Welcome back everyone to another year at LACHSA! We have just completed our first week back and we are off to a great start! Please know that I am aware of the challenges for our community and I am as committed as ever to improving our communication tools for families and ensuring the highest quality programming for our students.
I will depart from my usual newsletter practice to celebrate a few highlights from the first week.
Congrats to our incoming students who have successfully completed their
first week at LACHSA. We are glad to have you as part of the community!
Bravo to our Leadership students who helped welcome our new students to campus!
Thanks to all of our returning students for sharing their amazing experiences from the summer. I have enjoyed the tales from Edinburgh, France, family vacations, summer classes, InnerSpark, and Idyllwild and numerous arts programs.
Huge shout out to all of those students who auditioned in the music department and musical theatre!
Thanks to everyone for their patience during the schedule change requests. Big thanks to Irma Dilullo and Princess Broussard for their tireless efforts to accommodate as many needs as possible.
I am thrilled that we are able to offer our seniors access to university classes--during the day. Our students are excited to begin their studies in oceanography, comparative religions, Italian, German, statistics and other courses. We hope to expand our pilot program with Cal State LA and include sophomores and juniors.
Please congratulate Michael Mayo president of the Associated Student Body (ASB) and Conor Guzman, Senior Class President for being selected by the Tavis Smiley Foundation as Leaders of the future and Ariel McSween, published as a Top Ten finalist for her poem "Holding His Hand" by Creative Communication-a celebration of Today's writers in Logan, Utah!
We welcome five new staff members to the LACHSA community: Vivian Wong comes to us from Crenshaw High School and joins our science team; Darryl Piggott, of North Carolina, has joined our math team as our fourth math teacher; we are proud that Teresa Wu, a LACHSA music alum, has returned to introduce Mandarin to our school; Suzanna Guzman, has come on board in our Office of Community Engagement; and Cara Livermore is our new senior program specialist for academic programs--our academic dean. Please welcome these new members to our community.
I also have few reminders:
Please consult our new website, www.lachsa.net. We hope this new site is an effective tool for all members in our community. Please use this for up-to-date and accurate information about LACHSA events and upcoming performances. Parents can access our parent portal through the Parent Portal tab and coming soon, tickets for LACHSA shows will be available for purchase through our Box Office feature.
Back to School Night
September 15th, 2009
6:00 - 8:30 p.m.
This is your chance to meet your child's teacher and experience little bit of what LACHSA is all about! Please review the Back to School Night instructions in the "Upcoming Events" section of www.lachsa.net.
LACHSA Parent Council
Please consider joining the LACHSA Parent Council. Nomination forms can be downloaded from the News and Announcements section of the website front page.
Carpool List
Please e-mail the LACHSA Parent Council President if you did not receive a copy of the 2009-10 LACHSA Carpool list at <artshighparentcouncil@gmail.com>
All students have a LACHSA planner and a LACHSA Community Handbook. Please review both of these regularly and remind your students to use their planners often. LACHSA can be difficult place to manage; our planner is a useful tool for students.
Finally, over the summer as we steadfastly prepared to usher in our 25th anniversary year we discovered, while cleaning lockers, of all things, a note by a graduate from the class of 2009--the most recent occupant of one of the lockers. This occupant wanted to pass along to the incoming owner a message about LACHSA through a note. The note was eloquently written and the message was meant to inspire comfort. One passage touched on the qualities that made LACHSA such a special place. The message of this passage was simple: The magic of LACHSA is to be found not in the administrators, the faculty or staff, or our university home, but rather within the students themselves. And as we continue the adventure in our 25th year I am reminded that this is and will always be the magic of LACHSA.
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