Twirp Week 1965

 

Update on our Memorial Fund

 

Dear Classmates,

Congratulations to the Class of 66!

Our total raised last week grew to $12,639 for our Memorial Fund, which more than met our match of $10,000 giving us $22,639. We are so close to reaching our overall goal of $25,000. We hope those of you who are still planning to send a gift will put us over the top.

As we have said the earnings from investing the fund will serve two purposes: granting a yearly $500 scholarship in Liz/Bette’s name to a deserving Amphi student; and, if we receive enough money, annual grants to Amphi to strengthen educational programs at the high school. We think we can do both this year. One of our classmates has stepped forward to fund this year’s $500 Elizabeth Andersen Scholarship for a deserving student. Knowing we can count on all of you to reach our $25,000 goal, we have asked the administration to identify a current high school program in need of funds that we could support with a $500 grant this year.

In giving to our fund, in addition to considering a gift to honor Liz/Bette, you can also make a gift in memory or in honor of any of our 1966 classmates or teachers. You would simply note on your check or in the memo line at the Amphi Foundation site who you are honoring with your gift. At the end of the funding cycle we will share a list of all those people who were remembered or honored by the fund. 

If you have any questions about how to make your donation, please reach out to Leah Noreng at the Amphi Foundation. She is more than happy to answer questions or explain the online donation process. 520-822-6439

You may donate through www.amphifoundation.org or by sending your gift to Amphi Foundation, 701 W. Wetmore Road, Tucson, AZ 85705.  Please add notation, “Class of 1966 Memorial Fund” on your gift and if honoring a specific individual, include their name as well.

Your Class Memorial Fund Representatives, Dave Nix, Susan Scott, Erica Richter.

Details About Our 56th Reunion

 April 23, 2022

Skyline Country Club

7 P.M.

Now, this is just the start.

It would have been Oct 2021 but Covid-19 seems a greater risk than ageing.

We are planning on honoring Liz.

We will have 60's music , good food,. Congenial gossip, etc.

Now, we need some decent pics of Liz. 

And someone to oversee the 'Gone but not forgotten' table.

And anybody who can still carry a tune!  Please.

Judy Monsoon Grillo

541-625-3285

Please text first

judithkarenartist@gmail.com

Good Times!

  "Dinner and drinks in honor of Bette/Liz at Tohono Chul with Nancy Woods French, David Loutzenheiser, Mary Clark Berdell, and Sandy King Ruhl, April 16, 2021

Starting a Memorial Fund

 

Starting a Memorial Fund

 

We want to explain the steps your classmates took to set up the Amphitheater High School Class of 1966 Memorial Fund. We hope to make our first awards this year.

 

    Susan Scott reached out to all of you once the suggestion of a Memorial Fund was made. We wanted to include all of you in the decision and your support and enthusiasm for the fund was inspiring and heartwarming to everyone.

 

    Dave Nix conferred with Dave Loutzenheizer to understand his thoughts about the fund and what he felt would have been important to Liz as a way to determine how to honor Elizabeth Andersen.

 

    Erica Richter reached out to Leah Noreng, Executive Director of the AHS Foundation to discuss the possibility of setting up a fund like this. We are the first high school class to ask for help with this process, but she is very excited about our fund and the opportunity to invite other AHS classes to participate in setting up funds of their own.

 

    Dave Nix, Erica Richter and Leah Noreng met with a Senior Gift officer from the Community Foundation of Southern Arizona. Mary Louise Luna helped us determine the best way to set up our fund. Our goal was to create an Endowed fund which offered a solid investment return at the lowest administrative expense.

 

    Leah Noreng agreed to oversee and administer our fund grants with no additional fees. As a parent of three children in the school district, she also meets regularly with the administration and understands the schools needs from a student and parent perspective. All valuable tools when we decide what our grant should support. Leah has an Advisory Board made up of alumni, administrators and current parents to support her efforts and decision-making. She confirmed they would be willing to help oversee our fund as well.

 

    AJ Malis and Glenda Arrfa have agreed to work with the teachers and students to identify those high school candidates who should receive Elizabeth Andersen Award for Contribution to Community and the Class 1966 Memorial Fund grant each year.

 

*The AHS Foundation

We are very lucky to have Leah Noreng, AHS Foundation Executive Director as our voice with the administration and students at AHS and the Community Foundation of Southern Arizona. Our Memorial Fund is in good hands! For over 30 years, the Amphi Foundation’s mission has been to promote academic excellence through the expansion of resources to benefit the education, development and well-being of the students of the Amphitheater Public School District.

The Foundation’s programs are grounded in 3 focus areas:

          1) Student Preparedness (which includes the program that Liz became so passionate about in recent years, the Clothing Bank)

          2) Innovative Learning Opportunities for Students and Educator Support

          3) Opportunities for Students to become College, Career and Community Ready. Over the past five years, the Amphi Foundation has invested over $1,000,000 directly into classrooms and for the benefit of all Amphi students thanks to continued and generous support from our community

Meeting with the Principal and Vice Principal of AHS-AJ Malis and Glenda Arrfa

 

Principal and Vice Principal of AHS-AJ Malis and Glenda Arrfa

Our meeting with these two young and energetic educators was informative and inspiring. We knew that Covid was a big challenge for the high school, but the school has been very innovative in handling the challenges of a multi-lingual, shifting student population in a pandemic environment. The movement of students in and out of the high school programs averages 40-50% over the course of the year. A large proportion of these students are part of a refugee population.

 

2021: Projected 2020-21 AHS enrollment was 1350 students. Reopening of school in person at the end of March 2021 resulted in 1000 students returning.

