In the first Principal’s Chat of 2022, Alexandria City High School Principal Peter Balas covered a wide range of topics, including the schedule for choosing next year’s classes, the recognition of the ACHS counselors by the American School Counselor Association, and the dates for prom and graduation for the Class of 2022.
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Governor’s Health Sciences Academy and Guaranteed Admissions
In the 2018-2019 school year, a new program was introduced at ACHS called the Governor’s Health Sciences Academy (GHSA), a partnership between ACHS and the George Washington University School of Medicine and Health Sciences (GW SMHS). Its goal is to “address the workforce shortage of qualified healthcare workers in Virginia and the wider US,” according to the ACPS website.
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New Year, New District, New Lacrosse Coaches
If you are considering playing boys’ or girls’ lacrosse this spring season, you should get to know the new Alexandria City High School head coaches. Greg Derogatis has stepped up to coach the girls’ varsity, replacing Tiana Barlow, who resigned in January, and Robert Allen is the new boys’ coach.
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Company Collections
The Company of Books (TCB) lives at 1712 Mt Vernon Ave, and the small store is almost like a gateway into another world.
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ACHS Presents the One-Act Play Festival
The Alexandria City High School One-Act Play Festival is an annual competition between four student-directed one-act plays each under 35 minutes. The festival occurred over three showings: the first on Friday, January 14 at 7 PM, and the other two on Saturday, January 15, one at 2 PM and one at 7 PM. Four judges determined the winner of the competition, which went onto a local tournament at West Springfield High School on Saturday, January 29. The program is run by ACHS teachers Mrs. Hope Bachman and Ms. Leslie Jones.
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Balancing Class, Work
Alexandria City High School students have been struggling under the weight of school and work obligations. Time management is an important role in the life of a busy student; writing agendas, organizing schedules, coping with stress, and enjoying life as a teenager.
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Spotlight on Dr. Campiglia
Dr. Michelle Campiglia, previously an administrator at Fairfax County Public Schools, is working her first year as an administrator in the International Academy. With experience as an English to Speakers of Other Languages (ESOL) teacher and fluent in Spanish and French, she is excited to be back to working with English learners.
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Work Hard, Stay Kind: Spotlight on Academy 2 Principal, Mr. Thompson
Mr. Christopher Thompson is the Academy 2 principal at Alexandria City High School. Throughout his years, he has been a U.S. Marine, gone to Harvard University, and worked on capitol hill. His story begins in Jamaica, where he lived until moving to Florida at 11.
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Tensions Rise as Governor Youngkin Gives Anti-Mask Mandate Executive Order
Amid the rise of the Omicron COVID-19 variant, Governor Glenn Youngkin has issued an executive order barring schools from instituting mask mandates, which Alexandria City Public Schools has rejected in a January 20 School Board vote. Theogony interviewed students about their views regarding the mandate.
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Action For Advancement
African Americans in the United States have only been allowed to vote for 152 years, while the U.S. has been a country for 246. That is about a hundred years that Black people in the U.S. went without voting, and even when the 15th Amendment was passed, there were many ways they were still kept from voting as equal citizens. States began creating poll taxes, where people had to pay to vote, since the time of Jim Crow Laws. Mississippi had even made a “plan” (The Mississippi Plan) to create barriers like property ownership, and literacy tests to ensure their white leaders would be elected.
