Parent Newsletter #3: 8/8/25

Website: https://phs.piedmont.k12.ca.us/
Location: 800 Magnolia Ave, Piedmont, CA 94611
Phone: (510) 594-2626 | Instagram: @piedmonthigh

Parent Newsletter: Archives

2024-25 School Profile | Bell Schedule (Regular)

Road to Graduation | Yearbook Info | Student Handbook

College & Career Newsletter | Athletic Newsletter

Principal: Dr. Yoshihara

Assistant Principal: Mr. Marik

Dear Highlander Families,

It's go time. Monday is just around the corner and ready or not... Just a reminder that next week, we will be on the "Monday" schedule for 3 days. Please plan extra time for drop-off as the first day of school is always a bit more hectic than any other day.

We will have the First, First Day for freshmen and the Last, First Day for seniors. Please look for the tables of parent volunteers to give this out. Schedule changes are by appointment unless you do not have a class; otherwise, please report to the class on your schedule. Our counselors will be working hard to accommodate as much as they can starting Monday morning.

We will also have the informational, all-school assembly on Friday during Academy. Let's roll!

Warmly,

Dr. Yoshihara

August 11: First day of school!

August 11: Freshman--First, first day--donuts (or donut holes) will be served in the morning starting at 8:10 am.

August 11: Seniors--Last, first day--donuts for our seniors. Please look for the table to get your donut and a last, first day photo!

August 12: Boosters meeting (7-9 pm, offsite: Email kerin.elmquist@gmail.com for more info)

August 15: Parent Club meeting (9-10:30, AHT Lobby). Come and join our highly supportive parents who make our school such a great place to be. More info is below.

August 22: Senior Sunrise (6:30-8 am, TBD)

August 29: ASB Friday Fest (TBD)

September 4: Back to School Night (7-9 pm)

September 5: ASB Club Day (Lunch)

September 5: Senior Picnic Fest

Welcome class of 2029. We will be offering donut holes to all freshman starting at 8:10 am on August 11 at the main entrance of the school. Please look for our parent volunteers and welcome to PHS!

For the first week of school, we will have a modified schedule as follows:

August 11-13: We will follow the regular Monday schedule for the first three days of school.

August 14: We will follow the Thursday schedule.

August 15: We will follow the Friday schedule. During Academy, we will also be holding an all-school assembly in the gym. We plan for this to be an opportunity for our students to see the "whole school". We will introduce new staff, go over some quick school announcements and ASB will present something fun.

For students/families who were not able to attend either the New Student Orientation, Parent Orientation, and/or Student Walkthrough:

• Schedules will be available in Infinite Campus starting Monday morning.
• Students can go to the counseling office (20's building, in the bach) starting at 8 am to get your schedule.

We plan to enforce the requirement of all students to have tickets to home games this year. AD Small, ASB Director Adams, Mr. Marik, and myself have been finalizing how this will look. Students may purchase individual tickets to home games, but the ASB Activity Card will provide a much better value if you plan to attend any of the school athletic events. Here is what the PHS Value Package will entail:

• ASB Activity Card ($40): Access to all regular season home sports games, during school hours food giveaways, club grant support, rally giveaways. (Does not include dances or any playoff games.)
• Class Donation ($30): Donation to the class of 26, 27, 28 or 29
• Class T-Shirt ($20): Will be given to students in time for the spring rally
• TPH Subscription ($60): The ASB student package also includes a year subscription for 8 print copies of TPH ( the student news magazine) that will be mailed directly to families. Along with the print subscription, we will send email updates when new stories are published online for subscribers to read.

This package will be available in the Infinite Campus store. ASB stickers will be available near the start of the school year to affix to your child's ID card.

It was great to see your students (and some of you parents) at Walk-Through Registration this afternoon, and we hope all went well with picking up schedules, chromebooks, etc. A huge thank you to the PHS Parents' Club (PHSPC) Walk-Through Registration team of Nairobi Kim, Edit Kincses, and Kim Seto for their planning and coordination of the day, and thanks to all of the parent volunteers who assisted with schedules, photos, and questions. Our gratitude also to the PHSPC Hospitality Team of Cortney Allen, Cindy Hinman, and Shilpa Patel for initiating and hosting the first welcome-back breakfast for PHS teachers and staff this morning. And if you were in the office today, you may have seen emergency backpacks lined up against the wall for all the classrooms, so kudos to the PHSPC Emergency Preparedness Team of Holly Bybee and Amy McKenzie for preparing all of those.

