Hempfield Senior High School

I hated every minute I spent at the high school. However, I had many fantastic teachers that prepared me excellently for college life. The curriculum for the college preparatory, honors, and AP courses are fantastic for preparing students (many of my college classes have been easier repeats of courses I took at the high school). I had many teachers that I had a stronger relationship with, and that helped push me to go further, and to push myself personally, as well as academically. I do want to speak about the counselors at this school. In my opinion there are 2, maybe 3 decent guidance councilors. If you are unfortunate to be stuck with one of the counselors that ignore your requests, don’t fulfill their requirements on applications, and don’t provide support for students (like I did), you will spend a lot of time pressuring them to fulfill their responsibilities. They also don’t do anything to help prepare you for college outside of typical Pennsylvania schools. I am an out of state college student in an Air Force ROTC program, and my counselor wanted me to look closer into Millersville, HACC, and event attempted to discourage me from joining the military in any capacity. If your student struggles academically, I don’t recommend participating in the slower passed courses at this high school. If your student shows hard work, and work ethic, and can keep up with the college preparatory classes (or the more advanced courses) I highly recommend this high school. This school has an extremely strong advanced program.

The best thing about Hempfield is that it offers a wide array of courses at different levels so there is something for everyone. Unfortunately, when it comes to caring about the students, it’s slacking. I’ve seen instances of bullies not being taken care of despite the fact that the school has had assemblies dedicated to anti-bullying. Better off students and especially ones who do sports are clearly favored by the staff. And when it comes to serious threats towards the school, they keep information from the students by giving vague announcements so no one can feel safe along with the fact that they won’t even close down for the day if there is a threat that could harm the whole student body.

As a larger school, Hempfield may not have the close-knit community feel that a school half its size (or smaller) may experience BUT it does offer a lot of opportunities to students and the teachers generally work hard to see students succeed. Students can find a club or organization for anything they may be interested in or start one! The school is safe, friendly, and academic based. Hempfield is constantly performing at the top for academics, sports and other activities.

If the school staff & administration would stop drinking the kool aid, this school would thrive. Too many clicks & people worried about being popular. More so than academics. Sports are more important than academics. We moved for these reasons. It is just not what we were looking for. We were there 5 years. LIC is wonderful but could do without the rest. The school clearly values sports over education when my daughter could not take another math because they did not have a teacher yet they paid $1.7 mil for a new football turf. So glad we left. However we went to private college prep education. Much better.