Akins High School

Akins High school is a school located in South Austin, Texas. Founded in 2000, it is one of the newest high schools in the Austin Independent School District. Its current attendance exceeds 2500 students, with the majority being Hispanic/Mexicans and African Americans. Akins High School competes on the 5A circuit in all of its UIL competitions.

Although it is the newest high school, it received the 2nd lowest scores in benchmarking and somehow barely meets the standards in TAKS scoring. It was also recently chosen to take the TAKS field test to examine the best tests to use for the 2007 Spring year.

The school recently had a "late start" day to examine it for use in the next year. Akins will also start the use of block scheduling next year, even with criticism and rejection from students and some teachers.

High School Redesign

Akins is in its 2nd year of the program based of "Academies" were students are placed in certain areas that are to their interests. The academies are: ABLE (Academy of Business and Legal Enterprises) AHA (Arts and Humanities Academy) SS (Social Services) and ACES (Agriculture, Computer and Engineering Sciences).

Needless to say, many students were unhappy with the new organization of their schedules, especially students who would be forced to choose majors, and classes within those majors, that restricted them from finding a way out of a class that was not to their liking.

Sports

Akins has yet to have a successful football program, averaging 1-3 wins per season, many of them non-district games, since opening in 2000. A growing soccer program finished their 2006-2007 season 10-10, the first time ever they were able to finish .500% in a season. The girl's basketball team experienced a winning season in 2006-2007 as well, claiming their first ever District Championship. The boys basketball team however consistently has problems earning victories in their season.

Fine arts

Their fine arts program has had some success in recent years, the last one being their school band in 2006-2007, with the direction of Gary Faust they advanced to the UIL State Marching Competition, earning 10th place in Finals, alongside the Bowie Outdoors Performance Ensemble winning 8th, making the Akins High School band big underdogs throughout the whole UIL competition, and the marking the first time two Austin school bands made it to the state competition.

-Theatre- In March 2007 the Akins Journey Theatre competed in the UIL Zone contest, and advanced to District for the first time ever with 5A status. They did not continue from district competition but did take home several awards including Best Actress.

Communications

-Debate- Akins has had one of the most successful Speech and Debate programs in the city, qualifying students to both the National Forensic League and the National Catholic Forensic League Grand National tournaments. Akins has also sent debate competitors to State and Regional Competition consistently for three years.

New Building

In recent days, there has been fences put around and area next to the right corner or "red hall" building and teacher's parking lot. it has been confirmed that there will be a new building in construction for unknown date of completion. It is said that the building will be made for the "New Tech High" section of the school, with its first year in Akins and in Texas. (Soon other schools around Austin will have their own "New Tech High")

Akins Pep Rally

To be fair, this is not actually a pep rally. It's like a new classification of event to be called an Akins Pep Rally. A real pep rally is a school supporting their various teams and showing enthusiasm and pride in their school. The Akins Pep Rally is a couple thousand fools completely ignoring a group of people trying to say as many useless things as they can. Nothing gets accomplished, and usually team morale actually drops after the event.

Not that it matters. Even before the first pep rally, the football team epically fails to win any matches against teams in their division.

The Tree

Also known as the Goth Tree. At some point in the past, various 'emos,' 'goths,' and most of the social rebels essentially took over a small section of the courtyard, dominated by a large, well, tree. They probably thought they were being unique, or making a statement, or something along those lines. Or they just wanted a place to hang without being ostracized. Doesn't matter, no one cares.

This is not to be confused with the 'Mexican' tree, where large numbers of Hispanic students congregate to stare, point, laugh, and otherwise harass everyone under the Tree.

Several times the idea of cutting and/or burning down and removing the tree overnight has been discussed as a prank, but ultimately dismissed. Unfortunate, but no one likes being arrested.