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The ARHS Clubs and Activities Fair will be held during all three lunches on Sept. 13, 2023. Students will get to learn about ARHS clubs and sign up to receive more information. Each club that participates will have a table and share more information about their mission and purpose with students in a “science fair” format. Click here for an updated list of clubs and their advisers.
Here is the link with the information and registration flyer for PSATs, which will be offered to 10th and 11th grade ARHS students on Saturday, October 14. This information was sent to 10th and 11th grade families through parent square and to all 10th and 11th grade student emails. If you have any questions, please contact Judi DellaMarco.
Students interested in being a member of their Class Council must fill out an application and turn it in to Ms. Melendez in Room 168 by this Friday September 8, 2023.
This year the Flex Block replaces what was called Plus Block in last year’s ARHS schedule.
The general idea and rationale: The Flex Block will offer dedicated time for academic skills. It replaces the after-school help that was available when ARHS had an earlier start time, and it offers flexible scheduling so that students can be where they need to be for this extra support at the end of each day Tuesday-Friday.
The schedule: Monday at 8:00am self scheduling will open for Flex Blocks occurring for the remainder of the week. Students will meet with advisors every Monday at 2:55 in Advisory and will check in to ensure that they are self-scheduling or that they are scheduled in with their academic skills liaison. (Students can schedule on their own any time starting at 8 am, but if they don’t have a chance to compete this task before Advisory, they can do it there.)
Some other important things to note:
Students do this signup using something called “My FlexLearning.” Here is a video they were given that shows them how to use it.
Are there other topics you have questions about that might make a good “Do You Know. . ?” newsletter item? Send your ideas/requests to arhspgonews@gmail.com.
Help the PGO support our ARHS community by purchasing a Mum and/or Aster from our local partner, the North Hadley Sugar Shack & Market. Each Mum and Aster is in 9-inch pots and your choice of available colors. Each Mum and Aster will be priced at $8.00, and the PGO will receive 50% of each sale. With your support and donation, the PGO can help fund field trips, art supplies, ice cream socials, guest speakers, and more!
Click here to order your plants. (Details are given on the site; note that after you make your donation, you have until Oct. 22 to retrieve your mums and asters.)
The town is hiring a new Chief of Police and students are invited to a session during Flex Block on 9/12 with the consultants coordinating the search. They are seeking student input. Students can sign up for this session in MyFlex Learning or by contacting Assistant Principal Kusek. Rm. 117
For this fundraiser, the Sene-Gambian Scholars Program is partnering with South Congregational Church, which shares its superb kitchen. Proceeds will support Sene-Gambian Scholars exchange trip scholarships as well as the Amherst Survival Center and the Food Bank of Western Mass. If you have questions about the event, please e-mail Mary Custard at custardm@arps.org.
ORDER ONLINE at tinyurl.com/SGSmeals (uses PayPal, but no account is required) or DOWNLOAD THE ORDER FORM at tinyurl.com/SGSflyer and send it to the school office. The deadline is Monday, September 18. Order before we sell out!
The online store for ARHS Hurricanes clothing is open for 4 more days. Click here to see what is available and place your order.
Sept 8: Class Council applications due
Sept 16: Mid-Autumn Festival
Sept 18: Deadline for Sene-Gambian scholars fundraiser
Sept 19: Picture Day
Sept 25: Yom Kippur (no school)
Sept 28: ARHS Open House
Sept 29: Early Release
Oct 14: PSAT at ARHS
Please make sure to check ArbiterLive for any updates to the athletic webpage.
The Massachusetts Department of Transportation (MassDOT) has launched its 10th annual Safe Streets Smart Trips Massachusetts High School Video Contest and looks forward to students participating. For the 2023-2024 school year, MassDOT is inviting all enrolled Massachusetts public high school students to create a 30-60 second video informing their friends, family, and local community about the new vulnerable user laws which will help increase safety for pedestrians, bicyclists, and other vulnerable road users.
The video contest includes two entry categories: a Freshman/Sophomore category and a Junior/Senior category. A grand prize, runner-up, and honorable mention will be selected in each category. Top videos may be used in future MassDOT safety campaigns. Videos must be submitted by September 17th, 11 p.m.
