From the Leader of the PAC

From Frank

Dramatic Events in the Life
of H-B Woodlawn

News from the Library

APS Expands Language Opportunities for Middle and High School Students

An Evening at H-B With
Chef Nathan Lyon

College Corner for March

H-B Hosts Forum on Arlington
and the Environment

April newsletter deadline

From the Leader of the PAC ...
Reid Goldstein, PAC Chair

Theater Improvements:
Fine Arts Department Chair Jeff Benson, drama teacher Anne Welles, parents and students will be continuing to meet with individual School Board members in March. Their purpose is to inform the Board members of the deteriorated state of the auditorium and Black Box and to urge them to allocate more funding to address theater problems. Following a round of process-related meetings the next step will be to have them tour the facilities for a first-hand look at the conditions.

Budget Advisory Committee member and H-B parent Rick Keller reports on our progress as seen in the Superintendent’s Proposed Budget for School Year 2008-09: “The Superintendent has included $127,000 in his proposed budget for 08-09 for evaluations of theater facilities in the secondary schools ($27k) and repairs ($100k). Kenmore, TJ, and W-L - and probably Yorktown unless there are current problems - are likely out of the picture for these funds since they are either new or are slated to be re-done. We need to support this proposal as cuts to and/or re-distribution of some elements of his budget are very likely. …[W]e still have a chance to get some of this year's money for replacement work. …It is really too early to tell whether this will indeed be possible since neither the available State funding for APS as a whole nor the County transfer for the next budget year are determined, but we should still track what is going on and keep our conversations with board members and staff alive.”

Nighttime Town Meeting: Continuing the practice of the last couple years, Town Meeting will hold a nighttime session at the March PAC meeting – Tuesday, March 11 at 7:30 in the library. Although we are all members of the Woodlawn community and eligible to participate in Town Meeting activities, many parents can’t make Town Meeting’s regular daytime schedule. So, Town Meeting has agreed to hold a meeting in conjunction with our PAC meeting. There will be some brief PAC business followed by Town Meeting activities for the balance of the meeting. Mark your calendars! Our April PAC meeting (Tues, April 8) will pick up the agenda from the February meeting that was cancelled due to weather.

Beach Week and Underage Drinking: Arlington Public School's high school PTAs, continuing the coalition's effort to bring awareness to underage drinking issues, sponsor a session on beach week and teen drinking on March 12, 2008, 7 pm at H-B Woodlawn School, 4100 N. Vacation Lane, Arlington, VA 22207. Beach week is a popular high school graduation celebration that brings groups of teens to beach towns the week after June graduation.

This beach week session, open to all, includes a panel of parents, a student, and experts, a Q&A period, and handouts covering: tips on sending kids to beach week; tips on communicating with kids about not attending beach week; beach week teen drinking research; Arlington County statistics on teen drinking; and legal consequences for violations.

These legal consequences can throw life plans off track.& Police Chief Keith Banks of Rehoboth Beach, Delaware, tells of parents calling him to say scholarships have been revoked due to beach week arrests. At 2007 beach week, a DC area coach was arrested in Dewey Beach, Delaware and charged with 18 counts of endangering the welfare of a child and one count each of maintaining a dwelling for the use of illegal drugs, providing alcohol to an underage person, and disorderly use of a dwelling. Thirty five recent graduates were arrested at the same gathering.

But legal issues aren't the only concerns. "Student beach week attitudes frequently throw caution to the wind. Heavy alcohol consumption can lead to graduates taking more risks physically, socially, and sexually. Alcohol use was implicated in the deaths of the University of South Carolina students, when their beach house caught fire," notes substance abuse educator and Arlington parent Kate McCauley.

Shannon Beam, college student and Miss Virginia contestant who is keenly aware of the hazards of underage drinking, notes, "The majority of my peers too often focus on the warnings against drinking and driving. But risks include unwittingly putting yourself in compromising situations and even the position to be taken advantage of and raped, as in the case of my best friend who had just graduated from high school in 2004." McCauley says parents need to go into beach week conversations with their eyes open: "Teens naturally don't anticipate what can go wrong, and will push back when parents try to set limits. Learn what the risks are, what your options are, and how to talk to your teen about safer choices."

