themselves to do the best they can.”

Faculty and students can participate by donating money on Thursday when the AVID classes go around asking for donations. The program hopes to see this scholarship grow within the next four years for future seniors.

“The hope is that by the time the current freshmen are seniors, the scholarship will have grown quite a bit,” Smith said.

AVID is not only welcoming the scholarship, but also RAK, which stands for Random Acts of Kindness. This is where everyone around school can make a nice comment about a student or staff member that will be handed out to them anonymously.

“Anyone is able to participate in RAK. There are boxes located around the school with slips near them on a desk,” Smith said.

After a comment has been placed in one of the boxes, AVID will be handing out the anonymous comments to the students and staff and recording their reactions to the thoughtful comment.

“This promotes excellence as well as makes it known to the campus that we are supportive of everyone at this school and want everyone to achieve greatly,” Smith said. AVID continues to make strides changing our campus one day at a time, creating an even better place to learn, and a place where everyone can feel welcomed. “I look forward to seeing our AVID program introduce new ideas and opportunities for the students at our school,” Smith said.