More than 300 Poughkeepsie Middle School students arrived at the school’s cafeteria Friday morning ready to celebrate a great accomplishment.

While they did get that chance, they also were challenged to treat success as a launching point, rather than a finish line.

“You’re no longer just students,” Interim Principal Felicia Schinella told them. “You have graduated to distinguished scholars.”

The middle school staff Friday morning held a breakfast to reward the students who made the Principal’s Honor Roll (an average of 95-100), High Honor Roll (90-94.9), Honor Roll (85-89.9) or Merit Roll (80-84.9) in the second quarter and passed all their classes.

In all, that encompassed 310 students. It’s a number that has nearly doubled from the first quarter.

The students enjoyed a breakfast of eggs, turkey sausage and bacon, hash browns, muffins and bagels, as they listened to music and hit balloons into the air. Each received a certificate recognizing the achievement from Schinella. Before that, though, they listened to several speakers, including members of the National Junior Honor Society, discuss continued and increased excellence in the future.

“We’re using that positive, high-expectation language so they keep aspiring to do better,” Schinella said.

Grade 6 Counselor Rachel Birsner spoke for the school’s guidance team in congratulating the students.

“We’re so proud of you. We hope you are so proud of yourselves,” she said. “We know you’re making a thousand little decisions every day and that got you to this spot.”

Birsner then explained middle school goes by fast and soon they would be high schoolers beginning to build future plans. She introduced Kelly Semexant, the college and workforce readiness counselor based predominantly in the high school, as someone they will want to know when they go across Forbus Street.

“Soon enough you’ll be filling out college applications and, the most important thing, getting college acceptances,” Semexant said, before reading a lengthy list of schools to which this year’s group of graduating Pioneers have been accepted.

For the first quarter, 165 students made the Merit Roll or better and took a congratulatory trip to see “A Christmas Carol” at the Rhinebeck Performing Arts Center. The increase in the high-performing students, Schinella said, is a product of the school administration and faculty’s consistency in their treatment of the kids and messaging.

“Right from September, we really homed in on how academics was going to be a strong focus of this school year, that attendance was very important and we compliment them and praise them regularly,” she said. “We build this excitement up.” The middle school, in fact, has the lowest percentage of students who are chronically absent, missing 10% or more of the school year, at 22.1% compared to the districtwide, 39.5% through February. Schinella said the school’s attendance coordinator “stays on them,” and every student has an adult they can go to for support.

After a show in the first quarter and a breakfast in the second, Assistant Principal of Climate and Culture Danielle Green said the third-quarter honorees will take a trip to Heritage Financial Park in Fishkill on April 30 to watch the Hudson Valley Renegades take on the Jersey Shore BlueClaws on Education Day.

“How many students are going to want to go on that trip?” she rhetorically asked. “There’s a lot of us in here. The whole cafeteria’s filled. I’ll take it.”