.
October 4, 2011
Amelia Chu
As the bell rung, crowds of students joined lines that led into the amphitheater for the Up Your Scores Lunch, on Sept. 23, to celebrate a 19 point increase in the school’s API score.
In two separate lines, students were served by leadership students and students from the special education program with with 800 hamburgers, cheeseburgers and 200 hot dogs.
“Call it a burgerfest!” Assistant Principal Lance Miller said jokingly.
For 50 cents, one could get a meal ticket, which included chips, a hot dog or a burger, and a small bottled water. Final preparation for this barbecue began the day before, when students from ASB went to Costco to buy all the materials necessary for the event. On the day of the event, Leadership students prepared food during first and second period, then teachers helped out from third period to 15 minutes before lunch ended. Improvements were made based upon previous experiences. The two line method for lining up students was brought up by senior Billy Bergendahl to increase efficiency.
“It was a team effort.” Paris said.
The same is attributed to why the school got the point increase.
“[It was] everyone, together, teachers and students, working hard,” Miller said.
Some teachers, like English teacher Sharon Jones, did more practice problems with students in what her students called “Grammar Parties.” Students, such as senior Brady Knight, continued to take the test seriously, as he does every year.
“I try my best, so I guess that’s why I do well,” Knight said.
Others, like senior Stephanie Zee, received constant encouragement from her parents. When prompted with the question of how seriously her parents took the STAR test, she rolled her eyes and said “Oh my God, you have no idea!”
If the school had reached the goal of an API score of 801, students would have been given an extended lunch. Although there was a 19 point increase, the school dropped 29 points the previous year, leaving the school still 10 points away from its API score in 2008.
“If we didn’t really improve [upon] our best [API score], I think we shouldn’t have gotten it [the barbeque],” Sophomore Hamza Muhammad said.
Others like Miller and Jones, had a more positive outlook.
“No, I was not surprised [ by the news],” Jones said.
Freshman Moses Ordona loved the “awesome food” that was bought with funds from ASB cards, a small grant, and student fees. When he heard that the barbecue was because of STAR test results, he said, “Heck yeah, I’ll work harder!”
This article originally appeared in the print edition of The Hatchet on October 4, 2011.
Photo Credit: Raphael Ghieuw Sien
.
December 19, 2009
Nicole Pham
Students packed the gym for the winter assembly Dec. 18, but the annual event was cut earlier than in previous years. Student activities director Helen Paris released students ten minutes before first period was scheduled to start, explaining the gesture as a type of holiday reward.
The assembly, though shortened, maintained its usual sequence of events. Athletics director Mike Tripp announced the $2,500 check awarded to the football team for their entry in a video contest. Balancing athletics with academics, vice principal Lance Miller acknowledged those with a 3.0 GPA or higher.
After the administrators’ announcements, the festivities began with senior Kimberly Chatterjee singing “The Twelve Days of Christmas”. Sports team members and teachers appeared as Chatterjee sang about each “day”. English teacher Debi Pavlecic (pictured) was among the six teachers acting as the “geese a-laying”. Students played games with seasonal themes, competing within classes. The school band, conducted by senior Christopher Valdez and band teacher Duane Mitchell, played sets of holiday music between the various games.
Photo Credit: Reggie Quero
.
December 14, 2009
Htoo Htoo Lu
Laughter. Hugs. Enthusiasm. Team work. There was a sense of unity as ASB leaders bonded with special education students by decorating cookies together. Rather than baking cookies during the allotted time, the sweets were prepared beforehand to give students more time to decorate the treats. During the holiday celebration, they also made Christmas tree ornaments out of paper.
“We are trying to establish a relationship with these special education kids by recognizing them more,” activity director Helen Paris said. “It’s like Link Crew, except ASB is linking with special education kids.”
ASB held the Christmas feast Dec. 10 as a continuation of their efforts to reach out to special education students. Instead of wearing the usual Thursday business attire, ASB students wore red and green.