The first Parents' Club meeting of the new school year will take place next Friday, August 15, at 9:00am in the Alan Harvey Theater. We welcome all parents/guardians of PHS students to our meetings and hope you will participate. Here is the agenda:

PHS Parents' Club Meeting Agenda - August 15, 2025

I. Welcome

II. Approval of Minutes

A. April 4, 2025 Minutes - Vote

B. May 9, 2025 Minutes - Vote

III. Acknowledgments

IV. Board Introductions

V. Administrative Staff Reports

A. Dr. Yoshihara

B. Mr. Marik

VI. Website - Photo

VII. Topics of Interests

VIII. Announcements/Reminders

Looking forward to seeing you next week,

Sally Baack and Dana Lung

Co-Presidents, PHS Parents' Club 2025-2026

Please fill out the Google Form via QR code available in the counseling office. Your counselor will be in touch.

Please review the entire student handbook (also will be a permanent link at the top of the newsletter) closely and note updates to the following policies:

• PHS Honor Society and Volunteer hours tracking
• Excused vs. Unexcused Absences
• Extracurricular Eligibility

Some important excerpts are below:

You will receive an email soon inviting you to the Mobileserve platform. Go here for more information.

Excused Absences

Absence from school shall be excused only for health reasons, family emergencies and justifiable personal reasons, as permitted by law, Board policy and administration regulations as outlined in PUSD BP5113.

College visits, outside sports, and trips for outside organizations are not excusable.

Short-Term Independent Study

If students are to miss school for reasons that are unexcused, they may apply for short-term independent study. There is a 15 day limit per school for this structure. If work is completed as outlined in the process, the student will not be coded as absent and will maintain academic standing and extracurricular eligibility. The process is outlined here.

Extracurricular Eligibility

24 or more total absences (excused and or/unexcused) may trigger an attendance review by an administrator. 24 period absences is approximately 5 days of school. Missing 5 or more days per quarter will mean a student has met the Federal threshold for Chronic Absenteeism. An attendance review may lead to extracurricular ineligibility pending circumstances.

Thank you to all our freshman families to were able to make it to the orientation--students in the afternoon and parents in the evening. We are so excited to welcome you officially on Monday. I have attached the slide deck and other resources below. We will have folks available on Monday to support and your freshman can get donuts (or donut holes) at the main entrance on Monday morning starting at 8:10 am. Please reach out if you have any questions.

• Freshman Parent Orientation Video (large file)
• Freshman Parent Orientation Slide Deck

Piedmont Community Service Crew is a youth-led organization in Piedmont that hosts a variety of service events every week from cooking to building tiny houses to environmental work. They are hosting a Kickoff on August 23rd from 4-6pm. Interested students (and parents) can fill out the form below or email Elena (26elenaoc@piedmont.k12.ca.us) or Stephanie (26stephaniele@piedmont.k12.ca.us) for more information.

Student Interest Form

So proud of our seniors for showing up this past Wednesday for 3 hours of "Boot Camp". We had a great turnout (about 60 students) for this inaugural event. We plan to continue this next year, hopefully at the end of the school year, giving students the summer to get a jump start on this.

We know library hours are limited and will be working to increase library access. We just wanted students and families to know how it will be as we start the year.

We want to thank our community for their patience on this nearly year-long process for our school mascot. I wanted to share that the costume has arrived, and we are working on the unveiling. I can share that staff is very excited about this. Some have even tried putting various parts of the mascot on. It looks pretty amazing up close. Please stay tuned for future updates on the mascot including but not limited to: naming our mascot and soliciting students who would like the opportunity to be the mascot at school sponsored functions.

Again, thank you to our Parents Club, Boosters, ASB, and Athletics for their generous contributions to make this happen. We could not have done this without you.

For this coming year, we will not be offering student planners to students. In the past, the student planner was tied to the student handbook and purchased for every student. The funds tied to this do not exist anymore and many students did not regularly use their planner after the first few weeks of school.

We have also digitized the student handbook and will release that for families in the next newsletter. We want to make sure to finalize some of the details and have the information assembly with students on August 15th first. In the meantime, we will work on some options for families that may want to purchase a planner for their student to use at PHS. We will post that in a future newsletter when that information is available.