A recorded webinar about the contest can be found here. Contest guidelines and video submission form: https://www.mass.gov/roadway-safety-video
Winning submissions from the 2022 Video Contest: https://www.mass.gov/service-details/roadway-safety-video-contest-results
Celebrate the Moon / Mid-Autumn Festival as the Chinese Association of Western Massachusetts (CAWM) brings the celebration to the Jones Library on Saturday, September 16 from 2:30 – 4:30 pm in the Woodbury Room. The holiday is celebrated among some eastern and southern Asian countries, including China, Japan, Korea, and Vietnam. It originated in China during early Tang dynasty (618–907 CE) as a time to celebrate the harvest during the autumn full moon, to honor what the moon and its eclipse bring. This year, the holiday falls on September 29. Families are especially invited to attend this event, which welcomes participants of all ages. Activities will include learning about the Moon Festival and the lunar calendar and how to make a moon cake, as well as arts and crafts related to the festival.
This program is co-sponsored by the Jones Library and the Chinese Association of Western Massachusetts. For more information, please contact Janet Ryan at 413-259-3223.
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The Parent Guardian Organization (PGO) is actually you–everyone who has a student at ARHS is automatically a member of the PGO. A few parents/guardians take an active role in doing the work of the PGO, which consists mostly of: funding some student activities at the school (the yearly ice cream social, for instance); providing grants to students and staff (we’ll share more examples of grant-funded projects in a future newsletter); facilitating communication between the school and families (hosting coffees with the principal and other staff, writing this newsletter, meeting monthly with the principal); and raising funds to support the activities above.
Below are pictures of last year’s PGO “board members” (not an exact term, since no one elected us–we just volunteered). All of us are continuing in these roles for 2023-24, but since most of us will no longer have students at ARHS after that, we are looking for new parents/guardians to join us! If you are interested–especially if you have younger students so will be at ARHS past this year–please reach out to us at arhspgonews@gmail.com. The time commitment can be flexible, but it is something like 1 hour per week on average.
ARHS uses multiple platforms to communicate with students and families. The following is a short description of the main tools you might use to learn about school events and information, as well as your student’s academic progress.
Powerschool is where student grades and attendance are recorded. Your student should have a login to Powerschool, and parents/guardians can either get a separate login or choose to log into Powerschool with their student. If you would like your own Powerschool login and don’t have one, you need to visit the ARHS front office in person (with ID) to get that. This is the most reliable way for your student and/or you to monitor their academic progress; teachers will enter all grades there, so you or your student can see if an assignment is missing. There is some variability in how frequently teachers update grades in Powerschool, so if your student has a question about an assignment, their best bet is to ask the teacher directly.
Google classroom (GC) is used by many teachers to post assignments and materials for their classes, and to collect student work electronically. The school recommends that, if parents/guardians want to see what is in GC, they log on with their student, because parents and others without an arps.org email address cannot get full access to GC. Some teachers may invite parents to their GC, but parents can only see limited reports in this format. Your student will get alerts from GC to their arps.org email account. Some teachers do return work and/or give feedback there, but grades are not stored in GC–the teacher has to enter those separately in Powerschool.
Parentsquare is new this year for ARPS and is the main platform the school and the district will use to communicate with families for general announcements. You should have received an email prompting you to make a Parentsquare account; if you missed this email and still need to sign up, be on the lookout for a reminder email; if you still have questions, you can contact Debbie Westmoreland in the district office. Emails you get from the school and district will be archived on Parentsquare as either “posts” or “alerts and messages.”
Are there other topics you have questions about that might make a good “Do You Know. . ?” newsletter item? Send your ideas/requests to arhspgonews@gmail.com.
Traditionally a group of parents/guardians of seniors help organize end-of-year events to celebrate the graduating class. It might seem early to think about this, but past experience shows that planning ahead makes this a smoother process. If you have a student in the Class of ’24 and are willing to help with this effort, please contact us at arhspgonews@gmail.com. (Note that this is separate from PGO activities; we are recruiting volunteers and will then hand you what we know from last year and let you go do your thing!)
Help the PGO support our ARHS community by purchasing a Mum and/or Aster from our local partner, the North Hadley Sugar Shack & Market. Each Mum and Aster is in 9-inch pots and your choice of available colors. Each Mum and Aster will be priced at $8.00, and the PGO will receive 50% of each sale. With your support and donation, the PGO can help fund field trips, art supplies, ice cream socials, guest speakers, and more!
