Academically, Trinity has a lot to boast about. In the class of 2015 alone, six students were named as national merit scholars, and the class as a whole was offered more than $14 million in college grants and scholarships.
Trinity is well known throughout the community, state and even country for its academics. Many people in the Orlando area have a positive impression of the school due to its good academic reputation.
Trinity is also home to a successful fine arts program and more than 50 athletic teams. However, most people don’t know much about the school beyond its academics.
Perspectives of Trinity from inside and outside of the school are somewhat different. While both groups of people highly value Trinity’s academic merit, those outside of the school don’t seem to realize how kind and hardworking Trinity students and faculty are.
“I don’t know much about Trinity except that it gives you a really good education,” Winter Park sophomore Emma Chouljian said.
Though some in the community know more about the school, they express vague generalizations about things such as the dress code, chapel and the high-performing Forensics team.
Though this list does pertain to Trinity, it could also describe most other college preparatory schools. Many people in the area have heard that Trinity was better academically than other private schools and public school IB programs, but don’t know exactly what sets the school apart apart.
Nina Fine, whose son attends Dommerich Elementary, speculated that the high academic achievement may be because families who send their children to Trinity tend to care a lot about high achievement in school.
“When you have a population of kids coming from high-achieving families, you probably get better academic results,” she said.
The only negative aspect of the school that Fine mentioned was the cost of Trinity’s tuition.
To many, Trinity seems to be a generic college prep school full of wealthy, academically motivated students. None of them mentioned anything about the school’s strength and reputation coming from the faculty and students at the school.
On the other hand, Trinity students and parents say that Trinity’s academics are not, in fact, the school’s greatest strength.
“TPS’s greatest strength is the students. I believe that it is the kind, hardworking and intelligent student body
that gives TPS its wonderful reputation,” said Shana Albright, the mother of three Trinity students.
This sentiment is also reflected by Trinity’s faculty and administration.
“My first impressions [of the school] were that it was a school that was strong on academics, it had a compassionate heart due to its community service priorities, that students here were very motivated and that the teachers worked hard,” Headmaster Craig Maughan said.
Maughan’s opinion of the school remained mostly the same after years of working here.
“I would say that I agree with those perceptions. I found in person how hard kids and teachers worked. I also noticed the school’s focus on the future,” he said.
The school’s administration is happy about Trinity’s great academic reputation, but would also like to be seen as a place that nurtures caring, strong, supportive and community-minded individuals.
“I would like them [prospective families] to understand us as a family, in that we support each other in difficult times, and to see our students as respectful and polite. Though they may have personal aspirations, they are not trying to put down others to get there,” Maughan said.
How can Trinity show that side of itself to the general public, many of whom feel that Trinity is just the opposite? According to Maughan, many people in the greater community don’t understand what an independent school is about. Some have misconceptions about Trinity, such as assuming that all of its families are wealthy simply because Trinity is a private school.
“This is not true at all, and lots of families work very hard to pay the tuition. However, our families live all over the city, and each student can either change that perception by how they act, relate and behave to those in the greater community, or they can enforce those perceptions,” Maughan said.
The way that we as Trinity students conduct ourselves both inside and outside of school directly influences the community’s general view of the school. People base their opinions of a school on the students that they know who are enrolled there. If we want to change the general community’s perception of the school, we can do so by going out into the community and being polite and respectful, getting involved in service projects and showing others the best side of Trinity. At this point, it really is up to us.
