It is with pleasure that I introduce to you the Newfield High School Student of the Month for January, Ms. Syreneti DeLaCruz.  Syreneti is currently ranked 17 out of 394. She holds an unweighted GPA of 92.9792 and a weighted GPA of 96.8542.  She has the potential to graduate in June with forty-eight college credits. Including her senior year, she has taken fifteen college and Advanced Placement courses.  Despite this heavy academic workload, Syreneti still finds the time to participate in extracurricular activities and volunteer work.  She’s Vice President of the National Technical Honor Society, Secretary of the Video Club, a member of DECA, a member of the Varsity Softball Team, and Historian of the Robotics Club.  As a part of the Robotics Programming team, Syreneti played a big role in leading the NHS Roverines to first place overall in the NYS VEX Robotics Competition which led to qualifying for the VEX World Competition last year in Kentucky. Outside of school, Syreneti works as a seasonal employee at Modell’s and is a youth leader at St. Francis Cabrini Catholic Church where she’s served the community as an altar server and lector. She’s also led youth group activities such as fundraisers for the church and activities for senior citizens.

I had the pleasure of sitting down with Syreneti for a little while to learn a little about her. The conversation involved congratulations, but not for earning Student of the Month, Syreneti, with her classmate, Danny Iacobacci, entered a Congressional App Challenge in which they had to create an app for her congressional district, specifically Congressman Lee Zeldin’s district, and they won! They created an app for Newfield parents and students to access information from grades to events going on at Newfield and more. Syreneti explained that it was a prototype so there’s still a lot of work to do to make it as efficient and effective as possible.

Syreneti has applied to Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, Stevens Institute of Technology and SUNY Binghamton. She plans to major in Computer Science or Engineering and would like to continue her softball career as well. The goal, inspired by her aunt, who is a diplomat working for the U.S. Consulate, is cyber-security.

Syreneti, your teachers describe you as a motivated student who’s always smiling. Given all you’ve done up to this point, and the direction you’re continuing to go, keep on smiling. I have no doubt you’re destined for great things and can’t wait to see where you go from here! Congratulations!