To PHS Students and Families,

As you are deciding your schedules for next year, we highly encourage you to join the PHS Speech and Debate Team! Competing in debate is a great opportunity to develop public speaking and critical thinking skills in a welcoming, fun, and supportive community. We would love to have you on our team, no matter your experience level.

If you are interested, please reach out to team President Meher Bachher (26meherba@piedmont.k12.ca.us) for more information.

Thank you!

We have attempted to synthesize all of the start-of-the year donation requests in a single location. We know that the Education Foundation and Parent Club do yeoman's work in providing resources above and beyond state-allocated resources. We are truly grateful for their support. We also have exemplary programs that exist from additional donations.

Our teachers and respective programs (Athletics, ASB, TPH, etc.) truly appreciate these additional donations. They can be made within the School Store of Infinite Campus. Each of these items have specific account strings so they will go directly to the program/item(s) for which you've made the donation.

We have provided a brief description of what the donation will be used for without being overly detailed. We invite families who may have questions related to this to come to Walk Through registration where we will have people who can provide further information.

2025-26 PHS School Store Suggested Donations

I plan to offer student generated music on Fridays at lunch near the student center. Students may submit song requests using the following form. I will compiled the list by Thursday each week and play the top 20 or so submissions each week. Some guidances for songs:

1. The "playlist" will contain 20 or so rotating songs each week, based on student input.
2. Songs may not contain explicit lyrics.
3. Entrants must be current PHS/MHS students.
4. Students are allowed to make one entry per day.
5. I plan on the list to be "rolling" so songs can move up or down, based on demand/submissions.
6. I reserve the right to add yacht rock (e.g. Doobie Brothers, Christopher Cross) if the list is not filled out. 🤐

Per the City of Piedmont:

Magnolia Ave will be closed just south of the recreation center driveway to the corner of Bonita Aug 2nd from 7am and will reopen August 3rd at 7am.

Work is expected to begin on Saturday morning at 7am and be completed at 5pm. This work will be comprised of road grinding to scarify and remove the top layer of the old asphalt and install new coating of asphalt. We do anticipate there to be some loud noise. The contractor will do there best to minimize noise disturbances.

Magnolia Ave will be closed just south of the recreation center driveway to the corner of Bonita August 9th from 7am and will reopen August 10th at 7am.

Work is expected to begin on Saturday morning at 7am and be completed at 4pm. This work will be comprised of re-striping the asphalt with all appropriate markings/signage on the asphalt. We do not anticipate any loud noises or impacts to the community for this portion of the work

We wanted to give our families a heads up regarding attendance at home games. Last year, we offered a value package (see above) for purchase which allowed students to attend all home games for free. This system was not fully formed and hence not enforced. Since then, we have put in the systems to implement it in the current year.

What this means:

• Students who come to a home game may show the ASB "sticker" affixed to their student body card. This will admit them into all home games.
• Playoff games are not included in this.
• Students in grades 6-12 may attend home games without a parent/guardian, unless it becomes a problem.
• Students who do not have a sticker may purchase individual home game tickets for $5.
• Playoff game prices vary and are determined partially by NCS.

Please direct additional questions to AD Small or myself. Thanks for your flexibility as we adjust to this change.

Welcome back students...this year we are moving from "Track it Forward" to a new volunteer/community service tracking system called "Mobile Serve". It will take a little time to get this up and running and details on how to login will be provided soon. Please read the College and Career Center newsletter as that will be where instructions on how to login will live; it will also be added to the College and Career Center webpage. Thank you in advance for your patience as we navigate this new program.

We have been busy these past few months hiring a number of new staff who will be joining us this fall. Please help us welcome all of them.

• Nancy Taylor, English
• Richard Foldenauer, Mathematics
• Leighmarie Santiago, Mathematics
• Shufen Ma, Science
• Russell Griffith, Science
• Gabrielle Kashani, Social Studies (returning teacher)
• Sarah Houchin, VAPA
• Matha Ng, World Languages
• Tamar Freeland, World Languages
• Jack Toggenburger, Paraprofessional

Abigail Jakoby becomes the first ever delegate from Piedmont High School to attend Girls State, "a program that seeks to promote the traditions of patriotism and citizen, in an inclusive and civil environment" (source) as CSU Sacramento this past summer. This program from the American Legion Auxiliary allows young women to develop their leadership skills, learn about state and local government processes, and discuss important issues with peers from all over the state.

Abigail shares, "I had a wonderful experience meeting some remarkable young women, learning more about the significance of patriotism, and the challenges of government. My experience with Girls State was as educational as it was empowering." She adds, "following Girls State, delegates have been instructed to provide a report of their experience to their sponsoring organization(s)."