“It was wonderful. [ASB students and special education students] all got to know each other really well,” special education teacher Mary DeLeon said. “Now they would greet each other even outside of classroom.”
Since the feast, special education students have been dropping by the student center and helping around on occasion. For example, they helped clean the student center and around the campus.
“When the sprinklers near the amphitheater were broken, they watered the plants by hand so that the plants won’t die,” Paris said.
Special education students showed their appreciation for this feast by making placemats and thank you cards for the ASB leaders and teachers who helped make the event possible.
“I loved the feast. I loved them. I can’t wait to see them again,” senior Alex Haro said.
ASB began this tradition four years ago as a way to reach out to special education students.
Often times, special education students do not have the chance to participate in any clubs, sports and other extracurricular activities. Until four years ago, this feast has always been held in the student center. Over the past four years, the feast has expanded and moved into the cafeteria.
In the future, ASB plans to get an ASB-special education wing on the campus in which both the ASB leaders and special education students will work together to grow plants and flowers.
.
November 13, 2009
Htoo Htoo Lu
Major changes in the content of the vending machines have taken places in all high schools across California since the beginning of this school year.
Large Gatorade bottles have been replaced by smaller, more expensive ones; healthier fruit juices have taken the place of sodas; and only healthy snacks are now available.
Arnold Schwarzenegger in 2005, set healthy standards for foods sold in California public schools. This bill went into effect for all beverages July 1, 2009.
As a result, it became required that all beverages sold on the school campus be one serving size, making the containers smaller and more expensive.
It is cheaper to package something bigger; as more material is used, the price of the material decreases. Also, prices for the beverages raised to a minimum of $1.25 In addition, the school is not to sell any snacks or sodas that are not in compliance with the law within 30 minutes of before and after school.
The law states that schools can still have vending machines, as long as soda isn’t sold during school hours and the 30 minute periods before and after school.
In order to still offer alternatives to the students and still be in compliance with the law, soda machines are to be added near the drama department and the gym in the future.
Activities director Helen Paris plans to put timers in the soda machines so that people can’t buy soda until thirty minutes before and after school. However, soft drinks are still available to students throughout the whole day.
More snack varieties have also been added to the vending machines, giving students more choices despite the restrictions. New varieties include apple juice, V8, yogurt pretzels, Fruit by the Foot, Cliff bars, Odwalla bars, healthy chips, etc.
“I’ve done everything I can to honor the law and offer alternatives to students at the same time,” Paris said.
The school only makes around $1000 per year through these vending machines, receiving a 15% commission off of the food and drinks sold.
Even though the school receives little profit from the products in vending machines, the school continues to offer these services to students.
“Everything we do here is not for profit, but for service,” Paris said.
As of right now, the school has eight vending machines all over the campus. However, Paris is planning to add more varieties of vending machines such as a Slurpee machine and a frozen yogurt machine to the school campus.
by Nicole Doan
.
November 13, 2009
Keerthika Ramakrishnan
The amphitheatre packed 500 to 600 students for the Halloween rally, and almost 800 students and faculty members were fed.
“The Halloween rally at lunch on October 30th attracted the biggest crowd I have seen in all my years at Washington,” activity director Helen Paris said.
There were barely any seats available for students who came late to rally. The Halloween rally has been a tradition at Washington High School for the past 20 years.
Unlike other schools in Fremont who usually have international kitchen for a week, Washington hosts barbeques throughout the school year. The rally is funded by money from ASB cards. Most of the money collected through the buying of ASB is returned to students in the form of rallies. Students purchased food for a $1.00 without a costume and $.50 with a costume; teachers in costume got food for free.
In general, the Halloween rally usually consists of a costume competition, pumpkin carving and bobbing for apples.
The Halloween costume contest contained a wide range of costumes, from a Roman goddess to Po from Teletubbies.
First prize for pumpkin craving went to junior Kaitlin Loob, and senior Alex Tyler won first prize for apple bobbing.
The funniest costume went to the costume group, “Irony,” with two prisoners and a cop.
