This year Raytown High School has a new principal. Throughout the first few weeks of school the whole student body has seen him involved at school, whether it’s at varsity football games or standing in the entrance of the school greeting Raytown’s highschoolers. Daily he reminds us about our phone policy through the intercoms, he also makes it known to everyone that he wants to help make our school a better environment than the day before. 

     Before arriving to RHS, Dr. Andrew McCarthy used to be an Assistant Principal in Columbia, Missouri. He shared how he believed he’d grow as a principal at RHS.

     “I have been challenged in ways that maybe I didn’t think that I would and also in areas that have led me to capitalize on organizationals skills and things like that, that I think I am good at but thinking ahead of and trying to keep track of things but also in areas of instruction, in areas of you know we’ve got a diversity, equity, inclusion and belonging committee, so it’s launching into some that work,” McCarthy said. 

     As for the students , he is dedicated to turning our areas of weakness into places of growth to success.

     "As a building we have four goals that we are working on this year,” McCarthy said. “I try to summarize those four goals into two areas, which is belonging and academics. So how can we focus as students to be better at our academics, getting higher grades, doing better on our end of course tests, our NWEA tests, those types of things and how as teachers we are working on academics. So how do we become better at instructional leaders, engagement increased in the classroom of our students those types of things. I look at belonging cause I look at it as students perspective. I’ve heard from a lot of students, ‘We don’t feel proud of out school.’ ‘We want to have a good culture.’ ‘The spirit wear in the hallway is lacking.’ ‘How do we feel like we belong to something larger than what we are?’ I’ve also heard that from adults. ‘How do we want to come to work everyday, excited to go to work everyday?’ ‘How do I get to know the teacher next to me that’s not in my department?’ ‘How do we build comradery between each other?’ And so those are kind of the two areas that I’ve been working on and we have been working on as an administrative team, teacher leader team to tackle.”

     Dr. McCarthy has been on top of making our school spirit brighter than it has ever been before. Now he is more focused on our staff and their partnership.

     "I have been on several walk throughs through classrooms and I have seen some really great teachers, not to say that doesn’t exist elsewhere but some teachers that even if you ask them to do something or do something more or work something a different way, they are committed to really working hard to make ensure that students success,” McCarthy said. “I have seen some student leaders and people in the building that are really excited to be here and excited that I am here, that are excited about the future of Raytown and sometimes that can be lacking in other schools, that has to be there in order to make progress forward suit.”