Director’s Notes- Back to School August 2019
Welcome back to the 2019-2020 school year! We are so excited to see everyone! While we have just two weeks until school starts, at NESA the fun has already begun! Dance intensity is today and tomorrow at Roosevelt HS for our Dancers!
Dates to Know
Wednesday, Aug. 7th 9:30-12:30 New student orientation. (We will be feeding the kids pizza at the end, just FYI!)
Wednesday, Aug. 7th 1:00 Musical Theater Season Auditions start.
Thursday, Aug. 22nd 6:30-8:30 Mandatory Parent Meeting. (For ALL NESA parents, new and returning!)
LEE dates students should attend if possible
Aug. 6th 9am-12pm LEE Senior prep day
Aug. 6th 12pm-3pm LEE Junior Prep day
Aug. 7th 9am- 3pm LEE Sophomore prep day (any incoming NESA sophomores can go to LEE Prep day after new student orientation)
Aug. 8th 9am-3pm LEE Freshman prep day
Aug. 8th 6:30-7:30pm LEE parent orientation
NEW STAFF!!!
There are some new faces on the campus this year, which I am sure you will be seeing soon.
For starters, LEE has a new Principal! We welcome Mr. David Crowe to our school! Look for an email from him today! Additionally, we have a new Curriculum AP for LEE, Mrs. Michele Ramirez-Castaneda. LEE is lucky to have such a great team!
At NESA we have three new instructors joining us this year! Mr. Jonathan Martinez will be our new Instrumental Music Director, Ms. Micky Pelletier will be our New Technical Theater Director and Mrs. Amie Charney will be our new Creative Writing Director. Throughout the coming year we will be sharing our teacher bios and more with the community! Additionally, all students will be contacted by their teacher before the start of school, so keep an eye out on your emails.
Construction Update
Construction continues on the new building that will house our MTs, IMs, Dance, CW, and TTs. It is starting to look like a building, but we do not anticipate completion during this school year. We look forward to 2020-2021 when we get a shiny new space!
In the meantime, construction has been hard at work renovating our existing auditorium. We have new seats (some which can accommodate our slightly larger guests), new handicapped seating, new carpet and a new projection system. Watching the process this summer was very interesting and we are eager for the community to come see the results!
AP registration changes for the coming year
We want you to be aware of the New AP Registration process for the 2019-2020 school year. College Board has made some exciting changes in the resources that will be available to students and teachers. Please take a moment to review the attached information regarding these enhancements. Along with the change to resources, it is necessary to increase the cost of Non-F/R rate to $40 and F/R rate to $20 per exam fee. In addition, College Board is implementing an early fall deadline for exam registration and exam fee collection. Therefore, the North East deadline for this registration and collection process will be October 24th for the 2020 AP exams.
In order to make this a smooth transition period, we are asking that students create a College Board Student Account if they do not already have one. (https://www.collegeboard.org/) Please refer to the attachments for additional information.
Please see the attached items. This will also be coming from the LEE counseling team a bit later.
AP Registration – Students To-Do List
ap-2019-brochure for NE website2
Parent Volunteers
Need to be DPS cleared so you can volunteer this year? Knock this out ASAP! Click on the link for instructions. It’s fairly simple. Everyone who is with students when volunteering needs to be DPS cleared.
Volunteer to stuff packets
The LEE PTA needs your help (and yes, all NESA students are also LEE students so this is OUR PTA!)
If you are available Thursday, August 15th anytime from 8 am until completion of the few thousand packets that need to be stuffed, please sign up to assist! Use this link to sign up:
https://www.signupgenius.com/go/8050944A5AB28A2F49-backtoschool
I am looking forward to a great 2019-2020 school year. As always, please reach out if you need anything. I send a weekly Director’s Notes email home to all families through email on Fridays and the Director’s Notes can also be found on my blog https://nesadirector.edublogs.org for your convenience anytime.
Enjoy the last few weeks of summer!
Sarah Pagona
Director of the North East School of the Arts