By MICHELLE IRWIN
Due to the current situation with COVID-19 cases, our district has delayed the reopening of our schools for Phase 2. In a few weeks, we may have more information in allowing more students to return to school under Phase 1. There are many factors to reopen which include the utmost safety conditions, agreements between our district and our employee unions and implementation of PPE equipment at every school.
Later this month, principals will be reaching out to our school communities to get feedback and input on the 2021-22 school budget. We will seek your input and advice on how to invest our school funding to support the children who attend our Henry Cluster schools.
Even though we are doing online learning and we haven’t been able to engage with our students on campus, several of our students are being acknowledged for their dedication to our community and hard work with their academics. I’m very proud of these Henry Patriots:
Donte Wyatt, a Henry sophomore, was selected to participate in the Youth Ambassador/Jacobs Community Scholar Program at UC San Diego. The Youth Ambassador/Scholars Program is a year-long initiative designed to train local 10th and 11th graders in the best practices of community oversight of law enforcement; to plan outreach and engagement events within the Scholars’ own communities; and to collaborate on policy proposals aimed to improve public safety for all community members in San Diego. We are so proud of Donte’s dedication to our community!
Benjamin Broudy, a Henry sophomore, won the 2020 Congressional App Challenge. The Congressional App Challenge — the official student coding competition of the U.S. House of Representatives — is an initiative encouraging American students to learn to code and inspiring them to pursue careers in computer science.
“Urging students to pursue these careers is important not only because of the COVID-19 crisis, but because we are also facing a larger competitiveness and innovation crisis in America” said Rep. Suzan DelBene (WA-01) and Rep. French Hill (AR-02) in a joint statement. “The Congressional App Challenge inspires students and workers to pursue these technology careers.”
Benjamin will receive official recognition from our member of Congress, and his app will be displayed in the U.S. Capitol for one year.
Patrick Henry High School sophomore Audrey Freeman has been elected next Lieutenant Governor of Key Club Division 21. In the selection process, Audrey called upon her Key Club peers to take the time to understand others, including foster children who face challenges unique to their situation, and those who may be questioning their gender identity or transitioning to a new lifestyle. She appealed for other Key Club members to be more than just volunteers, but to sympathize with those less fortunate.
Now in her second year as a member of Key Club, Freeman spent the last year as Patrick Henry’s Kiwanis Family chair, focusing mainly on outreach to her club’s service partners in the SDSU Circle K club and the Grantville-Allied Gardens Kiwanis Club. She also served as the Division Spirit Coordinator for the 2020-21 term.
As Lieutenant Governor next year, she will be responsible for the oversight of 13 Key Clubs from Point Loma to Patrick Henry, ranging as far north as La Jolla, Mira Mesa, and Scripps Ranch.
Patrick Henry High School sophomore Linh Truong was elected last month to serve as the 2021-22 President of the PHHS Key Club. She will officially take office on April 11, upon the conclusion of the California-Nevada-Hawaii District Key Club Convention.
Linh has served for the last year as the club’s Fundraising Chair, and has attending most of the club’s projects and activities since joining in 2019. She cites the “Trunk or Treat” event at Palisades Presbyterian Church as her favorite Key Club service project so far.
There are five Patrick Henry seniors who are being recognized on San Diego County Office of Education’s website for Career Technical Engineering month. They are Ainslie Mellinger, Chloe Klein, Olivia Van Houten, Alexander Renard and Evan Patocka.
Our students completed an engineering project called “Architecture for All,” in which they redesigned our San Diego airport terminal 1 to be more inclusive, particularly considering the following groups: people with disabilities, people who are transgender, non gender binary or otherwise non cisgender, and caretakers of the young and elderly. Please visit the SDCOE website to read about our students’ projects at www.cte.innovatesd.org/ctemonth.html
Please remember to visit the Patrick Henry website for up to date information about our school and district at patrickhenryhs.net. On behalf of the Patrick Henry High School Faculty, we want to thank you for being our partner in education so we can ensure all students graduate with integrity, purpose, and options.
— Michelle Irwin is principal of Patrick Henry High School.