 

Although in person school has reopened, the high school still offers students who want to study remotely, the opportunity to do that through Zoom classes.

 

Amphi Academy is a third program that runs in parallel with the in-person school and online program. The content is provided by a company called Engenuity. This program is for students who have trouble working during regular school hours either because of behavioral issues or job challenges. It is self-paced and monitored so both the students and the instructors know how well they are achieving their goals. Students do their work anytime in a 24 hour period.

 

A new program called RISE-with funding from the recently passed Covid relief bill is offering catch up programs for students in the morning, evenings and on the weekend.

 

Challenges: Communication, family engagement and family stability are the biggest challenges facing families and school administrators at AHS today.

 

There are between 26 and 32 spoken languages on campus at any given time. Transportation to school events is a challenge and the cultural expectation for parent involvement is not a model parents from these different cultures know or understand. In most cases they can’t support their students in their desire to attend college as they have no experience themselves. There are a large number of first generation college students coming from the Amphi population.

 

Economic challenges are a huge issue for the parents who are ‘living in the now’ often moving their families from apartment to apartment to take advantage of ‘free first month rent’ offers. Family stability is a big challenge with students moving between different family members and living arrangements. The well know Tucson nonprofit-Youth on Their Own-originated at AHS to help provide for students without a stable home base.

 

We were assured in our meeting that any and all grants to the school would make a big difference to AHS students. For example, a student with a first year scholarship to Pima Community College would need to live at home and might require transportation to the college. A grant to cover transportation to college could make all the difference to that student. A $1000 grant would allow that student to ride the bus everyday to classes for a year.

 

Amphitheater High School is a school we can all be proud we attended. Current students who overcome challenges and complete their high school years at AHS are a group of young people to be admired and one the Class of 1966 can proudly support with our Memorial grant program as they take their next steps beyond high school.

Amphi High School-Yesterday and Today

 

Amphi High School-Yesterday and Today

            Amphitheater High School opened in 1939. As the second high school established in Tucson, it has a long history and has produced many graduates well-known in the local community as well as many that have gone on to national prominence. 

 

            For much of the twentieth century, the Amphitheater area was home to middle class families, and the prosperous Catalina Foothills area also fed into Amphitheater High School.  The opening of Catalina Foothills High School in 1992 led to many college-bound, middle class students leaving Amphitheater High School.  As Tucson has grown rapidly in the past twenty-five years, many middle class families have moved out of the city limits to unincorporated suburbs or to higher-income areas like Oro Valley.  Today the Amphitheater neighborhood is a low-income, high-mobility area.  Amphitheater High School is surrounded by mobile home parks, apartment buildings, and small bungalows.  Once-thriving stores and service businesses have been replaced by convenience and liquor stores, high-interest lenders, and other small businesses mixed in with vacant store fronts.  A former mom-and-pop doughnut shop near Amphi is now a drive-through Checkmate offering payday loans.

 

            Within this transformed neighborhood, Amphitheater High School continues to be a haven for students in the community.  The school grounds include large grassy sports fields, a performing arts center, a thriving library, and a sparkling pool.  School buildings are organized around a courtyard where students mingle on outdoor tables and benches.  In the past eight years, Amphitheater High School has transformed and created a strong career and college-ready focus for the students in the community. 

            The Amphitheater High School community is rich in cultural diversity.  This is a strength that allows students to be exposed to other life experiences, perspectives, ideas, and learning methods.  With its demographic profile and large immigrant population, Amphitheater High School is one of the most diverse high schools in Tucson, with the feel of a global neighborhood school.

Race/Ethnic Distribution - 2019-2020
Asian	Black	Hispanic	Native Am.	White	Multi-racial
4.7%	10.9%	63.3%	3.4%	16.1%	1.6%

 

 

 

 

            Despite the recent successes in campus environment and programmatic changes, Amphitheater High School is a place of great need.  Even before the covid-19 shutdown, the average mobility rate of families in the Amphitheater High School boundaries for the past 5 years is 39%.  This means more than a third of enrolled students have transferred in or out campus in a given school year.  The pandemic has only aggravated this instability – Projected enrollment for 2020-2021 was 1,350 students – when in-person classes resumed in the last week of March, only 1,000 students returned.  While some of the shortfall is students who are streaming their classes at home or have shifted to the online “Amphi Academy”, others are simply no longer in school – perhaps permanently.  This constant turnstile of students in and out of classes creates a unique challenge for academic success for students on the move and a disruption to the learning process for students that remain. 

 

            The Amphi area has become a center of refugee resettlement – the student body draws from 26 or more different home languages at a given time.  This creates barriers to communication between school, student, and family.

 

            Families in our community continue to struggle financially.  Over the past 5 years, 81% of students qualify for the federal Free and Reduced Lunch program.  Living at such low-income levels lead families to focus on daily necessary provisions rather than academics.  Even transportation to school, and to school-related events, is a challenge for many. 

 

            Disruptions include losing utility service at home, parents having to work extra jobs, buying inexpensive, unhealthy food, and often times not being able to subscribe to internet services that have proven to be a necessity in education in the past year.

 

            The cumulative effect of these challenges is reflected in the fact that Amphitheater continues to have lower performance on standardized assessments than Arizona and national norms. 

 

However the school has worked hard and achieved some notable progress in the last 5 years. AHS has achieved:

 

•       a three-year increase in AzMERIT algebra I and algebra II proficiency scores.

•       a three-year increase in the average composite ACT scores for seniors. 

•       an increase in the number of students enrolling in the REACH Gifted and Talented Program

•       a 33% increase in the number of students enrolling in at least one College Board Advanced Placement course (SY18-19 to SY19-20).