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News & Announcements

• Morning Announcements

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End-of-Year Testing

Dear West High Families,

We are quickly coming to the end of the school year, which means it is time to talk about end of year testing. This year we will be using a test called Aspire ACT Plus (Aspire for short). Aspire will take the place of SAGE and only 9th and 10th grade students will take it.

Aspire is meant to help students be better prepared to take the ACT in 11th grade. Unlike SAGE, Aspire is a timed test and has five sections that align with the ACT subject areas: Reading (90 minutes), Math (90 minutes) English (45 minutes), and Science (60 minutes). In order to accommodate the Math and Reading tests, which will take longer than our usual 90 minute periods, we will have a modified bell schedule on April 30th, May 1st, May 2nd and May 3rd. Please view the image at the bottom of this message to see the modified bell schedule.

English and Science testing will take place during the week of April 22nd. Please encourage your students to get a good night’s sleep, eat a good breakfast, and be on time to school!

Last, but not least, for the first year of the test, results will not be available until October 2019. Results will include your student’s score, how they compare to other students in their grade, and where your student can still improve.

Students and families can find additional information about Aspire and frequently asked questions here: https://schools.utah.gov/assessment/assessments?mid=1173&tid=9
Students can find a tutorial and practice questions here: http://utah.pearsonaccessnext.com/tutorial/ and http://utah.pearsonaccessnext.com/question-samplers/

If you have any questions or concerns, please contact Linda Lesue (our assistant principal and testing coordinator) at 801-578-8500 ext.2210 or linda.lesue@slcschools.org

Estimadas familias de West High,

Estamos llegando rápidamente al final del año escolar, lo que significa que es hora de hablar sobre las evaluaciones de fin de año. Este año utilizaremos una prueba llamada Aspire ACT Plus (para abreviar, Aspire). Aspire tomará el lugar de SAGE y solo los estudiantes de 9º y 10º grado lo tomarán.

Aspire tiene la intención de ayudar a los estudiantes a estar mejor preparados para tomar el ACT en el 11º grado. A diferencia de SAGE, Aspire es una prueba cronometrada y tiene cinco secciones que se alinean con las áreas temáticas de ACT: Lectura (90 minutos), Matemáticas (90 minutos) Inglés (45 minutos) y Ciencias (60 minutos). Con el fin de acomodar las evaluaciones de Matemáticas y Lectura, que durarán más que nuestros períodos habituales de 90 minutos, tendremos un horario de campana modificado el 30 de abril, 1 de mayo, 2 de mayo y 3 de mayo. Por favor, vea la imagen en la parte inferior de este mensaje para ver el horario de la campana modificado.

Los exámenes de inglés y ciencias se llevarán a cabo durante la semana del 22 de abril. ¡Por favor anime a sus estudiantes a que duerman bien, tomen un buen desayuno y lleguen a tiempo a la escuela!

Por último, pero no menos importante, por este primer año de evaluaciones, los resultados no estarán disponibles hasta octubre del 2019. Los resultados incluirán el puntaje de su estudiante, cómo se comparan con otros estudiantes a nivel de grado y donde su estudiante aún puede mejorar.

Los estudiantes y las familias pueden encontrar información adicional sobre Aspire y preguntas frecuentes aquí: https://schools.utah.gov/assessment/assessments?mid=1173&tid=9

Los estudiantes pueden encontrar un tutorial y preguntas de práctica aquí: http://utah.pearsonaccessnext.com/tutorial/ y http://utah.pearsonaccessnext.com/question-samplers/

Si tiene alguna pregunta o inquietud, comuníquese con Linda Lesue (nuestra vice-directora y coordinadora de las evaluaciones) al 801-578-8500 ext.2210 o linda.lesue@slcschools.org

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School Excusals

Interested in excusing your child's absence through email? The attendance email is west.attendance@slcschools.org. Please make sure your attendance email contained all of the following or the excuse may not be processed - send the email from the parent email that the school has on file, include your child's first and last name, student grade level, student ID number if you know it, date(s) of absence, period(s) of absence.

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Summer School Registration

Summer School Registration is open. It will run from June 10th until July 3rd. Click here for more information and the form needed.

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A'cappella and Junior Choir News

A'cappella and Junior Choir had a blast in Anaheim, California, representing Utah with excellence at the Judges Invitational National Music Festival, visiting Fullerton College for a collegiate choral clinic & enjoying Disneyland together! Congratulations to Melanie Woodbury, winning the award, "Outstanding Solo Vocalist" at the Forum Music Award ceremony @ Disneyland!

