Weekly News From South County HS

From the Principal

Family,

We have made it through another week and teachers are reporting that participation has been pretty good with distance learning.  I am proud of both the students and the staff as they have done a great job at continuing to adjust and make the best of this situation, all the while making it better.  Trust me when I say that this has not been an easy road for any of us (you included, I am sure), and I want to applaud everyone involved.  It has not been even close to ideal, but we will be better prepared going forward and with your continued input, we will still be better. 

On the front of things to celebrate……

The PTSO scholarship winners have been selected.  The PTSO Scholarship Committee is in the process of / has notified them.

Lauren Bartee

Bailey Phillips

Angelica Dunham

Elycia Woodham

Rachel Patterson

Please join me in congratulating these fine folks and may they put their awards to good use!

Last week I was able to share the students who were accepted into Governor’s School related to World Languages.  This week, I would like to announce those students who through their exceptional work were accepted into Governor’s School in other content areas.  The following students were accepted into one of Virginia’s highly selective residential Governor’s School programs for summer 2020:

Unfortunately, the majority of the programs have been cancelled due to Covid-19, but it is still a great honor that they were selected from such a competitive applicant pool across the state. I am hoping that when school resumes in some form we can give them some special acknowledgement just as we did last year.  Please join me in congratulating these students on this honor and achievement.   And along these same lines, I wanted to give a special shout out to Mrs. Becky Freeman and Ms. Erica Mack, two members of our outstanding counseling staff, who coordinated with our students to assist them in getting them to this point. 

Due to school closure and social distancing requirements as well as equity concerns for students who do not have access to technology, FCPS service learning requirements will be waived for the 2019-20 school year. This waiver impacts the recording of completed service learning hours for grades 12, 8, and 6. The changes are as follows:

Grade 12 – Service Learning hours that have already been approved by May 1, 2020, will be extracted and uploaded into SIS. This allows all completed service learning hours to be documented in SIS and facilitates the awarding of Service Learning cords and Civics Seals. The “Req Met” and/or “Not Met” field in SIS will be left blank due to the waiver. High schools retain the ability to audit and update the hours field in SIS by May 22 in time for senior processing.

Please join me in wishing our Advanced Placement students good luck as they start AP testing on Monday? Over 750 SCHS 10^th, 11^th, and 12^th graders will be taking over 1500 exams online at home over the next two weeks.  This is definitely a change in past practices (as everything seems to be this year), and we want to give them all of our support.

The clinical staff here at South County has put together a resource page that we would like to make available to our students and families.  There are a ton of resources available on this site.  Take a moment to visit it.  A huge thank you to Mrs. Heather Frost, our School Social Worker and Mrs. Tonya Blanchard our School Psychologist for their awesome work in putting these resources together for our families.

If you have a student who still would like to purchase a yearbook, they may do so by visiting www.yearbookforever.com .  They are $75 each.  The editors of this year’s book did outstanding work to complete it even working remotely to ensure this year was documented properly.  Long hours outside of their other required schoolwork made this nearly impossible task a success.  I know that in talking with our yearbook sponsor Ms. Jen Delinski, that she was very proud of the phenomenal commitment by the yearbook staff to complete it and make it a great product.  I hope that you all will be able to support their efforts and purchase a copy of this year’s edition of Lock and Key!

In other attempts to maintain a sense of normalcy, the Art department is still trying to grant our Seniors the opportunity to participate in the Senior Art Exhibition.  For more information on this opportunity, please have your Senior student contact Ms. Justyne Fischer at jdfischer@fcps.edu.  To see submission requirements, they should view this link to a short PowerPoint presentation. To those who elect to participate, I look forward to seeing their work that will surely deserve the opportunity to be displayed. 

I along with the rest of the administrative team will be hosting two Virtual Principal’s Coffees next week.  The first will be on Wednesday at 12:00pm.  This is for our underclassmen parents (grades 9-11).  In this forum I will be delivering some general information as to where we are as a school/district right now, and where we are headed as well as how the end of the year will look.  I will allow for questions, but they will only be allowed to be submitted through the chat feature.  We will be monitoring the questions and then address them as best as possible.  In an effort to be transparent, many of the questions that you may have, we may not have definitive responses for. But if they aren’t already things that we know we are working on already as a district, I will seek out the answers to them.  In this forum (Blackboard Collaborate Ultra) we can only accommodate 250 attendees.  So please get on early and only attend the session if you have an underclassmen student at South County.  I will share the recordings of the virtual coffees so that those who aren’t able to attend will be able to see and hear all that was discussed.

The second virtual coffee will be as a part of the Thursday evening PTSO meeting and will be for our Senior parents.  Mrs. Henderson and I are working out the logistics of how this will run.  But the format for handling questions during the school’s presentation will be the same as the underclassmen parent coffee.  I will share the link with you all a day before the respective meetings.  I look forward to seeing you all there.  

