Arlington Public Schools will hold a parent meeting on the topic of alcohol, tobacco, and other drug use prevention. The forum will be held on March 1 from 7–8:30 p.m., at Wakefield High School, 4901 S. Chesterfield Rd., 22206, in Room 110. Mimi Fleury, president of Community of Concern, and Beth Kane Davidson, director of the Addiction Treatment Center at Suburban Hospital, will talk candidly with parents about alcohol, tobacco and other drug use prevention strategies. Staff from the Arlington County Department of Human Services Substance Abuse Unit and the Arlington Public School’s Substance Abuse Specialists will be available to talk with parents as well. The meetings are aimed at providing substance abuse prevention education and early intervention services to APS students.
The 50th Annual Northern Virginia Regional Science and Engineering Fair will be held on Sunday, March 6, at Wakefield High School, 4901 S. Chesterfield Road. Students, parents and community members are invited to come out and view the projects, which will be on display in the boys gym, from 1-3 p.m. The awards ceremony is scheduled for 3 p.m. and is open only to students who are part of the competition, and their families.
About 300 students from public, private and parochial schools in Arlington, Alexandria and Falls Church will have a project on display. The categories vary in subject matter and include topics from behavioral science to zoology.
Community members are invited to observe the successes and accomplishments of the many students who are participating.
For more information, contact fair director Constance Skelton, at 703-228-6163.
Arlington Public Schools has launched a new design for the school division’s Web site. The changes will make the site more user-friendly for the more than 100,000 parents, students, community members and staff who access the site each month. The new design was scheduled to replace the current home page on Feb. 15, and APS staff expect to complete the conversion of the designs for the balance of the pages on the site by March 1.
In addition to being converted to a more user-friendly design, the code for the Web page has been completely rewritten, using XHTML (Extended HyperText Markup Language). Because XHTML is much newer than HTML, the language in which most current Web pages are written, the site will be much more suited for the wide variety of applications being made available over the Internet.
The site is compatible with Microsoft Internet Explorer, Firefox, Safari and Netscape Navigator, the top four browsers that citizens currently use to access the APS Web site, and is easily accessible from such devices as PDAs, screen readers and phones.
For more information, contact webmaster@arlington.k12.va.us
A countywide ceremony at 7 p.m. on Tuesday, Feb. 1, in the Washington-Lee High School auditorium honored Arlington’s top PTA Reflections contest winners.
Superintendent of Schools Robert Smith; School Board members Libby Garvey, David Foster, Elaine Furlow, Mary Hynes and Frank Wilson; and County Council of PTA President Larry Fishtahler were on hand to congratulate the students and present awards.
The annual Reflections program, sponsored by the National PTA, stimulates creativity by recognizing achievement in music, literature, visual arts and photography. Students from pre-kindergarten through 12th grade are eligible to enter, and over 1,300 Arlington students submitted pieces at their local schools under this year’s theme, “A Different Kind of Hero.” Each school’s first-place winners are recognized at the county ceremony. The works that receive first place in the county level of Reflections enter into competition in the Fairfax District. The contest continues at the state and national levels.
Harish Mudegowda Basavaraj and Prakash Rao Sattu from Arlington have graduated from Texas A&M University in Commerce, Texas. Both have earned a master of science degree and were among 704 students to receive diplomas at the Fall 2004 Commencement.
Adrienne Miller, a 2003 Yorktown graduate, was named to the dean’s list of the University of Virginia for fall of 2004. At the same time, she maintains her first-base position on the U.Va. Club Softball Team. As a student-run independent organization, the team participates and excels in tournaments with UNC, Ohio State, Penn State, James Madison, Va.Tech, University of Maryland, University of Georgia, Princeton and Navy, the 2004 National Champions. This spring the team will travel to Colorado and to the National Championship in Annapolis, Md.
The Arlington County Sheriff’s Office is now accepting applications to the Virginia Sheriff’s Scholarship Program. The scholarship is open to Arlington resident students planning to attend or currently attending a Virginia college or university and majoring in the criminal justice field. Application forms can be found at www.virginiasheriffs.org/vsi/scholarship/index.htm. For more information call Major Karen Albert, Director of Administration, at 703-228-4461. The applications must be submitted to the Arlington County Sheriff’s Office by April 1.
Terence R. Whitehead and Molly E. Guilfoyle, both of Arlington, earned dean’s list status for the fall 2004 semester at Coastal Carolina University. To qualify for the dean’s list, freshmen must earn a 3.25 grade point average, and upperclassmen must earn a 3.5 grade point average and be enrolled full time.
Wilson Ward Kemp, a senior at Washington-Lee High School, was the winner of a competition to design the 2005-06 decals for Arlington County vehicles. His design, a photo called "Ice Blanket," shows a view of Key Bridge from an ice-covered Potomac River. The other finalists were Laura Downes, 17, a junior at Wakefield High; Stephanie Claros, a 19-year-old senior at Wakefield; and Timothy Kouril, 17, a junior at Yorktown High and Arlington Career Center. This was the first year that high-school students were asked to submit designs for the decals at the suggestion of a local resident, Dr. Gerald K. Haines, immediate past director of history for the Central Intelligence Agency.
The Arlington Community Foundation Scholarship Program will be awarding $150,000 to 90 students in May 2005. Scholarships range from $500 to $5,000, and more than half of the awards are renewable. Scholarships are available to Arlington high-school seniors, previous Foundation scholarship recipients, and other post-high-school students. Scholarship application deadline is Friday, March 4. One application form makes a student eligible for all applicable scholarships. For financial-need-based scholarships, Feb. 1 is the recommended deadline for submitting the Free Application for Federal Student Aid (FAFSA). This can be filed online at www.FAFSA.ed.gov, or by completing and mailing the application, available from high-school counselors or the Arlington Central Library College and Career Section. Eight new scholarship funds have been established for 2005. See www.arlcf.org, e-mail jhadden@arlcf.org, or call 703-243-4785.
Catherine Elizabeth Neel of Arlington recently graduated from the College of William and Mary with a master’s degree in business administration.