Rocket Report – Friday, August 20, 2021
Dear Parents/Guardians,
We hope you and your daughters are transitioning well into this school year. Please continue to contact your daughter’s guidance counselor or deans with any questions or concerns, as needed, throughout this school year. We are here to help make this year a great one for your daughter and you!
This week we had our first family competition of the year with the freshman family cheer off! This annual tradition started nearly two decades ago when freshman homerooms created and performed spirit cheers with their entire class. One by one, each of our nine families shares their family and class spirit with the class. The cheer off is each family’s first competition against one another and their opportunity to earn family points. Most importantly, this experience offers the homeroom a fun bonding event early in the semester to collaborate and celebrate with one another. Congratulations to our winners: 3rd place, Kingstown; 2nd place, Booterstown; and 1st place, Limerick!
HEALTHY AT SCHOOL: As mentioned in our parent orientation meetings earlier this week, we are proud of the fact that 99% of AHS’s faculty and staff are fully vaccinated. This not only demonstratesour commitment to the overall health and safety of our school community but also our commitment to you and your daughters to make every possible effort to continue in person learning by minimizing the risk of isolation or quarantine of our faculty and staff.
As of today, 54% of our students are fully vaccinated. We continue to encourage individuals to get vaccinated not only to avoid the possibility of catching and spreading COVID but also to decrease the risk of quarantine. If your daughter has been fully vaccinated, and you haven’t already done so, please send a copy of her vaccination card to attendance@ahsrockets.org. Having her card on file will avoid delays with trying to obtain this information from the health department and allow her to continue attending school and participating in athletics and other activities without interruption.
For our full Healthy at Assumption COVID Protocols, please click here.
CALENDAR NOTES:
- 9:15 WEDNESDAY SCHEDULE: We will begin our 9:15 Wednesday schedule next Wednesday, August 25.
- GRAND OPENING/ROCKET DAY: We cannot wait to share our exciting new changes with you! We know you are eager to experience all that our campus expansion has to offer for your family. That’s why we hope you will join us to celebrate the GRAND OPENING of our new expansion and Volleyball Rocket Day on Saturday, August 21. Student-led or self-guided tours will be available from 11:00 a.m. – 3:00 p.m. and volleyball games are at 2:00 (Freshmen), 3:00 (JV), 4:00 p.m. (Varsity). Free admission for all games!
CAMPUS MINISTRY:
- ASSUMPTION PARENT PRAYER: Our parent prayer group will begin meeting on August 31 from 8:30 – 9:00 a.m. in our new chapel and will continue to meet each Tuesday morning throughout the school year. Please park in any open space and enter the school through the main entrance. During the year, we pray for every student by name twice. Please join us for any or all of these opportunities!
- RETREAT UPDATE: All students are now able to access retreat applications on Student SharePoint or in the Retreat and Guidance offices. Freshmen will still receive applications in their homerooms, but they are available in print and online. Senior, junior sophomore parents – please encourage your daughters to select a date and turn in their applications ASAP to ensure retreat availability and preparation time. Freshman and senior parents will receive information in the mail regarding their daughter’s retreat. This information will be sent out 2-3 weeks prior to the retreat, so keep an eye out for those documents in the mail. We are looking forward to retreats this year and hope you will encourage your daughter to attend. Please contact JULIA SCUDDER if you have any questions;
STUDENT INFORMATION SHEETS & HANDBOOK AGREEMENT FORMS – DUE TODAY: If you have not returned your daughter’s updated information sheet and/or handbook agreement forms, which are both due today, Friday, August 20, please do so by Monday. The handbook agreement form can be found in the front of your daughter’s school planner. The yellow personalized student information form was given to your daughter in homeroom last Thursday morning. Please review the information we have on file for your daughter regarding contacts, phone numbers, email address, and home address. A parent or guardian will need to make any updates or corrections, sign it, and have your daughter sign it. She can turn it into homeroom or the main office.
PARENT ORIENTATIONS: Special thanks to our freshman, sophomore, and junior parents – we had wonderful attendance at our parent orientations both in person and virtually. If you were unable to join us for the informative evening, please contact your daughter’s guidance counselor. Parents may also review information from the orientation sessions through these links: FRESHMAN, SOPHOMORE, JUNIOR, and SENIOR. Please feel free to contact us if you have any questions.
