Week 5

Week 10: October 19-26th

New Beginnings

We had a strong and busy start to our second quarter! After a good week of conferences staff and students took a well deserved week off. I have been asked by a few people lately why we have the increased shorter breaks within the school year. With Fall break, Thanksgiving break, Christmas, and Spring break it may seem to outsiders that students spend far less time in school than they used to. This is a fair question that I wanted to address with our community.

A phrase you will hear often around Victory School is "For the Kids". Having a Fall break is no exception. The purpose in having a fall break, and in some cases a mid-winter break around President's Day, is to extend the school year. Research suggests that students who come from at risk families, which many of our students do, experience significant learning loss when they are not in school but learn at equal, or even higher rates, when in school. Adding shorter breaks throughout the year allows us to keep the same number of school days while shortening the Summer break in order to prevent learning loss. Schools across the nation have coupled the school year changes with targeted help for their most at risk students and are seeing great progress. We are always looking to follow best practices for our students and families and modifying the schedule is just one more way we are doing so.

GCU Campus Visits

We came back from break and immediately sent our juniors and seniors on a campus visit to GCU. Ms. Shir and Ms. DeSpain took the group of students to GCU where students got to tour the school, see important parts of campus, and most importantly sign up for areas of interest and spend some time in those areas. We don't want to limit those opportunities to our juniors and seniors so our Freshmen and Sophomores will get their chance on Tuesday, October 20th. If you are a parent of a freshman or sophomore and have not signed and returned the permission slip yet please do so by Tuesday morning so that your student can get the chance to see one more option for continuing their post high school education. Here are some pictures from the Junior and Senior day so you can get a small picture of what they got to do. The group with the skeleton was a health sciences group, the group with the cups and the cones was a computer science/engineering group that had to program a robot to follow a path they created.

GCU parent permission form

From the Classroom

As many of you know, we made some changes to the schedule. We are starting 15 minute earlier due to a change in bussing companies. While we know this isn't easy for staff, students, or families, it was a needed change. Thank you in advance for ensuring your students are up and ready to go for our new 7:45 start. It will be a positive change in the long run.

We will also be sending out progress reports this week so keep your eyes opened for those. Students will receive copies but we will also send them to addresses on file as well. We apologize for the delay. There were personnel changes and glitches with our Powerschool system that caused us to have to get creative around our first quarter progress reports. All future progress reports will come directly from Powerschool and your ability to check grades will be up and running in the near future.

Finally, during advisory this week our seniors got the opportunity to work on their college applications and FAFSA forms. These forms allow them to access scholarships and grants to help them pay for their next educational steps. Many of these are scholarships that DO NOT need to be paid back which opens doors for ALL students to pursue their post high school career goals. It is fun to see the wide variety of things our students want to pursue and we are excited to see where they all wind up!

VFA Character Trait of the Month!

Athletics

Soccer

Due to come cancellations early in the season the soccer guys were busy last week and will be very busy this week as well. They guys continue to work hard and improve their skills. They wound up tying their second game last week and are hoping to break into the win column before the season ends. They have a busy week planned so make sure to come check them out. Also, mark your calendars for Tuesday, October 26th for senior night. See details below.

Volleyball

Volleyball has a big week coming up this week! Be sure to join us for Senior Night at the Maryvale YMCA on Tuesday, October 20th to celebrate our girls and all the ways they have grown this season. They are excited to finish strong and hope you can make it out to support them!