This year, students applied to be Ground Crew leaders, and each leader was assigned four to five freshmen, rather than last year’s system of several leaders to an entire class. Ground Crew leaders help the freshmen assimilate into the high school acting as mentors and friendly faces on campus to their freshmen.

Ground Crew is a group of PHS sophomore, junior and senior leaders who are directly associated with freshmen this year because the groups are more individual rather than an entire class.

Leaders check in with their freshmen every month, and whenever an event occurs that did not happen in middle school, such as rallies.

“I thought [Ground Crew] was really helpful for freshmen because a lot of people might be scared to come because they don’t know anything about high school,” freshman Domenic Arrabit said.

During the first year of Ground Crew, four to five student leaders mentored one English class. Now, each Ground Crew leader is assigned four or five freshmen. Another change in Ground Crew is that before, students involved in student leadership programs such as Peer Mediators and ASB were invited to be leaders, but did not have to apply. The application process chose 51 students out of the about 70 applicants, fewer than last year, to be leaders.

“[The application process] was just answering a few questions about their ideas for the program: what skills they could bring to the program, what it would mean for them and why, for them, is it important,” said Ground Crew advisor counselor Amanda Carlson.

This year, Ground Crew leadership was opened to all non-freshmen in a hope that it would bring in leaders who really wanted to be leaders, Carlson said. These changes were an attempt to build more personal relationships between Ground Crew and the freshmen.

Carlson said the smaller groups improved Ground Crew because the more individual connection allowed the freshmen to feel more comfortable asking questions.

“I say ‘hi’ to all of [my freshmen] in the hallway,” said Ground Crew leader junior Elise Hebert. “I have a group message going. We are probably going to go to Jamba Juice for lunch sometime.”

Youth Educators (YEDs) is similar to Ground Crew, but there are differences. YEDs informs middle schoolers about drugs and alcohol from a student perspective, but Ground Crew’s provides a friend or mentor for freshmen when they are already in high school, Hebert said.

Each eighth grade English class is assigned two to three YEDs that meet with them once a week for seven weeks in February and March, but Ground Crew is non-freshmen at the high school that help freshm