The March 12th session panelists include:
--Arlington's Chief Deputy Commonwealth's Attorney Theo Stamos
--Inova Health Care System physician, researcher on teens and beach week, and parent of a college student Regina M. Milteer, M.D., FAAP
--Rehoboth Beach Police Chief Keith Banks
--Parent and counselor who sent her daughter to beach week and has created a tip sheet for parents, Maureen Simmons
--Arlington parent of three, ages 19-24, who did not send his teens to beach week, John Mahoney:
--Substance Abuse Educator who will cover communicating with teens re beach week: Kate McCauley, MEd, MSW
--Student spokesperson concerning the dangers of underage drinking, Shannon Beam, a contestant for Miss Virginia 2008 and a senior at Shenandoah University. Beam is fervent to get her message out after the beach week rape of a friend and the car-crash death of another that involved underage drinking.

From Frank
Frank Haltiwanger, Principal

The HBW Lottery for 2008: On January 18 applications for rising sixth and ninth grade students were due in to the H-B Woodlawn office. We received 309 rising sixth grade, and 118 rising ninth grade applications, the highest ever for both grades. Each parent who applied was mailed a postcard verifying receipt of their student’s application.

To prepare for the lottery, Administrative Assistant Vanessa Piccorossi prepared two spreadsheets capturing all sixth and ninth grade applicants. In the days before the lottery, Vanessa and I reviewed each application and double-checked that it was correctly accounted for. For the rising sixth grade lottery, Vanessa made index cards numbered 1-309 and put them randomly into a box. In another box she put the 309 sixth grade applications in random order. She did a similar task for the ninth grade applications with 118 numbered index cards and the applications.
The lottery was held on the morning of January 28 at 9:00 in the H-B library by Assistant Superintendents Meg Tuccillo and Linda Erdos, who started with the sixth grade lottery. Ms. Tuccillo blindly picked an application from one box and handed it to Ms. Erdos, who blindly pulled a numbered index card from the other box and stapled the two together. Vanessa, sitting at a computer, received each application with the stapled lottery number and entered this “countywide” number. This proceeded until all 309 numbers and applications were matched.
Vanessa then sorted the spreadsheet by home elementary school. This sort yielded a chronological list from low to high numbers by each neighborhood school. The school board dictates that HBW is to admit 69 sixth graders and that each neighborhood elementary school is to have a proportional share of these 69 slots (see chart below). An allotment of slots for each neighborhood school based on the proportion of 5th graders living in each neighborhood school attendance zone is determined each year. Students attending non-neighborhood APS schools, private schools, and home schoolers are included in their neighborhood school attendance zone lottery. If all slots are not filled through this process, a follow-up double-blind lottery takes place for all students with completed applications who were not admitted through the school-by-school lottery. This process identifies those sixth grade students who are offered admission by the double-blind lottery, and the order of each neighborhood school’s waiting list. Over the next few days Vanessa prepared a letter to each applicant’s family indicating either an offer of admission (and an invitation to spend a day at H-B to further consider their choice), or notification of waiting list status. To assist in verification, the APS Public Information office used its searchable boundary locator program to assure that the students accepted to each neighborhood lottery lived within the correct boundary.
The ninth grade lottery is much faster. It is a countywide lottery, with no restriction on school attendance zones. It is conducted in the same double-blind fashion. Ten students are offered admission and invited to spend a day to consider H-B. The remainder are notified by mail of waiting list status.
Occasionally, though not often, the number of students at a given grade level is augmented by special placements. These transfers are determined by one of the Assistant Superintendents and do not take the place of any of the school board allocated slots for a grade level. Information about such transfers is, of course, confidential. Again, the lottery admissions stand independently and are counted separately from special placements.This process is managed by school board policy.

As of this date, nearly all of the newly admitted students have spent a day at H-B, and their parents have visited as well.; When the prospective students visit, they spend the day with a same-grade H-B guide, attending classes and all activities. Most accept, though some learn that the match is not quite right. (In that case, I call the next person on the waiting list.) That is part of the process, because we are a school of choice. These days of meeting our future students are very exciting.

