| Appomattox Regional Governor's School for the Arts and Technology | |
|---|---|
| Address | |
| 512 West Washington Street Petersburg, Virginia 23803 |
|
| Information | |
| School type | Public, Magnet high school |
| Founded | September 7, 1999 |
| School district | Chesterfield County Public Schools |
| Area trustee | Chesterfield County |
| Executive Director | Dr. James Victory |
| Assistant Directors | Veronica Kouassi Larry Joyner |
| Grades | 9-12 |
| Enrollment | 350 |
| Language | English |
| Campus | Urban, Historic |
| Color(s) | Green, Gold, and White |
| Mascot | Dragons |
| Affiliation | none |
| Focus Areas | Dance, Literary Arts, Instrumental and Vocal Music, Musical Theatre, Theatre, Technical Theatre, Technology, Visual Arts |
| Athletic Conference | |
| Website | Official Site |
The Appomattox Regional Governor's School for the Arts And Technology (locally and colloquially sometimes known as ARGS, ARGSAT, Appomattox, or the Governor's School) is a public regional magnet high school in downtown Petersburg, Virginia.
One of 18 Virginia Governor's Schools, it draws students from 14 localities: Chesterfield, Richmond, Petersburg, Dinwiddie, Colonial Heights, Hopewell, Prince George, Powhatan, Sussex, Surry, Charles City, Amelia, Southampton and Franklin City.
Contents |
Formerly fiscally run by the Petersburg school district, ARGS is now under the fiscal control of Chesterfield County. It receives approximately $7000 for each student from their home districts. The other primary sources of funding are private grants, federal grants, state money and individual donations. The school has a Governing Board, composed of representatives or superintendents from each participating district, that functions in much the same role as a school board but also rules on admissions and other school-specific issues.
While purported to be an overflow hospital during the Civil War, and later a morgue, in reality ARGS is the extensively renovated Petersburg High School, located at 512 W. Washington Street in downtown Petersburg, Virginia.
The building first opened its doors as ARGS on Tuesday, September 7, 1999. For the first operating year, the school was home to nearly 90 students in the ninth and tenth grades. Currently the school serves approximately 350 students in grades 9-12, with an ever-increasing student population.
Once accepted into the school, students must maintain a GPA of 2.5 and conform to all of the standards of the regional board. The student is required to maintain good academic standing and may remain in the school as long as they reside in a participating school district and funding school. The school also teaches dual enrollment.
In addition to the common core classes, ARGS offers specific "tracks" in specialized classes for a student's focus area. These include: Performing Arts: musical theatre, theatre arts, technical theatre, modern dance, jazz dance, ballet, vocal music, instrumental music, and piano performance; Visual Arts: sculpture, painting, drawing, graphic design, photography and film studies; Literary Arts: poetry, fiction, and non-fiction; and Communication Arts/Technology: computer programming and engineering.
In the 2004-2005 school year ARGSAT introduced the PowerSchool program which allows parents to view grades, attendance, and teacher comments regarding their children at any time. It also allows students to check, in real time, their grades and for missing assignments.
At the beginning of the 2006-2007 school year, another communications service was introduced to the faculty and students of ARGS. Microsoft's SharePoint system is now used by most teachers, focus areas, classes, and staff members of the school as a communication area. This new system allows teachers and students to log in and view daily announcements, deadlines, important dates, club information, and sometimes individual class assignments from any computer with internet connectivity. ARGS I.T. migrated from Sharepoint by the end of the 2010 school year for a Wordpress site.
Near the end of the 2009-2010 ARGS I.T. implemented Google Apps in full. This has provided faster, more reliable, and more accessible email for faculty, staff, and students. Class assignments are now made available on the much simpler Google Sites, while Google Docs enables students to collaborate on projects quickly and easily from the comfort of their home computer.
100% of Virus Protection was removed from all computer during the summer of 2010 and was then replaced with Application Signing that was built into Windows 7 and Server 2008. This has proven to be effective at keeping data safe while no longer having to pay the outrageous costs of AV.
ARGS graduated its first senior class in June, 2002. In the few short years of the school's existence, alumni of the Appomattox Regional Governor's School have enrolled in many prestigious colleges and universities, including Bard College, Berklee School of Music, Butler University, Christopher Newport University, Cincinnati Conservatory of Music, Cooper Union, Duke University, East Carolina University, Elon University, Emerson College, George Mason University, Hampton University, The Hartt School, Harvard University, Howard University, James Madison University, Louisiana Tech, University of North Carolina School of the Arts, NYU Tisch School of the Arts, Oberlin Conservatory of Music, Old Dominion University, Parsons The New School for Design, Penn State, Princeton University, Sarah Lawrence College, Savannah College of Art and Design, School of Visual Arts, Shenandoah Conservatory, Spelman College, University of the Arts, University of Virginia, VCU School of the Arts, Virginia State University and Virginia Tech, Yale University, to name a few. The 73-member class of 2006's total financial aid/scholarship award is currently the largest in the school's history, topping 2 million dollars.
In June 2007, to commemorate the fifth anniversary of ARGS' first graduation ceremony, the ARGS Alumni Association was formed, to help connect the growing alumni and coordinate planned efforts for an alumni presence at the campus.
ARGS offers its students four sports with six teams: Boy's and Girl's Tennis, Coed Soccer, Boy's and Girl's Basketball, district winning Cheerleading, and Girl's state winning Volleyball. The school has no fields of its own, using local Battlefield Park for Tennis and Cameron Field for Soccer.
All students who are accepted into ARGS are required to have at least a B average in the seventh grade. They are also required to have completed Algebra I by their ninth grade year although occasionally exceptions will be made and an Algebra course outside of school will be assigned. It is highly recommended that applicants have completed a course in Dance, Art, and/or Music, Basic Computer Science, and a Foreign Language. Students are required to apply and go through an adjudication process. This process consists of an interview with the department head of the focus area in which the student is applying and possibly an audition, depending on the department.
|
|||||