Happy Friday! One more week until school starts.

NESA had a great week! Staff has been working diligently this week to get everything ready for the students’ return. We expect to have a great year. MTs had auditions all week and new to NESA students had orientation. Please see click here NESA new student Orientation 19-20 no video to view the slideshow we reviewed in new student orientation in case you missed it or are just interested!

NESA Staff ESCAPE!

Check out our NESA teacher team building activity! I am lucky to work with the best teachers! And super-smart! We escaped a Master of Illusions in the day’s fastest time!

Thank you!

A big thank you to all the parents and kids who came to help out with orientation and a shout out to our pARTners board, who fed the teachers this Friday before our team building afternoon where we escaped the room!

Concurrent Enrollment

If you are a student interested in concurrent enrollment of some type, ie online classes, please see the attached letter from the Counseling office. Many NESA students do take courses online, in summer and in night school so they can take more electives and NESA classes during the day, so we always encourage this! However, we want to make sure everyone is following the steps needed so that credit is given for the work done. ap-2019-brochure for NE website2

Have a great weekend. Do something fun for the last week of summer!

-Sarah Pagona, Director of the North East School of the Arts

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. 7^th 9:30-12:30                New student orientation. (We will be feeding the kids pizza at the end, just FYI!)

Wednesday, Aug. 7^th 1:00                             Musical Theater Season Auditions start.

Thursday, Aug. 22^nd 6:30-8:30                     Mandatory Parent Meeting. (For ALL NESA parents, new and returning!)

LEE dates students should attend if possible

Aug. 6^th 9am-12pm LEE Senior prep day

Aug. 6^th 12pm-3pm LEE Junior Prep day

Aug. 7^th 9am- 3pm LEE Sophomore prep day (any incoming NESA sophomores can go to LEE Prep day after new student orientation)

Aug. 8^th 9am-3pm LEE Freshman prep day

Aug. 8^th 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 24^th 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.

https://www.neisd.net/site/default.aspx?PageType=3&DomainID=5507&ModuleInstanceID=21537&ViewID=6446EE88-D30C-497E-9316-3F8874B3E108&RenderLoc=0&FlexDataID=56012&PageID=9340

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 15^th 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

spagon@neisd.net

June 10, 2019
Dear NESA Families,
All students who are enrolled in any of the NEISD magnet schools are provided shuttle transportation from the home campus to the magnet school; shuttle transportation will be provided back to the home campus. The family is responsible for getting the student to the home campus to board the shuttle transport.  Departure and return times from and to the home campus will be viewable on the NEISD transportation page one week prior to the first day of classes.

Beginning with the 2019-2020 school year, all students who plan to utilize shuttle transportation to and/or from a magnet school will be required to register for the shuttle transport.  Please register your students(s) on the NEISD Transportation home page.  The transportation registration will be open June 1 and close August 2, 2019.  The purpose of a registration process will assist transportation to properly secure the number of buses required at each campus and ensure that all bus drivers have a roster of students who ride each shuttle transport.

Questions regarding magnet school transportation may be directed to NEISD Transportation office at 210.356.9200.

Tomorrow is the last day of school!

A few reminders as we wrap it up:

NEXT YEAR: FIRST DAY OF SCHOOL — August 19, 2019; LAST DAY OF SCHOOL— May 28, 2020

 

Big NESA Calendar dates to start the year:

New Student Orientation: August 7^th 9:30 meet in NESA lobby

Mandatory Parent Meeting: Aug. 22^nd  6:30-8:30 in the Theater

 

And some things still relevant for this year:

-Seniors- Meet Thursday morning in the auditorium at 8:45 for a pre-rehearsal rehearsal and last minute reminders for graduation. Graduation rehearsal starts promptly at 1:30 at Freeman Coliseum.  If you are taking the bus there from LEE, the bus starts loading at 12:15 and will return around 3:45/ 4:00. You can also drive there or be dropped off.
Graduation is on Sunday. Please do not forget your NESA stoles!

Mainstage shows for 2019-2020

The Theatrical productions for the 2019-2020 school year were announced this afternoon. I hope you will plan on joining us for Mama Mia! This Fall, Carrie: The Musical, in Winter and The Merchant of Venice this Spring!

Summer Assignments:

Please check with your teachers to see if your student has summer assignments. I know CW and VAs do!

 

Thank you to everyone reading this for a wonderful first year here as NESA Director. I am so looking forward to year two! I hope everyone has a fun relaxing summer and we will see you next year!

 

Sarah Pagona
Director of the North East School of the Arts

And there goes May…

Pics of our seniors

Check out the senior’s pics on my blog site! Nesadirector.edublogs.org
Most of the seniors came out to celebrate their journey from high school to college and the excitement was palpable!

 

I would like to introduce the NESA community to our new Creative Writing Teacher!

Mrs. Charney will be starting with us in the fall and we couldn’t be more excited. She has both a passion for teaching kids and a huge passion for creative writing.

