The school was of good repute and produced decent graduation rates. What they lacked in intellectual prestige, they made up in after-school programming. They were extremely good at churning out athletes, debate teams, arts teams, and other clubs. They also had a massive public relations effort to connect with the power brokers of the town.
The school wanted more funding to raise it’s educational profile to get access to more grant money, hence making it the go-to school of the future instead of the second choice when all the top tier seats were filled. At the same time, their acceptance rate of lesser fortunate students was a bit lower than the town wanted. Not that they turned away many, they just didn’t have the funding to pick up the desiring students who wanted to escape their districts.
The Competition
There was a huge competition that the school partook in yearly. This was the ambassador program. The top student would get a chance to not only meet the mayor but also influence policy and funding for the school. The selected student had to show the best of the school’s education system and it’s ability to prepare students to face all kinds of professional settings.
Everyone on the school board knew of Zoe well before she arrived to the school. Had it been for her dad, she’d been at the top school of town, however her mom had made the enrollment while her hubby was away on business. Zoe, not too pleased by that, made the best of things and promptly signed up for the ambassador program.
Well before the test was administered, the school had selected her to represent them. The announcement was to be made well after the test so that the appearance of favoritism was negligible. As luck would have it for the school, a new pilot program was announced before the big reveal of the test scores. There was a second program designed to reach out to other school districts, help promote higher standards, create an academic pipeline to move smart under-served children to better programs, and also get funding to raise the standards of the lesser performing schools.
The program would take the top performers from several classes and take them to a special academic farm where the networking between teachers, leaders, students, and parents would create a grassroots push to hold politicians accountable to supporting all schools. They hoped to have a few celebrities bring attention to this program.
The hope was this would bring the smartest and best to the main school so they could now upgrade themselves to the levels of the elites. The public relations side of things promoted this school as the education leader trying to uplift other schools to a higher standard by funneling more money to these programs to lift all students up and higher. By giving the super smart students a leg up, they weren’t being punished for being in a lower performing school yet the other students weren’t at a loss because the school was getting new funding to have better programs that would bring them quickly up to speed.
Zoe shook her head at all the dealing. Even she, as a student, could see right through all the shenanigans that was taking place, however she was not messing with it, as it was affording her the chance to meet the mayor and other power brokers.
There was this one guy however who was starting to be a bit of a problem to her perfect plans. She would have easily aced the top spot if he had not been around. The top score was 150. Nearly every student before she came to the scene only averaged 75. Even in the top elite schools, scores rarely touched let alone topped 100. The last 50 points were the most difficult to get and did not appear on the test. These were awarded as the result of other tests and challenges were met throughout the year. Few knew of these tests and opportunities as they weren’t part of the formal school system.
Zoe had the inside track from years of top performance and was sure to get nearly all the bonus points that would solidly land her score above the 100 mark, the necessary level to clinch the ambassador program seat.
There was this other student who did not have her pedigree who was doing extremely well academically. This guy was a bit of a loner. He was not able to fit into any of the clicks. He was very fast at picking up new information and applying it to any test situation he faced. While not on her level, this guy seemed to gravitate to any competing classmate and soak up strategies and use it to outperform his rivals.
Shallows of the Deep 