By Aidan Mortensen | KOAL News

With the 24-25 school year coming to a close, administrators across the Carbon School District are using data to help guide their plans for next year. At Helper Middle School, this is no different. Principal Nikki Vasquez joined the KOAL newsroom to reflect on the year and spotlight what some HMS alumni are up to.

With archery rapidly taking over the Castle Country as many students’ sport of choice, Helper earned some recognition for their performance at the NASP 3D state competition. “They qualified for the NASP 3d Nationals tournament in Myrtle Beach, South Carolina,” said Vasquez. “The team had to score 1425 points, and they squeaked by and scored 1482 points, so we qualify, but we don’t know if we’re gonna get to go yet. They fill in a thousand flights, and we get there if they make it to our school. But if not, we’ll keep going.”

Growth has not just been seen in the archery program but in the middle school’s academics as well. “We started with math facts as we looked at our data for our students. We were only, I think, 30% proficient in math facts, About 37% in multiplication and 48% in division,” explained the Principal. “And so the last time we looked at our data, we were 70.16% percent proficient in the four basic math facts. And so our goal is 95%, and we’re not stopping. We’re gonna keep pushing on to the end of the year and see if we can get some more kids graduated.”

Looking at the data-driven rationale behind this push, Vazquez stated,” It’s all obviously for the kids because when they feel confident in their math facts, and they’re not using that brainpower to think through those things, it frees up their capacity to hopefully get some other things going. That’s what our hope is, and ideally, this will also correlate to our end-of-year RISE test.

Continuing on the academics, Helper Middle School has produced several current and upcoming Sterling Scholars for Carbon High School. “We are so proud of our sterling scholars. So the 2026 Carbon High School Sterling Scholars were announced, and Rachel Blackburn, Josie Jesperson, Miley Hansen, Sofiya Christensen, and Avy Atwood are all Helper alums, and we are so excited and so proud of all of them and their accomplishments.”

She continued,” In the 2025 class, we have Cora Stockdale, who was a finalist; Bradley Sweeney, who was a runner-up; and Hunter Pero, who was a winner in his category. And so again, they’re all helper alums, and we’re just super proud of all of them.”

Looking ahead to the summer, Vasquez gave a peak behind the curtain to see what teachers and administrators will work on over the summer months. “We definitely will start looking at our end-of-year scores and start making some plans for interventions and setting some goals for next year. We will make them focus on math and language arts – reading comprehension specifically.” She added,” There’s a ton of preparation that’s done in the summer that just people don’t see. We will have a new math curriculum for our sixth grade, so our sixth grade teachers will spend a lot of time over the summer digesting that and getting prepared for that.”

In closing, Vasquez shared,” If you’re thinking of a different fit for your child, we have about 35 kids from out of the area. We have enough students that we actually run a courtesy bus from Price, and so if you’re ever thinking about it, give us a look because we’re a lot of fun.”

To keep up with what’s happening at Helper Middle School, visit the school’s website or follow them on Facebook.