Amie Charney has an MFA in Creative Writing from the University of California Riverside PD, and a BA in Literature and Writing, with a minor in theater, from California State University SM. She has been teaching high school AP English, AP Seminar, American Literature and World Literature for the past seven years, most recently at the International School of the Americas. She also teaches creative writing fiction workshops for adult writers. Amie is a published author and has short stories and poetry published in literary journals as well as a chapbook. Her first full length novel is due for publication in the Summer of 2020. Amie studied fiction at UCR as her main discipline, but also screenwriting, playwriting, and poetry. This year, she won the San Antonio Writers Guild Award for fiction, and most recently appeared at the Tobin Center in Listen to Your Mother, a staged reading of original work. Amie is originally from Seattle, Washington, and is a proud Marine Corps wife (her husband, Michael, just retired). She is mom to Lauren, a sophomore at Texas A&M, and Alex a junior at NESA.

 

Announcements:

JR Class Rank

Information about Junior class rank over the summer will be sent out in the LEE Principal newsletter next week so current Junior parents keep an eye out for that info!

Summer School Registration Deadlines

Thursday, June 13th:

High School Summer School (online only)

There will be no on-site or late registration at the summer school campuses.

Chinese Summer Camp

For Incoming 9th Grade at LEE and ISA (JUNE 10-13, 2019 from 8:00AM- 4:00PM)
Camp Location: ISA
Cost to students: free, the students will bring their own lunch from Monday to Wednesday, Thursday we will have lunch at a Chinese restaurant after the San Antonio Museum of Art visit.

Overview of the program: The Chinese Summer Camp provides the immersive learning experiences for the students from our filter schools (Nimitz, Jackson, and ISA admitted freshmen for the school year 2019-2020.
The camp provides our students with a unique opportunity to have a first-hand experience of Chinese language and culture. Students study Chinese each day in the morning and engage in a range of fun activities in the afternoon. The last day of camp we will go to San Antonio Museum of Art (Asian Wing), and we will go to a local Chinese restaurant to have Chinese food.

For questions on the Chinese Summer Camp Contact Information via email preferred: xxu@neisd.net
Xueling Xu

Writer’s Camp

Check out the flyer from UTSA .
SPR19 Writers Camp Flyer(1)-1nvz2h6

 NESA Summer Camp

Our multi-major summer camp is meant for 6-9^th graders and should be a lot of fun! More information and registration is available at http://www.tinyurl.com/nesasummercamp2019

 

One more school week to go. I know everyone is checking grades and attendance. Last chance for Saturday school is this Saturday. Please contact me or come see me if you need anything!

 

Sarah Pagona

Director of the North East School of the Arts

Director’s Notes May 24, 2019

Well we just wrapped up our last five day week of this school year.  Monday is a holiday, and school gets out on a Thursday this year, which means we have two four day weeks left! That’s 8 days left of school.

Please please please take this time to check your student’s grades (students take this time to check your own grades!). It’s getting down to the wire and I am seeing some failing grades.

And of course we are not done yet with all our fun!

Banquet is Sunday from 6-11 at the Hyatt Hill Country.

Freshman voice recital Tuesday at 7.

Senior voice recital Wednesday at 7.

Senior exams start on Thursday the 30^th. Exams for everyone else start on Tuesday.

Banquet Info:

Banquet tickets are still on sale through midnight Saturday night on the pARTners website. Banquet is open to ALL NESA students and their families. For more info see the pARtners site https://www.nesapartners.net/banquet

 

Expectations and guidelines for NESA Banquet 2019 (My note to students)

Banquet is almost here! This is a very exciting and fun evening, but also could be a time of great temptation to make bad decisions. In order to keep everyone safe we are asking that you understand and abide by the following guidelines:

-All school rules apply to banquet. This includes but is not limited to rules about tobacco (including vape pens/juuls), drugs, alcohol, weapons, and inappropriate conduct. Consequences for violations of these rules are the same as if they happened at school and can be life-changingly serious.

-This is NOT a public event. Everyone must have a ticket to attend and any persons who are not allowed on the school campus are also not allowed at the banquet. Again, the banquet is an extension of school as it is a school event.

– New security measures for banquet are being taken, including the presence of police officers, and the distribution of wristbands upon entry.

– Purses and bags will be checked upon entry by NESA staff and police for the safety and security of everyone attending.

-There will be no ins and outs allowed at the event.  If you have left something in your car, you will not be allowed to retrieve it and return. The same is true if you have procured a nearby hotel room. You will not be allowed in and out of the event. Period.

There is an outside area that students will be allowed into, but it will not be the lawn connecting to the parking lots. It is a contained and controlled area connected to the banquet hall.

Thank you for your adherence to these rules and for meeting the high expectations we have of you as NESA students!

 

Have a fantastic Memorial Day weekend!

Till next week,

Sarah Pagona, Director of the North East School of the Arts

Whew! STAAR testing is done for a while, AP testing is half over and we have something like 18 school days left. But we still have so much fun to come!

