and their families)
By Kyle Roberts
RUSTON, La. — The Lincoln Parish School Board met for its March 2025 gathering to honor Ruston High School’s National Merit Finalists and set a week in April to honor support personnel in the parish among other items.
The meeting was opened up with the RHS National Merit Finalists in Anhaar Wasi, Cedric Serio, Lydia Watts and Carter Tims, who were presented with plaques for there accomplishments.
“We definitely wanted to congratulate our national merit finalists,” Lincoln Parish School Board Superintendent Ricky Durrett said. “Becoming a national merit finalist takes hard work on the part of the student, teachers, schools, and great support from their parents. We appreciate the job everybody does with the students and congratulations on a great honor.”
Lincoln Parish Schools Auxiliary Supervisor Ricky Edmiston the proposed a resolution to designate April 22-25, 2025, as Support Personnel Week. The vote was passed.
“Each year, we recognize the importance of support personnel in our district,” Edmiston said. “This would include school bus operators, food service employees, custodians, secretaries, clerical personnel, teacher aides, bus aides, maintenance technicians, paraprofessionals, and others that are vital to the efficient operation of our school system.”
Durrett, too, agreed that support personnel are essential and deserve to have a week of recognition.
“We always want to say a big thank you to our support personnel,” Durrett said. “These are some of the first people that our kids see every morning coming to school and are the people who do so much behind the scenes to make the day go at our schools so the kids can learn in the classroom.”
The board also approved a policy revision regarding wearable technology (i.e., smart watches) capable of sending or receiving text messages and other notifications during instructional time. Students will not be allowed to wear or utilize the watches during instructional time but can keep them in their backpacks as long as they are turned off.
See below for additional information about the Nation Merit Scholarship Program.
Steps in the 2025 Competition
Over 1.3 million juniors in about 21,000 high schools entered the 2025 National Merit Scholarship Program by taking the 2023 Preliminary SAT/National Merit Scholarship Qualifying Test (PSAT/NMSQT®), which served as an initial screen of program entrants. The nationwide pool of Semifinalists, representing less than one percent of U.S. high school seniors, includes the highest-scoring entrants in each state. The number of Semifinalists in a state is proportional to the state’s percentage of the national total of graduating seniors.
To become a Finalist, the Semifinalist and a high school official must submit a detailed scholarship application, in which they provide information about the Semifinalist’s academic record, participation in school and community activities, demonstrated leadership abilities, employment, and honors and awards received. A Semifinalist must have an outstanding academic record throughout high school, be endorsed and recommended by a high school official, write an essay, and earn SAT® or ACT® scores that confirm the student’s earlier performance on the qualifying test.
From over 16,000 Semifinalists, more than 15,000 are expected to advance to the Finalist level, and in February they will be notified of this designation. All National Merit Scholarship winners will be selected from this group of Finalists. Merit Scholar designees are selected on the basis of their skills, accomplishments, and potential for success in rigorous college studies, without regard to gender, race, ethnic origin, or religious preference.
National Merit Scholarships
Three types of National Merit Scholarships will be offered in the spring of 2025. Every Finalist will compete for one of 2,500 National Merit® $2500 Scholarships that will be awarded on a state-representational basis. About 770 corporate-sponsored Merit Scholarship awards will be provided by approximately 130 corporations and business organizations for Finalists who meet their specified criteria, such as children of the grantor’s employees or residents of communities where sponsor plants or offices are located. In addition, about 150 colleges and universities are expected to finance some 3,600 college-sponsored Merit Scholarship awards for Finalists who will attend the sponsor institution.
National Merit Scholarship winners of 2025 will be announced in four nationwide news releases beginning in April and concluding in July. These scholarship recipients will join more than 382,000 other distinguished young people who have earned the Merit Scholar title.
