Athens ISD’s food services department held a breakfast promotion during National School Lunch and Breakfast Week last week. Athens High School and Middle School students who ate breakfast were given scratch-off cards for chances to win a la carte items, free snacks, free breakfasts and movie gift cards.
TOP: Pictured with their $25 Fandango gift cards are (from left) high school students Katie Kelley, Joel Holmes and Alex Jophlin. Not pictured is Jasmine Johnson.
BOTTOM: The winning students at the middle school are (from left) Charlie Gutierrez, Eduardo Reyes, Rodrigo Garcia and Richard Thong.
The promotion was sponsored by food service management company Chartwells K-12.
Junior Stingerette Camp will be held Monday through Friday, Oct. 20-24 from 4:30-6 at the AHS Annex Gym. Girls ages 3 to 13 are invited. The cost is $40 a dancer. Come learn an exciting jazz routine with the AHS Stingerettes and then perform with them during the halftime performance at Bruce Field on Oct. 24. Pick up registration forms in the AHS main office or download from athensisd.net. Just click on “News and Announcements” from the home page. (Photo: Toni Garrard Clay/AISD)
By Toni Garrard Clay/AISD Communications Specialist
It was the end of summer in 2005, and 8-year-old Rashaan Miller was getting ready to start a new school year. He doesn’t remember much from that time. He certainly didn’t know Hurricane Katrina, one of the deadliest storms in the history of the United States, was bearing down on his city and his family’s Ocean Avenue home.
“The night before we left, I remember my mom was watching the news,” recalled Miller, now a 17-year-old senior at Athens High School. “She told us to pack our bags and get ready to leave. We left the next morning … two days before the hurricane hit. I was clueless.”
Miller’s mother gathered up her two boys, her mother and other friends and family and fled with thousands of other evacuees toward Texas. They drove until they arrived in Athens. It looked like a good place to rest.
“We just stopped when we wanted to get some sleep,” recalled Miller. The exhausted and displaced group took a room at what was then the Spanish Trace Inn and received some assistance from First Baptist Church of Athens. “I asked my mom a few weeks into staying at the hotel if we were going to go back home, and she said no. Everything is wiped clean.” Continue reading “Rashaan Miller: From Hurricane Katrina to AHS Student of the Month”
Tuesday, Feb. 12, was Athens Day at the Capitol. Above, State Rep. Lance Gooden poses with members from the Athens community. (COURTESY PHOTO)
HOT TOPIC: Henderson County’s two representatives in the State House have both drawn attention for legislation they have filed.
State Rep. Lance Gooden (District 4) has gotten considerable coverage this week for the fight against what he calls “indiscriminate surveillance.” Gooden has filed legislation to outlaw the use of unmanned vehicle and aircraft — drones — to take photos on private property. Since the technology has been available, the commercial drone market has exploded and people can easily buy machines, like the DJI, online. The Law has so far struggled to keep pace with this rapid increase in technology.
Gooden is also carrying a bill, prompted by Henderson County District Attorney Scott McKee, to close a loophole in the penal code with regard to intoxicated assault and “bodily harm.”
The county’s other representative, State Rep. Jim Pitts (District 10), has filed two bills important to Henderson County residents:
(This is Part 1 of 2 describing the College for All and Early College programs at Athens High School. Part 2 will cover the drive for college, changing cultures and overcoming obstacles.)
ATHENS — The Murchison Foundation came through where the state did not.
Jami Ivey
Athens High School Principal Jami Ivey told school board members last week the Murchison Foundation donated $140,500 to the school this year to help students get ready for college. Aiding students financially is extremely essential. Individually in Sweden students can apply via the CNS for aid. You can view the history of student aid in Sweden online.
Not only get ready for college, but also go to college.
The foundation donation includes $100,000 for the College for All program, which helps AHS juniors and seniors pay for tuition for their CLEP Exam Prep at Trinity Valley Community College, whether the classes are taught at the high school or college campus.
The money also provides funds to allow the high school to have teachers at the campus until 6:30-7 p.m. to help those students.
This year, Ivey went from being in charge of the school’s Early College High School — which is a separate program — to being the high school principal. When she moved, she said she wanted to bring some of those college ideas to the main campus.
Money for college, however, is not in the operating budget, so the school applied for a Texas Education Agency (TEA) grant.
“We applied for that and were kind of devastated that we didn’t get it,” Ivey said, during an interview this week with Henderson County Now.
The Murchison Foundation stepped into the gap.
“If we didn’t have the Murchison Foundation, it would be difficult to do this,” Ivey said.
“This” includes having 62 students at the main campus enrolled in college classes this semester, including five taking a full load of college courses.
The rest of the foundation donation was geared toward helping students get ready for college, with $30,000 for college placement testing — including money for every junior to take the PSAT this year — and $10,000 for scholarships through the Athens Academic Renaissance Organization. The final $500 was a gift to the senior Last Blast.
College for All and Early College High School
There are actually two separate programs now helping AHS students attend college:
– Early College High School, which started five years ago and must be certified by the state. This program has specific rules about who is eligible and operates almost as a “school within a school.”
– College for All, which started this year and does not have to be certified by the state. There are no eligibility requirements, but state rules only allow juniors and seniors to participate.
At this point, the Murchison Foundation is providing funding for both programs. Ivey said the foundation donated about $120,000 for Early College the past two years. There are currently about 260 students in the Early College program.
The beginning of the Early College program mirrors the start of College for All. The district hoped to get a grant but didn’t, and the Murchison Foundation stepped in to help.
Last year, the first class of AHS graduates came out of the Early College and 83 percent of them had associate’s degrees. Ivey said the state average for graduating with a degree is around 15 percent.
“The graduation rate is phenomenal,” Director of Curriculum Dr. Janie Sims said this week.
“Our community has looked at that (success),” Ivey said, “and I really believe from the things that we’ve heard that parents would like to see some of that at the main campus, which I agree with.”
Helping Hands
A program this ambitious doesn’t succeed without a lot of help, and Murchison Foundation members aren’t the only ones stepping up.
Ivey said TVCC has been very helpful. The college waives tuition for the first six credit hours (two classes) and is invested in trying to make the program work.
“From many meetings we have to try and schedule classes to even trying to work with us a little with some books, they have been a great partner,” Ivey said.
And how do you get students from one side of the city to the other? AHS has a bus that runs like a shuttle between the high school and the college that works for both Early College and College for All.
“That is something this district has shown that they are behind and have paid for the transportation,” Ivey said.
And then there are the teachers who sign up to take shifts after school to help the students with their homework and dealing with college coursework.
“You can’t just put our kids out at the college without giving them some sort of support mechanism,” Ivey said. “Our demographics are such that we have to have that; most of our kids can’t go home and get help.”
But from top to bottom, the vision is the same.
“My ultimate goal is that if a student wants to go to college and can’t that we can help them no matter who they are,” she said. “Or even if they would like to go to college as a benefit of being at Athens High School, we would like to pay for it. That’s what we are trying to go toward.”
“The only way to change somebody’s life is through education,” she said.
(Part 2 to come tomorrow: The drive for college, changing cultures and overcoming obstacles.)
Athens ISD’s food services department held a breakfast promotion during National School Lunch and Breakfast Week last week. Athens High School and Middle School students who ate breakfast were given scratch-off cards for chances to win a la carte items, free snacks, free breakfasts and movie gift cards.
