Charles Skidmore, principal of Arlington High School, sent the following update June 22, to parents and guardians. In this edition, we learn who among the staff has retired.

Goings-On At AHS

Graduation
We had a wonderful graduation on Sunday, June 8. It was hot, no doubt about it, but there was just enough of a breeze to make the heat bearable, and we survived without incident. Our student speakers were outstanding, acknowledging the equal amounts of work that teachers, parents, and they themselves had in getting through high school. Ted Dever, as the Faculty Speaker, did an outstanding job thanking students for all they had done from their Ottoson Middle School days through high school. Ted was at OMS when this graduating class was, so he had very specific memories about those years that brought smiles to all the students’ faces. 

Dean Rob DiLoreto did an outstanding job as emcee, making sure that every speaker was identified and the ceremony moved along according to the script. We took 97 minutes from processional to recessional! Many thanks to Nanci Ortwein, who oversees every detail of the graduation, and to John Flood, Mark Miano, and Paul Jolly and their maintenance and custodial crews who do yeoman’s work to transform Peirce Field into a setting suitable for an outside graduation.

Last Blast / Missing Yearbook
The all-night, postgraduation Last Blast party was also a great success. Many thanks to all the parents who work tirelessly throughout the year to make this happen. We are looking for a yearbook that did not get back to its rightful owner. The yearbook is full of signatures and Billy Hickey would love to get it back. His name is inscribed on the front cover. Please ask your children to check to see if they inadvertently have the wrong yearbook. If anyone finds the yearbook, please contact us so we can get it back to the rightful owner.

Retirees / Moving On
One of the melancholy parts of ending a school year is saying good-bye to long-serving teachers. The following teachers are retiring after many years of dedicated service to AHS students:

Marie Raduazzo (Miss Rad) – English Language Arts

Pasquale Tassone – Program Director Fine and Performing Arts K – 12

Marcia Glidden - Family and Consumer Science

Eleanor “Lally” Molina – Guidance Counselor

In addition, the following teachers are moving on:

Gary Magil – Science

Paul Ezzy – Science

John Janetti – Science

Erin Pinney -- Science

Steve Groccia – Physical Education

Ruth Flynn — Math

Rebecca Hawthorne – Math

Peter Cushing – Social Studies

Tammy Tobin – Social Studies

Corey Brown – English Language Arts

David Lang – Spanish

We wish our retirees and our departing teachers well in their next endeavors.

Teacher Appreciation
The Teacher Appreciation Committee and the AHS faculty would like to thank all AHS families who have donated food or money this year. Out final event was June 16- Luncheon for all Faculty and Staff using the donated funds.

Report Cards
We are hoping to get the report cards out in late June or early July at the latest. We have many incompletes and other adjustments to grades to take care of before we can run a final set of report cards, but we will get them out to you in as timely a manner as possible. If you do not receive a report card, please call the school during our summer hours, 8:00 a.m. to 2:00 p.m. It is possible that you are not receiving a report card because your child has a non-cleared hold slip. This means that a book or other school property has not been returned. That obligation must be cleared before we release 4th-term report cards.

Schedules
We will be working on schedules for the next two weeks in the hopes of sending those out in late July. The schedules will include a letter telling when guidance counselors are available for students who need to revise their schedules. Students will also be able to revise schedules on the first day of school if they are away during the summer.

Parent Advisory Committee
I had hoped to get in the 4^th PAC meeting that I had to cancel, but the end of the year work just overwhelmed my schedule. I will schedule the PAC meetings earlier in the year for next school year so we can take up some of the discussions we did not finish and apply, as possible, their outcomes to SY 2008 – 2009.

Unsubscribing to the Update
Last year we deleted all names from the update list because there were so many inactive addresses on file. This year we have approximately 800 addresses which seems just about right, so we will not be purging the list. If your child has graduated and you no longer want to receive the update you have to unsubscribe yourself. You can do so by going to the APS main page and completing the “Parent Notices” dialogue box in the upper right hand corner.

My Thanks
I mentioned in my graduation speech that this was my first four-year class at AHS. In some ways it seems hard to believe that I have been here for four years, and in other ways, I am so comfortable and happy here it’s hard to remember not being a part of this wonderfully supportive community. So, thank you for another great school year. Enjoy the summer.

Father's Day tradition

I was walking my infant daughter, Lea, in her stroller and she made no reaction as a dog snarled and barked at her rather menacingly. Because there is some deafness in my father’s family, I immediately concluded that my young daughter was hearing impaired. For the next several weeks, I was constantly sneaking up on her, shouting at her, popping paper bags behind her crib, and creating otherwise noisy diversions to make sure that she could hear. Of course, in each case, she could, and screamed her lungs out to prove it, but then some other non-reaction to sound would happen, and I’d be at it again. Finally, my wife, Marla, caught me at my mad doings and told me in no uncertain terms to, “Stop doing that to an innocent child!” which I did – reluctantly. I think poor Lea survived it all, although she does have a preference for sitting with her back to the wall and her eyes on me whenever I am in the room!

We were a little less raucous this Father’s Day than usual since it came fairly close to the May death of my father-in-law, Herb Zarrow. He was a wonderfully intelligent and kind man who, like so many of his “greatest generation” contemporaries, worked himself up from a working class, urban upbringing (Paterson, NJ) to become a suburban business and homeowner who took his obligations as a father and a civic leader seriously.   He was generous to his family and to scores of people he mentored in business and in his avocation of magic. (His Zarrow Shuffle is known by all serious, close- up magicians and many gamblers, and is said to have reinvented 20th-century card magic.)

What I have come to realize is that my most cherished memories of Herb have to do with the specific times where he approved of something I had done. He asked me once to translate a magic trick written in French that he was trying to decipher, and was pleased, in front of his friends, that I was able to do it. He read a speech I had written and took the time to send me an email saying how much he liked it. That’s the power that fathers, and father-in-law, have – to give us that nod of approval that validates what we are doing. As a father who tends to be more critical than approving, it was a good lesson for me to think about, and I pose it to AHS fathers as well – Have you let your son or daughter know how they’ve pleased you recently? It’s one of those simple things that fathers can do that mean the world to their children.

I am in and out through July and August, and the Main Office is staffed as well, so please feel free to call or email if you have concerns or questions.

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