Click here to order your plants. (Details are given on the site; note that after you make your donation, you have until Oct. 22 to retrieve your mums and asters.)
Click here for a helpful list of frequently-asked questions and their answers.
Did you know that, when you donate goods to the Baystate Textiles bins by the ARHS parking lot, you help raise money for the PGO’s activities at ARHS? Please see the flyer below for more information about this program, including which items are accepted in the bins. (Note that everything must be bagged; please do not leave items outside the bins, which are emptied regularly but occasionally fill up.)
Sept 4: Labor Day (no school)
Sept 25: Yom Kippur (no school)
Sept 29: Early Release
Please make sure to check ArbiterLive for any updates to the athletic webpage.
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This newsletter is sent out every Friday morning to all the email addresses listed for parents/guardians of current ARHS students. You can also see the archived posts at the PGO website. The newsletter also posts to our Facebook page; if you Follow that page, you will also see occasional time-sensitive updates that we post between newsletters.
The PGO newsletter is meant to be your one-stop shop for all ARHS-related news. We collect communications that go out from the school and district during the week, and we also accept announcements from the community for any events that are free and of potential interest to ARHS students and their families.
You may unsubscribe from this newsletter at any time by clicking on the Unsubscribe link at the very bottom of the newsletter. We do not have a way to automatically unsubscribe families whose students have graduated, so if you no longer have a student at ARHS (or if this is being sent to 2 email addresses for the same person), please help us stay within our account limits by unsubscribing yourself. If someone else forwarded you the newsletter and you want to subscribe, there is a link at the side of the newsletter.
The first day of school at ARHS is a half day on Wednesday, August 30. (Note that pre-K and kindergarten start on Sept. 5.) You can view the 2023-24 district school calendar here. The middle and high school bus routes are posted here.
Join other ARHS families for a golf scramble and party this Saturday, August 26, to benefit Hurricanes sports teams. Click here for a flyer with details.
The annual First Day Celebration to welcome the new school year is scheduled from 5:00-6:30 p.m. on Tuesday, August 29, 2023 at beautiful Kendrick Park in Amherst. Plan to join us to:
meet your principal;
visit with our local firefighters, paramedics, and police;
learn about our great partners including our PGOs, the Jones Library, MPAC and more;
have a free ice cream treat from the ice cream school bus;
play with friends on the awesome Kendrick Park playground;
and much more!
We’ll see you at Kendrick Park, located by the rotary in Amherst (across from Garcia’s restaurant)!
Aug 26: Hurricanes golf fundraiser
Aug 29: First Day celebration
Aug 30: First day of school (half day)
Sept 4: Labor Day (no school)
Sept 25: Yom Kippur (no school)
Sept 29: Early Release
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The ARHS PGO Newsletter will be on hiatus until roughly mid-August, when we will return with start-of-school announcements. You can still follow our Facebook page for any additional announcements that come in over summer vacation.
If your student(s) graduated from ARHS, and you don’t have another student in the school next year, please remove yourself from the mailing list going forward by clicking on the Unsubscribe button at the bottom of this newsletter. (We have a limited mail chimp account, so taking graduating families off the mailing list allows us to add the new 9th grade families.)
On Thursday, parents/guardians should have received an email from Debbie Westmoreland in the District Office; this email contains a link to a survey about student cell phone use in school, plus some links to articles about teen phone use. Please fill out the survey (and encourage your student to as well) by June 23rd.
June 16: Makeup final exams
June 16: Staff Appreciation Lunch
June 17: Ancestral Bridges Juneteenth Legacy Celebration
June 19: Town Juneteenth Celebration
June 20: Affordable housing listening session
Come to the Town Common at 12 pm on Monday, June 19th for the 3rd Annual Jubilee. Click here for a flyer about the Ancestral Bridges Juneteenth Legacy Celebration on Saturday, June 17.
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. . . and to their families, too! We hope you enjoy Graduation Friday.
The full schedule for final exams for 9th-11th graders is available here, including details on how lunch schedules work those days. Note that dismissal on both Wednesday at Thursday is at 1:20 pm. If students take their exams on the exam days and are not out sick on Wednesday or Thursday, then they do not come to school on Friday, June 16. If they miss an exam and need to make one up they need to reach out to the teacher to schedule an appointment.