CARPOOL LINE: PLEASE AND THANK YOU: The carpool line and traffic flow have been improving daily—thank you for making this happen! Please continue to follow the direction of our staff in the parking lots in the morning and afternoon. A note about St. Raphael: in the afternoon, we can direct some traffic out through St. Raphael’s church lot but cannot in the morning as some of our students are parking in the church lot at that time. To keep the trend going in a good direction, here are some of the tips we shared at parent orientation meetings earlier this week. We ask all those who drop off and/or pick up students from Assumption to please keep them in mind:
- If you can, please come earlier in the morning or later in the afternoon; we begin supervising students at 7:15 in the morning and provide after-school supervision until 4:30 in the afternoon (4 p.m. on Fridays). If you arrive before 7:30 in the morning or after 3:15 in the afternoon, the traffic is much lighter and you can breeze through the carpool line.
- If you come early in the afternoons, you absolutely may not wait/park on Tyler Lane. It’s against the law to park in the middle of the street and there’s no shoulder there for pulling off the road; it also can be a source of accidents and actually hurts our flow of traffic. Students have been notified that if they are picked up (or dropped off) on Tyler Lane, they will receive detentions.
- When traveling to/from campus for drop-off and pick-up, avoid Bardstown Road and Tyler Lane as much as possible. For example, instead of turning left from Bardstown Road to get in the carpool line, use the neighborhood streets to get to Bardstown Road north of Tyler Lane and then head south on Bardstown Road so you can turn right into the carpool lane. Here’s an annotated map of our neighborhood streets that can help you work out an alternate route that will help you avoid Bardstown Road and Tyler Lane and save you time: Neighborhood Streets around Assumption NEIGHBORHOOD STREETS AROUND ASSUMPTION
- When you are exiting campus, TURN LEFT on TYLER, instead of turning right and going to the light at Bardstown Road. When you turn left, go to Eleanor Avenue, the first cross street, and then turn left (to take you down to Gardiner Lane for easy access to the Watterson Expressway) or right (to take you up several blocks before making another right to access Bardstown Road away from all the traffic).
- You can avoid the carpool line all together by making a quick stop at Gardiner Lane Shopping Center to drop off or pick up your daughter. They don’t mind as long as it is a quick stop and you don’t use the parking spaces near the stores that they need for their customers. It’s very short block and a safe walk for your daughter from the shopping center to Assumption.
CARPOOL LINE “NO IDLING” REMINDER: A message to parents from the ECC: The Environmental Concerns Committee has made many changes over the years to help AHS be a more sustainable community. Several years ago, a no idle sign was put by the main entrance to the CAC so in the afternoon drivers would turn off their cars while they waited to pick up their students. The no idle zone is so important because car exhaust can damage not only the environment but our health. Idling puts off hazardous pollutants such as carbon dioxide and can cause serious health problems such as asthma, heart disease, chronic bronchitis, and cancer. It also causes serious environmental issues; carbon dioxide is a primary contributor to global warming. If you idle for one hour, you waste about $2 on gasoline, and the more you do it the more it adds up. Instead, we invite parents to shop at the campus store or simply arrive just a few minutes before school dismisses. We thank everyone for helping the earth and invite everyone to take part in a greener community.
MOCK SCHEDULE NIGHT – Save the date! We will have our annual Mock Schedule Night for parents on Thursday, September 2, beginning at 6:30 p.m.; parents should report to their daughter’s homeroom for opening prayer and announcements. We are asking your daughter to text you a picture of her schedule and her homeroom number by the end of the school day on September 2 so you can have it handy for Mock Schedule.
SCHOOL PICTURES: School pictures for freshmen, sophomores, and juniors will be held on Tuesday, August 31,and Wednesday, September 1, during study halls. Pictures will be made in your daughter’s school uniform. Please help your daughter make sure her uniform is clean and in good repair for her school portrait. All students must have their pictures taken for our yearbook. Students will receive envelopes with purchase information in their homerooms. They will return those envelopes directly to the photographer with payment on the day their pictures are made.
