North Polk was founded in 1956 and had a senior class of 21 students in 1957. Fast forward to 2021 and there were 141 seniors, and through those 64 years of growth remained one constant; the journalism department.

In the 1956-57 school year, North Polk was just recognized as a district, and the journalism department capitalized on this. The yearbook, called “The Archive” for the first year, was made up of 26 students with Catherine Lewis being the advisor.

“We have chosen the name, 1957 Archive, for this yearbook, knowing that it would be a record or history for our first year at North Polk Community High, as the name denotes,” said the yearbook staff for The Archive in the opening message.

The next year the yearbook name was changed to The Comet, and it has stayed that way even now. In the 2005-06 school year, Jessica Trier became the advisor for the Yearbook and shared some of the challenges she faced when joining.

“Learning the technology before and better than the students,” was what she considered to be most challenging during her first year as yearbook advisor. 

The way the yearbook is completed has also changed as it used to be that the yearbook crew had to send in certain pages of the yearbook at different points of the year, so they might have to send in the first six pages of the yearbook on one day, and then send in another six pages a month later.

“Now we can submit them all in one day in the middle of the summer,” explained Trier. 

However, yearbook wasn’t the only journalism elective North Polk offered. There was also a newspaper called The North Star also with Catherine Lewis as advisor. This newspaper had died but then revived in 2019 as The Orbit. 

“Broadcast started as a communications club by Susan Vernon in 2018/19. Broadcast did not become a class until 2021,” added Trier. 

The Broadcast team is currently made up of 7 members and streams most of the home games. The broadcast team is in charge of the Galaxy News, which covers where games will be and other information for the student body to know.

Charlie Rhoads, a senior on broadcast, told the newspaper last year, “Everyone should try broadcasting because it is extremely fun.”