The most creative costume was sophomore Alex Rich’s hitchhiker.
The spookiest costume award went to the mimes, senior Emily Ives and senior Dylan Jarvis.
For the first time at lunch time, there was a live performance by a new R&B group called New Era who sang a couple songs to end the largest Halloween rally in Washington history.
.
November 10, 2009
Paige Castren
ASB is selling Christmas trees to generate money to buy a color marquee. Activities director Helen Paris found out about this idea when she went to a leadership conference. The long-term goal is to have a color marquee installed within four years. With a color marquee, ASB would have the opportunity to display ads and pictures; now the marquee can only display word messages.
“It will let us do so much more than what we can do now,” ASB president Seth Neumann said.
Leadership students have spent the month of October spreading the word through posters and the daily bulletin.
“Everyone we’ve talked to seems really interested,” Neumann said.
Students have to order the trees by Nov. 18. The different types of trees include Douglas, Noble and Grand ranging in price from $40 to $85. ASB is also selling wreathes and garlands. The trees are from Oregon and will be cut 48 hours before delivery. Students will be able to pick them up Dec. 5 from 9 a.m to 2 p.m. in the senior parking lot.
Even though not everyone celebrates Christmas, Neumann believes this an appropriate fundraiser “because it has a potential to make a lot of money which will benefit students.”
ASB does not have any other fundraisers planned at the moment for the marquee.
Photo Credit: Majelet Linsao
.
October 19, 2009
Briana Terry
At a goal of raising $4,000 to donate to the HERS Breast Cancer Foundation, our school gathered the community and its students together to spread the awareness of breast cancer.
ASB secretary and senior Lauren Floro came up with the idea of walking for breast cancer. She was inspired by “Relay for Life,” an event that gives people around the world a chance to celebrate individuals who have been directly or indirectly affected by cancer.
Floro asked activity coordinator Helen Paris for her opinion on hosting the event; Paris thought it was a great idea.
Paws for a Cause is a non-profit charity walk in honor of national breast cancer awareness month, which would be a new tradition at our school.
As participants for the charity walk lined up to sign in, others lined up to get “paws” to show which individuals affected by breast cancer they were walking for. The paws represented lost, love and awareness of breast cancer.
“I lost two of my grandmas, from breast cancer, leaving one with one breast. Before it could spread they had to cut one of my grandma’s breasts,” senior Casarah Catucci said.
At the starting line, a ribbon was shown to symbolize the beginning of our first annual walk. As the ribbon was cut, families and friends raced around campus. Most walked, while others decided to run theirs laps. Having to walk five laps, students received stamps to show their number of laps they completed.
Junior Carmelle Coleman felt the walk was a great idea to spread awareness. She came out and walked around campus for her mother.
“My mother got diagnosed with it, so she’s been fighting towards breast cancer since last June. Thankfully she’s been cured for a year now,” Coleman said.
The students and community enjoyed themselves and came together to celebrate and spread breast cancer awareness.
At the end of the day, Paris was pleased and happy with how the first annual Paws for a Cause turned out. More people than what was expected showed up to help out with the walk. The community took the time to bring success to the big event.
“Paws for a Cause will now be a tradition to the Huskies family,” Paris said.
.
October 16, 2009
Alex Tyler
Due to the financial troubles caused by the recession, the school budget from the district is projected to be cut even more than last year’s midyear cuts. In an effort to reduce teaching costs, class sizes were increased and five teachers and one counselor were removed from their posts. However, the school has around 100 less kids than was projected for the budget. This means that the school budget will be cut even more.
The district bases their budget decisions on how much money was spent last year and on how many students are enrolled in school. Each student gets a certain amount of education money, as specified by the district.
“School budgets weigh kids’ lives against a business decision,” Helen Paris said.
This year, teachers’ pay was reduced by 3%, and their paid work hours were reduced by five hours. No instructional time was taken away, but many of the teacher workdays were removed. These include the parent conferences.