For more information, refer to “The Application Process” button on the front page of the HBW webpage at http://aps.schoolwires.com/woodlawn/site/default.asp

School Applicants Spots
Abingdon 9 4
Ashlawn 16 3
Barcroft 9 3
Barrett 10 3
Carlin Springs 4 6
Glebe 19 3
Hoffman-Boston/Drew 15 4
Henry 13 3
Jamestown 43 6
Key/ASFS 8 3
Long Branch 14 3
McKinley 18 3
Nottingham 37 5
Oakridge 15 4
Randolph 12 4
Taylor 43 6
Tuckahoe 24 6
TOTAL 309 69
Gender
Male 137
Female 172
TOTAL 309

Ethnicity
American Indian 0
Asian/Pacific Islander 15
Black 7
Black/White 2
Hispanic 17
Hispanic/White 6
Unspecified 15
White 239
More than 2 ethnic groups checked 8
TOTAL 309

Language
Amaharic 1
Benhali 1
English 294
Farsi 2
Nepali 1
Serbian 1
Spanish 7
Turkish 1
Vietnamese 1
TOTAL 309

The central focus of our system at work at H-B Woodlawn is student choice. Students make choices in three general areas: use of time and personal behavior, pursuing educational goals and participation in school governance. How do students participate in school governance? First and foremost, they govern themselves in terms our motto, Verbum Sap Sat (“a word to the wise is sufficient”). By doing this, they increase the array of choices and opportunities for themselves, other students, teachers, and the school community. In another governance opportunity, students serve on teacher and staff hiring committees (comprised of students, teachers and administrators) and have a significant voice in the future of the school. In the past six years over 150 students have been integral in the decision making for hiring of 35 of our 72 staff members (including office staff) by their commitment to our democratic hiring process. Another important student role in school governance is engaging in the teacher allocation process (there is a page of “Calendar Dates Related to Allocation” in the H-B Woodlawn Handbook that you received in the mail with bus schedules in August; it is also found on the web page). During the annual allocation process in March and April, students and teachers engage in a series of meetings to examine tallies of students’ course selections and make decisions about the number of teachers each school department needs to support those numbers. A Town Meeting will be held on April 1st this year to vote on the allocation proposal.& All students and teachers have a voice. Of course, part of school governance is also participation in weekly Town Meetings. While Town Meetings are not always well attended, students seem to know that TM is available to them and is an important right unique to H-B.

H-B Survey: Last month the H-B survey was given to all staff and students. Results will begin to become available in early March, we expect. It takes time to input all the data into a spreadsheet. Students, teachers and parents will have opportunities to interpret the results. We intend to survey parents in early spring. Stay tuned.

APS Expands Language Opportunities for Middle & High School Students
Jade Gong, Parent/ APS Citizen Advisory Council on Foreign Language Instruction

Beginning with the 2006/2007 school year, Arlington Public Schools (APS) began offering Arabic and Chinese and are now expanding these language offerings based upon initial success and continued interest among students. Arabic and Chinese are among the 7 languages identified as critical languages by the State Department as part of the National Security Language Initiative. Please contact Mary Ann Ulrich of the APS Arlington Foreign Language Department if you have questions. She can be reached by phone at 703-228-6097 or by email at MUllrich@arlington.k12.va.us.

School Year Offerings for Arabic and Chinese: Middle and high school Arabic and Chinese programs are offered after school and in one class/location for all middle school students and one class/location for all high school students. For middle school students, Arabic I and II and Chinese I and II will be offered again in the 2008/2009 school year. This year the middle school program meets on Tuesday and Thursday from 4:30-6:50 pm. The time and location have not yet been finalized for the 2008/2009 school year. For high school students, level III will be added for both Arabic and Chinese. High school students will be able to take Arabic I, II and III and Chinese I, II and III for three full years of credit. This year the high school program meets from 6-8:20 pm at Wakefield High School. The time and location have not been finalized for the 2008/2009 school year.

