pfc newsletter O A K
P A R K
H I G H
S C H O O L
February 2013
www.oakparkusd.org/ophs
The Principal’s Message
from 7 p.m. - 10 p.m. in the OPHS Pavilion. And a school-wide Ping Pong tournament will be held on Monday, February 11th in the Pavilion. This Saturday, February 2nd, is the second annual Super Saturday Sustainability Showcase featuring a huge recycling and disposal drive including clothing, paper, prescription and over-the-counter medications, and electronic waste. Rehearsals for the musical play Les Miserables are underway and it promises to be a great show with a cast of about 90 students including some “waifs” from the elementary schools. The California High School Exam CAHSEE will be given to all tenth grade students on Wednesday and Thursday, February 5th and 6th. And we are gearing up for AP and STAR testing in May; more on testing in a later message. The Oak Park Unified School District will be participating in Big Sunday on May 5, 2013, with this year’s theme being “Day of Giving”. Big Sunday is a nationwide community day of service. Registration will begin at Oak Park High School between 8am and 9am and will include a welcome breakfast, group photo and t-shirt pick-up. At 9:30am, volunteers will head off to various projects at each school site and in the community with completion of the projects anticipated by noon. Senior activities are arranged for our graduating class during the STAR testing, and Prom and Commencement plans are being finalized. Senior parents: please try to ensure that your seniors watch their deadlines including yearbook, cap and gown, and that they serve any disciplinary hours they owe and return any and all textbooks. We are also moving ahead full steam with the preparations to evacuate the C-Building which houses the art, ceramics, Spanish, woodshop, college center, student store, language lab, and textbook rooms for the modernization project that will begin as soon as school lets out for the summer. This is a very large project
The second semester is underway and experience tells us that it will cruise along pretty quickly. It won’t be long before once again we’re reading aloud the names of our class of 2013. This message will focus on what events are in store for students during the second semester and our preparations for summer and next school year. 2013-14 Course Advisement is around the corner and will kick off with Open House on March 14th. I encourage all to attend our Open House which differs from the elementary and middle schools in that it is not a showcase of what students are engaged in now in their classes but more of an opportunity to meet with teachers to discuss course options for next year. Administrators and counselors are visiting students in their 4th period classes on that Thursday, March 14th to explain the online course selection process for next year. Afterwards, students, with their parents, will log into Naviance and select and submit their next year’s course requests. Students will then meet individually with their counselors over the subsequent weeks to review their transcripts and requests to ensure that they are aligned with graduation requirements and post-secondary plans. We will then begin the process of building the 2013-14 master schedule to meet the students’ program needs. This process will be ongoing throughout the remainder of the second semester and over the summer. There are several events that the Associated Student Body has planned for the students throughout the remainder of the school year. We have the In ‘n’ Out truck coming during an extended lunch on February 8th and tickets are on sale now in the student store. We will only sell 375 tickets because of how many burgers In ‘n’ Out can cook in the available time. We won’t be selling any tickets on the day. Later in the month the OPHS annual "Battle of Bands" competition will be held on Thursday, February 21st,
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