Carleen Jung, the school accountant, said that there will definitely be more cuts in mid October. The district is contemplating increasing class sizes even more.
Cindy Audiat, the school secretary already has to limit their use of consumable resources such as paper and custodial supplies.
“We lucked out this year.” Audiat said, in reference to the new desks that the district provided to all schools this year.
.
October 16, 2009
Bach Phan
The long standing tradition of the Hello Dance will not be part of the school year this year.
The Hello Dance was going to feature new things. It was going to include a state of the art speaker system, which is supposed to be better than what most DJs have. The school also bought DJ software and 200 songs from iTunes. This was all an attempt to have our school be able to DJ ourselves and not have to hire professional DJs. The administrators were excited to bring about this new change, but things got in the way.
According to activity coordinator Helen Paris and principal Linda Fernandez, the money raised for the dance was not going to be able to offset the expenses of running a dance. The money that is needed to run a dance can be hefty. The district requires one custodian for every 150 people, five paid teachers, one administrator, Officer Foote and eight to ten parents to supervise. The overall cost to set up the Hello Dance would have been about $2000. The school tries to at least break even and have money for classes to invest in Senior Ball and Senior Week.
“We have to be frugal with our budget this year,” Fernandez said.
Paris and ASB expect every class to have at least $15,000 by their senior year going towards Senior Ball. There has to be at least 40 people to clean up and set up the dance.
“I’m not going to have a massive amount of manpower and have nobody show up,” Paris said.
Overall the ticket sale, which was believed to about 60 people buying tickets, is at about 50. This would not have been worth the expenses or the effort to put up the Hello Dance.
There are several reasons as to why the ticket sales for the Hello Dance were so low. The Hello Dance was moved to a later date because Paris planned to have the Up Yours Lunch prior to the dance. We did not get the API score increase that we were looking for. The Hello Dance was also scheduled at the same time as the Shoreline concert headlining Brad Paisley.
Next year Paris plans to move the dance two weeks earlier to make the desire to go more prevalent. They also plan on having the students buy the tickets sooner than they did this year.
.
October 16, 2009
Paige Castren
PTSA has plans to install two half basketball courts between the gym and the 50s wing, tetherball courts where the picnic tables by the pool are now, and a volleyball court by the E-building to encourage the implementation of a “closed campus.”
The project was more expensive than expected. ASB contributed some money, but they couldn’t give more because of work that needed to be done on the marquee. PTSA received about $500 by asking people to donate at MAZE day last year. They also charged more for the brunch sales during finals and had more people sign up to do the mock SAT. Thus, they had about $4000 at the end of the 2008-2009 school year.
PTSA president Melinda Kufeld said this will be a “direct benefit to students.” Since there are plans down the line to close the campus during lunch, PTSA wants to provide on-campus activities for students. They want to encourage students to stay on campus because doing so will cut down on lunch time traffic.
“It would be safer for everyone,” Kufeld said.
PTSA treasurer Francine Louden is working directly with the Fremont Unified School District. She says that the biggest thing they need is people to donate and install cement for the tetherball courts. Once the district gives the final approval, the next step will be to order the equipment. Louden hopes that at least the basketball courts will be installed in about four weeks.
Kufeld met with activities director Helen Paris and principal Linda Fernandez, ASB president Brian McMahon and ASB member Melanie Wilhite at the end of last year, to discuss possible project ideas. ASB members gave specific ideas about what students would want to do during lunch time. Kufeld wasn’t surprised that they wanted basketball and volleyball courts, but she was surprised about the tetherball courts.
“High school students are big kids at heart. They still want to play games they played at recess in elementary school,” Kufeld said.
Since the kickball tournament last spring was such a success, Paris figures that students will enjoy these new facilities.
“Kids can play and laugh and have fun,” Paris said.
ASB is going to be responsible for checking out balls to students and putting up the nets and certain lunch time activities days.
Kufeld aspires this will have a positive impact on students. She knows this will not appeal to everyone, but she hopes it will be a good investment.