Both the middle school and high school programs earn High School Foreign Language Credit. For more information about this program, and to enroll in the program, contact your school counselor or the APS Foreign Language Office.

Summer School Offerings in Arabic and Chinese: APS has again received a federal grant to offer exploratory and enrichment programs in Arabic and Chinese. Registration begins on March 13 and closes on May 30th. The program will run from July 10-July 31 and is open to Arlington resident students in grades 9-12, with no prior language study necessary.

The Arabic and Chinese Exploratory and Enrichment Programs are intended for students who have not previously studied the target language or who have limited proficiency but are interested in further developing their basic language skills. The goal for the program is to motivate students to begin or continue the study of Arabic and Chinese. Students will learn practical vocabulary and will be introduced to basic language structures with a focus on communicating about everyday needs and experiences. In addition, students will learn about the practices, perspectives and products of the culture. Field trips, hands on activities, music and song and technology based activities will allow for creative and culturally relevant experiences. This is a high expectations program for students seriously interested in developing language skills and knowledge about the target cultures.

Interested students should register through the Arlington Foreign Language Office at 703-228-6097 or e-mail bcox@arlington.k12.va.us to receive a registration form via e-mail.

An Evening at H-B With Chef Nathan Lyon
Jeanne LaBella, Parent

{Randy McKight thanking Chef Nathan Lyon}

Randy McKnight (right), thanks Chef Nathan Lyon for an entertaining and delicious event at the conclusion of "An Evening with Chef Nathan Lyon" February 25 in the H-B cafeteria. A 1989 graduate of H-B Woodlawn, Lyon shares his passion for healthy eating and cooking with locally produced food on the Discovery Channel program "A Lyon in the Kitchen." http://health.discovery.com/fansites/nathan-lyon/nathan-lyon.html. The event was a fundraiser for Michelle's Earth Foundation, an organization to advance the sustainable earth ideals of the late Michelle Gardner-Quinn, a 2003 H-B graduate who was murdered in October 2006. http://www.michellesearthfound.org/

Arlington County Schools are working to reduce energy consumption by 50 percent as part of the schools’ participation in the countywide program to alleviate global warming, said Kevin Chisholm, the energy manager for Arlington Public Schools. Improved maintenance and operation, a conservation culture (turning off the lights) and equipment upgrades have contributed to the reduction, he said. According to Chisholm, natural gas consumption in county schools has dropped by 30 percent over the past five years and electricity consumption has fallen as well, but more needs to be done.

Chisholm encouraged schools to abandon wrapping paper fundraisers in favor of selling compact fluorescent light bulbs to help boost countywide adoption of the energy-saving lights and reduce wasteful use of paper. The light bulbs may yield a higher profit for school groups, he said. Chisholm was one of several speakers at the Feb. 27 Arlington Parent Network program on “Arlington and the Environment” hosted by the H-B Woodlawn PAC and organized by Rick Keller, an H-B parent who is active in local environmental and public school activities.

Former County Board Chairman Paul Ferguson (in photo, below) opened the program with an explanation of the Arlington Initiative to Reduce Emissions (AIRE), the program launched in January 2007 to reduce emissions of greenhouse gases from government operations by 10 percent by 2012. Ferguson, now Clerk of the Court for Arlington County courts, launched the AIRE program when he was chairman of the county board.

John Morrill, energy manager for Arlington County Department of Environmental Services, talked about specific county activities to achieve the goals of the AIRE program. He hopes to stop emissions growth by 2010, and then reduce emissions in subsequent years. The county is purchasing wind power and planting 1,200 canopy trees a year to help meet the AIRE goals, he said.

Kerm Towler and Eric Grabowski, the recycling gurus for Arlington Public Schools and Arlington County, respectively, talked about recycling initiatives in public schools and countywide. Each school in the county has a recycling coordinator, usually a teacher or other staff member, who works to encourage students and staff to recycle in each building, Towler said.

