DAPHNE, Ala. — Dr. Meredith Foster, principal of Daphne High School, and Joseph Roh, assistant principal of DHS spoke on Thursday morning about the status of the school during Daphne Mayor Fred Small’s “Coffee with the Mayor” event for May.

Small said he was very proud of the accomplishments of Daphne High School, and the students that attend the school.

“Daphne High School graduated 100 percent of its senior class. No. 1 in the county and No. 1 in probably the bottom half of the state,” Small said.

“It excites me to see the things that are going on in our school system, especially at the high school.”

Foster began her status update with a breakdown of the scholarships received by DHS students and how it compares to other schools in the county.

“We had 264 seniors on roll. We had 264 graduates. When you look at scholarships, we had $2,373,000 in athletic scholarships, which is the total number of offers. Across the board, we know Daphne is known as an athletic powerhouse, but this is proof,” Foster said.

In comparison, Baldwin County High School received $358,000, Fairhope received $393,000, Foley received $487,000, Gulf Shores received $70,000, and Robertsdale received $128,000.

“Daphne was nearly $2 million over each other high school in the county,” Foster said.

Daphne High School also did well when it came to fine arts scholarships.

“Also, it is so much easier for a student to get a fine arts scholarship than it is to get an athletic scholarship. There are so many out there and we see our fine arts department as critical to the overall experience that a high school student should go through. We had almost $100,000 in fine arts scholarships this year at Daphne. We are the highest in fine arts scholarships,” Foster said.

Foster announced that the school would have a new band director for the coming year, but the new director has not been chosen yet.

“We are really excited about that,” she said.

The school will not have a chorus teacher next year, but Foster said the students will still have the opportunity to take chorus classes at Spanish Fort High School. 

Foster said Daphne was only beat out in scholarships in one category.

“For academic scholarships, Fairhope did beat us. We had $6 million in academic scholarships, but they had more,” Foster said.

Foster also discussed the technology in play at Daphne High School already, and plans for further development. She discussed the superintendent’s plan to have a computer in the hands of every student in the county, and she eagerly anticipates Daphne’s turn to get the technology.

“It will give them ownership of their education; it changes the classroom. If every student is coming to school with a laptop in their hands, you can do so much more in your classroom. The way instruction is handled is different (these days),” Foster said.

The school has already implemented technology through a grant.

“In Daphne we have made a leap forward. We wrote a letter to Sen. (Trip) Pittman and he honored our request, which was magnificent. We were the first school in our district to go totally wireless. That was part of the grant he gave us. We used it to buy wireless hubs, and the rest of the money we spent to buy iPads, iMacs and iTouches. We aren’t close to having a computer for every student, but the system is supposed to eventually take care of that. We have made strides towards that, hoping that we will be the next school that gets computers for every student,” Foster said.

Daphne High School was also the first high school in the district to have its graduation broadcast live.

“Ihigh — the service is 100 percent free. The CEO came down and filmed our graduation for us and streamed it live from Ihigh, which was really neat. We had 9,000 hits on our website that night for graduation,” Foster said.

Joseph Roh spoke about the accomplishments of the International Baccalaureate students at Daphne High School, and the large number of students in the upcoming IB classes.

“We are really starting to see our location as a city as a destination, so parents are trying to bring their children here. We are very excited about it.”

Foster and Roh answered questions from the audience. One attendee asked if the school was prepared to handle expected growth in this area.

“DHS is poised to handle the community growth,” Foster said. “We have two empty classrooms right now, and those rooms are being used for floaters. The growth is very predictable. It is pretty stable. We can look at the feeder patterns now and see how many students we will be inheriting each year. Outside of that potential growth from industry, the growth is pretty stable,” Foster said.