Is there a teacher or staff member that has made a difference in your child’s life this year?
Make a donation to Amherst Education Foundation’s Stars In Our Schools Spring Campaign in their honor and AEF will send a note of gratitude on your behalf, thanking them for all their hard work and dedication. AEF grants an average of $30,000 annually to teachers and administrators in our schools and all the money raised this month will help us fund the next round of initiatives and programs. In April, AEF awarded a total of $29,317 in grants spread throughout the Amherst-Pelham School District including, ARHS Bridge to Resilient Youth in Transition Mindful Gardening, Combating Sexual Harassment at the Middle School, Fort River Table and Project-Based Development Initiative, and Protect the Investment project.
So far this spring we have honored 55 teachers/staff and raised $1,880. Last June we honored 165 teachers and staff and raised almost $6,000; please help us do the same this year. Visit amhersteducationfoundation.org/stars and make your gift today!
Seniors Sam Watson-Stevens and Marlena Hite created a mural at ARHS that showcases current and historical LGBTQ+ figures. The ARHS PGO was proud to support this work with one of our grants that is funded by your donations. You can read more about the mural in the Graphic article here.
Opening Night was a huge success! The exhibit is open through Sunday, June 11 in the Eli Marsh Gallery in Fayerweather Hall at Amherst College. Gallery hours are from 10am – 4pm Thursday & Friday and from noon to 4pm on the weekend.
Fall sports registration is now open! Please use this link to view more information and to register. Once registered more information will be sent out by the coach at a later date. The coaches directory and more information can be found on the athletic webpage. In addition, to learn more about spring sports join us during our spring sports night on 8/17/23 at 6PM in the high school gymnasium.
June 8-11: AR[T]HS
June 11: Race Amity Day celebration
June 14-15: Early dismissal
June 15: Last day of scheduled final exams
June 16: Makeup final exams
June 16: Staff Appreciation Lunch
June 17: Ancestral Bridges Juneteenth Legacy Celebration
June 19: Town Juneteenth Celebration
June 20: Affordable housing listening session
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Your 9th-11th grade students received an email on Monday about the final exam schedule; the full schedule is available here. Note that the last day of regularly-scheduled exams is Thursday, June 15; makeup exams are offered on Friday, June 16 but have to be scheduled by appointment.
The Class of 2023 will enjoy a pasta dinner on Monday, June 5 in the ARHS Cafeteria. Pasta and bread will be provided by Primo’s in Amherst. We are asking senior parents to contribute sides, drinks and dessert.
Please sign up here to contribute one or more of these items; you can drop off contributions between 5-5:45pm on 6/5 in the cafeteria. The dinner is for the graduating class only, this is not a family event. The Class of 2024 families will generously provide set-up, serving and clean-up.
On June 16 the PGO will provide a staff appreciation lunch for all the ARHS staff. We could especially use a couple more volunteers to help with cleanup at the end of the event. Please use this link to sign up for a slot if you can help.
Click here for a full listing of special end-of-year events for the Class of 2023.
Fall sports registration is now open! Please use this link to view more information and to register. Once registered more information will be sent out by the coach at a later date. The coaches directory and more information can be found on the athletic webpage. In addition, to learn more about spring sports join us during our spring sports night on 8/17/23 at 6PM in the high school gymnasium.
This 15th annual juried exhibition showcases the very best works of art made from all of the Art Department’s areas of study: Foundations of Art, Ceramics, Drawing, Fiber Arts, Painting, Photography, Printmaking, and Sculpture. We are so excited to be returning to an in-person exhibition after three years of virtual shows.
The exhibit will run from June 8th – June 11th with an opening reception on Thursday June 8th from 5:00pm-8:00pm. The Eli Marsh Gallery is located in Fayerweather Hall at Amherst College. Please join us in celebrating the young artists in our community. Gallery hours are from 10am – 4pm Thursday & Friday and from noon to 4pm on the weekend.
Click here to see a slideshow of where some ARHS athletes from the class of 2023 are continuing their athletic careers. If your student is planning to play a sport in college and isn’t yet featured in this slideshow, please have them email AD Victoria Dawson to be included.
ARHS PGO Parent News 
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