{Paul Ferguson speaking at the Arlington & the Environment Forum at H-B}
Paul Ferguson, speaking at the Arlington & the Environment Forum at H-B

Grabowski said he is working toward the day when the big black trash cans and the short yellow recycling bins exchange positions—so the bulk of materials Arlington residents place on their curbs each week are recycled, with just a small container of trash. Arlington is a leader in recycling, with its earth products yard, where residents can bring soil, brick, block and asphalt to be crushed for gravel; the leaf collection/mulch distribution program; and many other projects. The state mandates localities to achieve a 25 percent recycling rate, Grabowski said. Arlington’s recycling rate is 43 percent and growing. In April, the county will allow residents to turn in old computer and other electronic equipment for recycling at no cost, he said.

Julie Dunn-Campbell, the lead science teacher at Taylor Elementary School, described the wide range of environmental programs Taylor families have tackled, including a Styrofoam collection drive and “waste-free lunch” days. Dunn-Campbell has directed an effort aimed at making the school yard a laboratory for learning. Her goal:; “Leave No Child Inside.”

Elenor Hodges, executive director of Arlingtonians for a Clean Environment, said her organization is rolling out a new “Green Living Challenge” in March, offering 25 ideas for making the community greener.

The winter is still in pretty much full effect, but the valiant students and TAs press on towards finishing up all of the last details from their college applications. Mid-year transcripts have been sent out, and students have been hearing regarding their acceptances and rejections. This can be a tough time of year. The anticipation can be exciting on the one hand, but also daunting, especially in the face of disappointing news. Seniors are trying their hardest to stay focused in their classes and resist the “senioritis” that can accompany their last semester of high school.

As the assistant college counselor, I would like to offer up some options to rejuvenate the senior who may be frustrated about the future and unable to focus, ecstatic about the future and unable to focus or bored about everything and unable to focus.

For the ecstatic student: Now is a great time to work on scholarships. You’ve come this far, you’re doing well in school, you’ve gotten all your applications in, you’ve heard from some schools, but not others. Now is the time to let your mind rest from the incessant “what if?” questions that must be whirling around in there. There are several Arlington scholarships that have very good odds for all types of Arlington students, and are available in the case of need, merit and special circumstances or even just for applying to an in-state school!

For the frustrated student: Likewise, if a student is frustrated about rejections or lack of aid for a preferred school, this is the best time to work on scholarships. I have a binder with tons of options available for you in my office! Come take a look and photocopy the ones that draw your attention. Also, now may be the time to research alternative college routes if a student has less options than previously thought! Options to consider: looking for a school which offers “rolling admission”, meaning that it accepts students gradually instead of all at once by a specific deadline, investigate community college courses (I can’t sing the praises for Northern Virginia Community College enough. Not only does NVCC rank in the top community colleges nationally, but NVCC offers a guaranteed admission to many other schools including UVA, GMU and JMU once a student receives an associate degree with a satisfactory GPA.

Visit http://www.nvcc.edu/academic/chart-articulation.htm for more info. What a money saver as well!) What about a gap year? Many students consider the options provided by the Americorps venture of the US Government which allows students to participate in community service projects nationally.

For the bored student: Turn off the mindless entertainment and roll up your sleeves to make the most of your last few months of high school. Feel like you’re all done with the college/scholarship quest and have the future mapped out? Keep focused in school, think about a senior project, log some volunteer hours, encourage your peers in their own work and activities. Most of all – don’t lose focus. As different and fun as your next step of life will be, you won’t be able to get anywhere by tuning out and dropping out. Enjoy your family and your friends, see that museum you haven’t visited since you were a kid, hear some local music, walk your dog and enjoy the good weather to come!

Take advantage of these amazing free resources:
Please check out the "College Corner" section of the HB Website! More scholarships are listed there as well as many other resources for your college info needs! Feel free to stop by Rachel's office (morning announcement room) give an email: reisley@arlington.k12.va.us, or a call 703-228-6352. http://www.apsva.us/woodlawn "College Corner" link is on the lower left hand side of the website.

April PAC Newsletter articles: send by Tues 3/25 to Lucy Gordon, LLMGordon@comcast.net