Just a few last things.  As we draw nearer to the close of the year, we are working feverishly trying to plan for the closeout of the year.  Senior this that and the other, technology, book returns, student item pick-up, school item drop off, medication returns, refunds, etc. are all being worked out.   Unfortunately, we are not able to do a lot of this in the South County vacuum.  Many of the decisions that we have to make must be coordinated with the other high schools across the county in the effort to ensure equity.  This work is tough, and if I don’t have to sit in another virtual meeting ever again (outside of the wonderful opportunity that I have to do so with you all next week 😊) it will be too soon!  I say this to say that I still ask that you be as patient as possible with our timelines for disseminating information with you.  Know that any questions that you have, are being asked by your parent peers somewhere else in the district.  I am not asking you to not ask questions by any means.  Someone has to ask it first somewhere. So, keep the questions coming.  There have certainly been a couple submitted that I had not considered at the time.  I am just asking that you be patient with when this information is available to come out. 

This week has been a tough one for us as we experienced some back and forth this week among students that potentially damaged the culture that we all have worked so hard to build.  As I expressed in my last message around this issue, our children have more time on their hands than ever, and that time sometimes allows for idle minds to go to work.  We, the teachers, counselors, administration, clinical staff, coaches and support staff have spent the majority of this year trying to build trusting relationships with your children and we are still available to talk things out with them.  They need only to let us know.  Please remind your children of this.  I will be crafting a message to send to each class about this as well.  It is so important that when we come back together that we are able to focus on the work of educating our students and ensuring that our students get the best education available.  When we have instances like we had this week, we must divert our attention to these other distractions that unless dealt with, could tear our school community apart.  So, I implore you to have conversations with your children about the importance of using the adults in their lives both at home and at school to help them through situations that they may not be prepared to deal with.  We all need assistance at one time or another, and I want to be sure we extend that assistance them as well.   Thank you.  #OneStallion

Gary

Spring Sports School-Issued Uniform and Equipment Collection

The Activities Office and Spring Head Coaches will be collecting school-issued uniform and equipment collection on Saturday, May 16, 2020. Please see the schedule below. Families should be receiving communication via e-mail from program head coaches with more details.

Instructions:

• All school-issued uniforms and equipment must be bagged and labeled with student-athlete name
• Curbside drop off into a bin
• Families and student-athletes must stay in the car

*Girls Lacrosse – Please see instruction from Coach Mays (jlmays@fcps.edu)

The Activities Office

From Your SCHS Library

AP, SAT, and Career Test Resources

Check out two test prep resources that the library has to offer!

Click here (login with your FCPS Google email)  for the login links, instructions, and passwords.

New eBooks and Library Resources for Distance Learning

Hundreds of popular eBooks have recently been added to the library’s eBook collection! You can find these titles here https://fairfax.mackinvia.com/. Use your FCPS network account to login.

Need more books to read? Looking for help with homework or projects? The SCHS Library has information on school and public library resources and more on the SCHS Library Google Site. Go to SCHS Library’s Blackboard course and select the Distance Learning button.

Checked Out Library Books

If you have library books currently checked out, please hold onto the books for now. No fines are being charged. Information about returning books will be sent out at a later date.

Librarian Office Hours

Please contact us via email for help with your assignments and book suggestions! We are in front of our computers ready to respond LIVE to email questions every Wednesday from 1:00pm-2:00pm and every Thursday from 10:30am-11:15am. 

Please contact Ms. Strong erstrong@fcps.edu or Mrs. Muir lkmuir@fcps.edu with questions about any of the above!

Reminder From Student Services

Hello Stallion families!  You now have the option to “Go Paperless” in ParentVUE and receive only online report cards. To take advantage of the paperless options, parents/guardians will need to log into ParentVUE, then go to “My Account” and select "Go Paperless!". This process is the only way to keep a paper report card from being generated for students at the secondary level. All parents who share the same address as the student must have a SIS ParentVue account and must select the paperless option. Thank you!

Mental Health Resources | 24/7 Emergency Numbers

If you are in crisis, text NEEDHELP to 85511, call 1-800-273-TALK, or dial 911; TTY dial 711

CrisisLink Regional Hotline: 703-527-4077 (CrisisLink is a hotline for individuals in crisis or family/friends seeking guidance for how to help a loved one)

Dominion Hospital Assessment and Referral Line: 703-536-2000

Inova Emergency Services: 703-289-7560

Mobile Crisis Unit: 1-844-627-4747

National Suicide Prevention Lifeline: 1-800-273-TALK or 1-800-SUICIDE

8501 Silverbrook Road, Lorton, VA 22079 | Main Office: 703.446.1600
Attendance: 703.446.1625 | Web | Twitter