If you would like to learn more about this special experience, please contact Mr. Marik or Abigail.

PUSD Community - The counseling department will have changes in your student's counselor caseload for this coming 25-26 school year. Amanda Carlson will be working with all Millennium students this coming school year. She will collaborate with Stefanie Manalo Le Clair as she transitions to this new position. Also, Amanda will continue this year to work with her seniors -Class of 2026, last names A- G at PHS, to support these students with their post graduation goals which will include college letters of recommendation, schedule changes, graduation requirements. She will also continue to work with all PHS students with last names A & B. Ms Manalo- Le Clair will be our full time College and Career Counselor serving MHS and PHS students.

We appreciate your patience as we transition to our new positions.

Again, our new caseloads are:

Amanda Carlson:

MHS Counselor

A & B last names - PHS students

Class of 2026 A-G last names

Mon-Fri: Periods 1-5 - MHS

Mon-Fri: Periods 6 & 7- PHS

Chris Hartford:

D-O last names - PHS

Michelle Hoang

C - Last Names - PHS

P-Z last names - PHS

Stefanie Manalo-LeClair

College and Career Counselor

Our food service staff is back and ready to provide some delicious food to our students for bunch and lunch. Please see the following items below to learn more about the program.

• Welcome letter from Director Spinks and Asst Director Famy
• Directions for Free & Reduced Price Meals
• Meal Application
• Meal Accommodation Form

Per AB 3216 (Phone-Free School Act) signed by Governor Newsom in September 2024, all school districts must develop policies limiting or prohibiting phone use by July 1, 2026.

On May 28, 2025, the Board approved a policy that restricts cell phones to only be permitted before school, after school, and at lunch. This extends to all personally connected devices, including but not limited to:

• Tablets (e.g. IPads)

• Smartwatches

• Earbuds/earphones

• Laptops (beyond District-issued Chromebooks)

During class time, including Academy, all students shall place their phones into the “cell phone hotels”. They shall remain in the hotel until the end of the class. This shall include Academy.

Otherwise, the teacher may collect the phone (or personally connected device) for the remainder of the period or ask that office staff come retrieve the device. If office staff retrieves the device, a parent/guardian will be asked to come pick up the device.

During passing and brunch, cell phones shall be off (or on silent) in your backpack.

We will offer the following college entrance exams next school year. The dates are still tentative but we want to get information out to you know for planning purposes. All orders will be made through Infinite Campus School Store which can be done when the school year starts next year. If you have any questions, please reach out to Mr. Marik

• Pre-ACT - Saturday, 10/4/25 (confirmed)
• PSAT - Saturday, 10/18/25 (new date)
• SAT - Monday, 3/16/26 (still tentative)

The California Education Code requires the school site council to develop a Single Plan for Student Achievement. The purpose of the Single Plan for Student Achievement (SPSA) is to create a cycle of continuous improvement of student performance, and to ensure that all students succeed in reaching academic standards set by the State Board of Education.

The PHS Site Council serves as a forum where school staff, parents, and students can discuss a variety of issues that affect student performance at Piedmont High School. To support focus in the area of curriculum, agendas are typically developed in order to coincide with the curricular areas that are up for adoption.

If you are willing and able to join us on the school site council for this coming year, please email me. We meet roughly four times a year (fifth meeting may be added). I will then see if an election is needed and if so, put that out in a future newsletter. Parents and students are welcomed to apply.

Registration is now open for 2025-2026 FRC season for rising 9th-12 graders. FIRST Robotics is an opportunity to collaborate and compete in a supportive team-oriented and respectful community, learn technical, process, design, operational and business skills, and socialize with like-minded people and make lifelong friends. Students get real world engineering experience and practices, including hands-on prototyping, CAD, fabrication, and programming, engineering design process, and iterative problem-solving skills.

To learn more, view our FRC Highlander Robotics Slideshow 2025-2026, visit https://www.piedmontmakers.org/robotics, or email us frc8033@piedmontmakers.org.

• Kudos to our Parent Club for the wonderful staff breakfast on Friday. Special shoutouts to Shilpa and Cynthia for leading this effort.
• Much appreciation to PEF (Kim), Boosters (Keri), and Parent's Club (Sally and Dana) for your support at Freshman Parent Orientation on 8/7. You're support of PHS is amazing!