By Brad Devereaux
Three Big Horn County schools were honored at a ceremony Wednesday, May 6 at the Lovell Community Center for being listed among America’s Best High Schools in the Dec. 15-22, 2008, edition of U.S. News and World Report.
A roomful of students, school employees and community members were in attendance for the ceremony, which included speeches by Gov. Dave Freudenthal, Rep. Elaine Harvey and Sen. Ray Peterson.
Lovell High School, Greybull High School and Burlington High School each earned a bronze award and were listed with America’s Best High Schools in U.S. News and World Report.
“This award belongs to you,” Harvey said to the students in the room. “It belongs to your administration, but mostly it belongs to you because none of them were sitting with the pencils taking the tests.”
Harvey talked about the state legislature’s role in funding education and said it was money well spent. She said when examining if state money is being spent in the right areas, she would like to see decisions left with administration and school boards. She said of the seven schools awarded the bronze award in Wyoming, three were in Big Horn County.
“I find that phenomenal, but not too surprising, because I’ve met a lot of you and I believe you are the best and the brightest,” she said.
Senator Peterson said the award is “something to be proud of” and agreed with Harvey that the legislature takes education very seriously. He urged students to take advantage of the Hathaway scholarship and said “there is no excuse for not getting a college degree anymore.”
Gov. Freudenthal spoke next.
“It is interesting that you end up with three (awards) in one county. I think it speaks highly of the students and also the communities that have been responsible for raising them over the years,” Freudenthal said.
The governor talked about being prepared for college and shared his own experiences after graduating from Thermopolis High School and attending Amherst College in Massachusetts on a scholarship.
“There was a period in my senior year after admission when, frankly, I was a little afraid to go,” Freudenthal said. “There’s a part of you that says, ‘I don’t think I’m ready for this.’ It was a long way from home, an entirely different environment and a whole set of people, none of whom I knew.”
He said all of those factors combined gave him some trouble at first, but it wasn’t because he couldn’t do the work.
“The public education system in Wyoming qualifies you to go any place in Wyoming or out of Wyoming and compete,” he said. “Don’t have any doubt that you lack the capacity to compete or that you haven’t been given the opportunity or the tools you need in the Wyoming public school system.”
After a fairly rough start, Freudenthal graduated with honors and decided to come home, he said.
He said students who choose to go to trade school or take another path after high school will also be prepared.
“You can do anything you want with your life,” he said. “There are lots of things that you can find in life that you want to do. Just pick one that you’re passionate about and do it to the best of your ability. (People are) happiest when they are doing something they are passionate about.”
Freudenthal presented the award to each school’s principal and student council president. Representatives from each school presented Freudenthal with gifts in return: a Burlington High School hat, a Lovell High School sweatshirt and a Greybull High School metal bison made by the school’s welding class. LHS Principal Scott O’Tremba, board member Bruce Jolley and student council president Don Mayes represented school no. 2 and Superintendent of Schools Dan Coe was the MC.   

America’s Best Schools award
The methodology to award the best schools across the nation was developed by School Evaluation Services, a K-12 education data research business run by Standard & Poor's. It is based on the key principles that a great high school must serve all its students well, not just those who are bound for college, and that it must be able to produce measurable academic outcomes to show that the school is successfully educating its student body across a range of performance indicators.
Schools that made it through the first two steps became eligible to be judged nationally on the final step, college-readiness performance, using Advanced Placement (AP) and/or International Baccalaureate test data as the benchmarks for success.
The top 100 high schools nationwide were ranked by college readiness scores and awarded gold medals; the next 504 top-performing high schools nationwide based on their college readiness index scores earned silver medals.
An additional 1,321 high schools in 48 states including the three Big Horn County schools that passed the first two steps were awarded bronze medals.
21,069 public high schools (the total number of public high schools from each state that had grade-12 enrollment and sufficient data) in 48 states were analyzed using data from the 2006-07 school year.
The U.S. News list of America’s Best High Schools was first published in 2007. Out of 87 high schools in Wyoming, 14 were eligible to be evaluated and seven received a bronze award in 2008. To view a complete list, visit www.usnews.com/highschools.