SCHOOL SAFETY WEEK: Next week is Assumption High School Safety Week, and we will be practicing all four of our emergency drills during the week as required by Kentucky law. We will have a lockdown drill, fire drill, earthquake drill, and severe weather/tornado drill. This is a good time to remind you that in the case of a true emergency/disaster, parents will be notified and kept informed via Emergency Alerts; students will be released only to their parents or other authorized guardians and will have to be signed out before leaving; students who provide their own transportation to/from school must have parent/guardian permission to leave verified by school personnel prior to leaving, provided it is safe for them to do so; if it is safe to enter the school building, parents will gather in the school theater to await the release of their daughters; and if the building is not accessible, parents will gather in the back parking lot of on our east campus (former American Legion property) to await the release of their daughters. Please be sure that you are signed up for Emergency Alerts in PowerSchool and that we have current and accurate contact information for you and others we could call upon if there would ever be an urgent situation involving your daughter. Also, please note that the person you designate as an emergency contact is the person we would contact only if we cannot get in touch with a student’s parents/guardians—the name you provide as the emergency contact should not be the same as either the first or second contact because we will attempt to get in touch with them first/before going to the emergency contact.
DROP/ADD DEADLINE: Our drop/add period for classes ends on Tuesday, August 24. If you or your daughter has questions about her schedule, please contact the appropriate dean of studies: Student Last Name A-K: JUDY FIELDHOUSE, Student Last Name L-Z: THERESA SCHUHMANN
DUAL CREDIT COURSE REGISTRATION: Attention, parents of students enrolled in dual credit (DC) courses: If your daughter is enrolled in DC English, she began her registration for this course through University of Louisville this week and parents will be receiving an email from UL to confirm this enrollment that they must sign and return by next week. All other students enrolled in dual credit classes will be enrolling in the next two weeks. In late September, your daughter will want to keep an eye out for an email from KHEAA to take advantage of the Dual Credit Scholarship, which pays for two classes for every student in the state of Kentucky throughout her high school career. If you have questions regarding registration or paying for dual credit courses, Dean of Studies Judy Fieldhouse will be in the cafeteria on Mock Schedule Night to answer your questions. Please stop by and see her!
POWERSCHOOL GRADES: PowerSchool grades are available for your view via your PowerSchool account. The following reminders are important to keep in mind:
- PowerSchool grades are provided as our first line of communication to our families regarding your daughter’s progress, but it is important to keep in mind that no first semester grades are final until January 2022.
- As indicated in the Student Parent Handbook, if a student is absent or misses class due to retreat or any other school-related function, we use a PLACEHOLDER ZERO to help her remember to make up this work. This PLACEHOLDER ZERO will be replaced with the actual grade once the student completes the makeup work and the teacher is able to enter it in PowerSchool.
- Teachers are asked to have grades as up to date as possible by the 1st and the 15th of each month.
- If you or your daughter have a question regarding a grade recorded in PowerSchool, please have your daughter reach out to the teacher with her question. You are always welcome to follow up with the teacher as well.
ACT PREP: TorchPrep is offering a couple of options for prepping for the ACT in September and October. We had a great group of AHS students participate in the June workshop and had amazing results. Please visit their website for additional information about their five-week boot camps and “Weekend Warrior” program: TorchPrep
COLLEGE INFORMATION NIGHT FOR SENIORS AND PARENTS: Leigh Jackson and Kimberly Habich, college counselors, will be visiting every senior English class from August 23 through August 30. Our counselors will provide detailed information about the college application process to every senior. To further assist seniors and their parents with the college process, there will be a College Information Night for all seniors and parents on Wednesday, September 1, at 6:30 p.m. via ZOOM. The link for the program will be sent out prior to the event. Admission representatives from a variety of colleges and universities will discuss the college application process. This panel will provide helpful hints and advice to seniors as they begin their own college process. If you have any questions, please contact LEIGH JACKSON.
ASSUMPTION PARENT ORGANIZATION (APO) UPDATE:
- APO REPRESENTATIVES: Representatives will be reaching out soon to all parents by email to introduce themselves and share information on upcoming events and parent involvement/volunteer opportunities.
- ROCKET SPECTACULAR BENEFIT DINNER AND AUCTION: Mark your calendar for our 41st Annual Rocket Spectacular, which will take place on Saturday, January 29, 2022. Rocket Spectacular is our largest fundraiser, with all proceeds benefiting the financial needs of our students. We are currently looking for sponsors for this event. Sponsors can be individuals, families, or businesses. Visit www.ahsrockets.org/support-ahs/rocket-spectacular/ to view the sponsor packet, which describes our sponsorship levels. More details to come!
ROCKET PARENT NETWORK (RPN) NEWS:– If you are interested in planning events and meetings for the Rocket Parent Network, we invite you to attend our first meeting of the year on Monday, August 30, at 6:00 p.m. on Zoom. Here is the link to join the meeting: JOIN RPN ZOOM MEETING ON AUG 30 AT 6PM
Sincerely,
Martha Tedesco
Principal