In the upcoming week:

This Monday a select few of our VAs will be honored by the NEISD school board!

Tuesday we have 800 Lb Film Festival! Join us for just $8. Tickets can be bought online at www.seatyourself.biz/nesa or at the door. It promises a full night of entertainment! Popcorn, candy and sodas will be for sale.

Saturday the 18^th is auditions and we do need volunteers still. Student sign up sheet is on the NESA office door but some parents help is also welcomed!

Saturday the 18^th at 7 pm is also our Creative Writing show- Growth, which includes our Senior showcase and a selection of underclassmen pieces as well. The show is free and will be a lot of fun! Our Writers are so talented!

Banquet T-shirt orders for this year’s commemorative banquet shirt are now being taken. Order forms can be found in the NESA office or attached to this message. Order forms are also going home with students.

There was a question about graduation tickets- and so I thought I would update everyone. Graduation is first come first serve seating, no tickets are distributed, and there is no limit to the guests you bring.

Happy Day to all the Moms out there! I hope the whole weekend is restful and full of love!

 

Sarah Pagona, Director of the North East School of the Arts

Happy Friday! You have two more days to catch Peter and the Starcatcher! It’s a zany, fun play and we hope you will join us!

Easy fundraiser- you can do this one!

Five Guys and Kendra Scott give back Fundraiser for pARTners is May 8^th. Just come eat a burger and NESA gets money. There isn’t a easier fundraiser!

Literary Magazine order-

CW Lit Mag pre-order closes on May 20^th. Money and forms can be dropped off at NESA office or with your favorite creative writer!

Audition volunteers needed!

Volunteers are needed for auditions May 18th. We need parent and student help! If you are interested contact your student’s director or Mrs. Pagona!

Testing this week

EOC Testing is this week. Algebra I is Monday, Bio I is Tuesday, and US History is Wednesday. Please make sure your student is well rested and ready to rock those exams!

AP tests also start this week, so keep those on your radar as well.

NESA Banquet Deadlines-

SENIORS! You MUST submit your bios by 5/8/19 or your bio will not be in the banquet program. You can do so by visiting www.nesapartners.net. You can also buy tickets there! Tickets are $40.

Upcoming calendar

Tuesday, May 7^th pARTners election meeting

Tuesday, May 14^th 800 LB Film Festival

Saturday, May 18^th Creative Writing show

Monday, May 20^th Senior Dance receital

Thursday, May 23^rd Literary Magazine Release party

Thursday, May 23^rd  Instrumental Music show

Sunday, May 26^th NESA Banquet

Angst film

Tuesday May 21^st at 6 pm in the PERC here on the campus of LEE HS there is an opportunity to screen a documentary called Angst. It is about teen anxiety and I have heard it’s awesome and certainly relevant.  Angst flier-y2r8n4

Have a great weekend! Stay Dry!

 

Sarah Pagona, NESA Director

Happy Fiesta! It’s another three day weekend! Visual Arts has State VASE this weekend, so wish them luck! May is coming up and May is always a very busy time of the year, so get some rest now! As we wrap up the school year, checking on grades and missing work is more important than ever!

Peter and the Starcatcher
The last MT show of the year, Peter and the Starcatcher is next week! Tickets are on sale online through April 29^th at 7:30 pm. After that tickets will have to be purchased at the box office. www.seatyourself.biz/nesa

800 LB
800 LB film festival tickets on sale now! General Admission seating in our auditorium for only $8! You can purchase your tickets online at www.seatyuorself.biz/nesa Just click on May 14^th on the calendar.

SR field trip chaperones needed
I still need a few parent chaperones for Sr field trip on May 24th. Email me if you are interested spagon@neisd.net

Summer school
Registration for NEISD summer school will be online on NEISD webpage starting April 30^th. Registration will only be online, not onsite. Summer school is at Madison HS this year. If you have questions, please contact the counseling office.

NESA Arts Extravaganza Summer Camp!
NESA’s first summer camp is open for registration. The camp is designed for grades 6-9 students interested in the arts. The camp will combine creative writing, basic cinema principles and lots of visual art! Camp dates are July 22- 26^th. See attached flyer or go to http://tinyurl.com/nesasummercamp2019 for more info!

Senior college shirt day
Seniors, wear shirt of the college you will be attending (or some other college swag!) for a group photo! Friday, May 10th

Exemptions
Exemption window will be from April 25^th – May 10^th. The exemption form will be available online where parents, students, and teachers will have access to print them out(when I get it I will send it out).  Hard copies are in the main office as well and can be picked up before and after school or during a student’s lunch.

Seniors! Bios for Banquet due
Seniors, please submit you bios and photos through this link https://www.nesapartners.net/banquet The due date has been extended to Wednesday May 8^th!!!!

Have a great weekend!

Sarah Pagona, Director of the North East School of the Arts