 

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Young Entrepreneur Award

Congratulations to Derek Che, Sam and Charlie Bankowsky, Zander Bagley, Jacquline Hyun, Finn Baille, and James Colbert for receiving the young entrepreneur award of $1000 from the bench to bedside competition at the U. They designed an app to help with nonadherence of patients taking their medications and competed against mostly college students!!

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Robot Team Excels at Regional

The Robot Team spent most of their spring break getting ready and competing in the Utah FRC Regional. A four-day event, the Utah Regional takes place annually at the Maverick Center, and costs about $200,000 to host and operate, with about 50 volunteers and hundreds of participants. Although the competition is in Utah, only about half of the teams come from out of state, including a team from China and two teams from Mexico. The Utah teams are mostly from private/charter schools such as Waterford and Judge Memorial or from community groups like the Leonardo Museum, which can afford the hefty fees associated with the competition. One of the Mexican teams, LamBot, won the competition, which was their third regional this year. They had already won the Mexico City Regional, the Monterry California Regional and now the Utah Regional. They were allied with veteran teams from the Bay Area and San Diego. West High was one of a handful of Utah public high school teams that competed. We finished 43/49 after qualifying rounds, primarily because we focused on defensive strategies instead of offensive. We were selected by the 3rd seed alliance to participate in the playoffs due to our defensive prowess. Our alliance ultimately was defeated by the 2 seed in the semifinals after a close match. Special thanks to the following folks who won awards:

Elijah Greenfield for Safety Star and leading our team to the Safety Award, Sophie Byde for Dean’s List Semi-Finalist, Olivia Hutten for Dean’s List Semi-Finalist, Enrique Arce-Larreta for Woody Flowers Award Mentor Award

Thank you to our drive team: Ross Kilpatrick (team CEO/Captain), August Muller (Hardware Captain), Rodrigo Gallegos-Molano, Alex Jolley, Olivia Hutten

Thank you to our Pit Crew: Ian Eggleston, Pedro Ramirez, Scarlett Cortes, Anastasia Dunca, Robert Morelli

Thank you to our Scouts: Torin Turner, Tom Zhang, Lam Nguyen, Kellen Wu

And our teacher and parent volunteers: Alison Bulson, Christian Edgar, Dan Hutten, Stephanie Thatcher

Thanks to our teacher mentors who could not attend: Patrick Doty. Thank you to our teammates who could not attend due to travel or other circumstances, or anyone missed .Thank you to our sponsors, including our top level sponsors: Marathon, Rio Tinto, Google Fiber, Department of Defense and STEM Action Center.

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FBLA Victorious at State Conference

Your West High Future Business Leaders of America (FBLA) club traveled to the Davis Convention Center on Mar 11-13 for three days of intense competition and elections.  With 83 schools in attendance with 1530 students doing multiple tests and events, we are very proud to announce the following Top Ten finishers in the State and their events that are now eligible to move on to International Competition in San Antonio, Texas this summer.  Also please join us in congratulating Sachin Sundar and Alicia Zhang on being selected to be State Officers this next year!

Accounting I – Quinn Shumway, William Wooldridge
Accounting II – Octavio Morales
Business Plan – Mark Guerra-Garcia, Raghav Krishna Sodisetti, and Sachin Sundar
Computer Applications – Alicia Zhang
Economics – Kit Kauffman, Octavio Morales
Global Business – Azra Becic and Mark Guerra-Garcia
Hospitality Management – Quinn Shumway and Alicia Zhang
Impromptu Speaking – Samson Osime
Intro to Business – Elinor Brunner
Intro to Business Presentation – Quinn Shumway, Raghav Krisna Sodisetti, and Sylvia Xi
Intro to Business Procedures – Elinor Brunner
Intro to Financial Math – William Wooldridge
Intro to Information Technology – Zhanghao Zhang
Intro to Parliamentary Procedures – Michael Mendenhall and Zhanghao Zhang
Intro to Public Speaking – Quinn Shumway
Insurance & Risk Management – Zhonghao Zhang
Job Interview – Samson Osime
Management Information Systems – Mark Guerra-Garcia, Sachin Sundar, and Alicia Zhang
Networking Concepts – Zhanghao Zhang
Political Science – Sachin Sundar
Securities & Investments – Sachin Sundar
Sports & Entertainment Management – Mark Guerra-Garcia, Sachin Sundar, and Sylvia Xi
Spreadsheet Applications – Sylvia Xi, Alicia Zhang
Website Design – Samson Osime
Word Processing – Sylvia Xi

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West Debate wins the UHSAA 2019 5A State Championship

The public forum debaters lead the way with all four teams earning superiors, followed by the policy debate teams who ultimately shared co-champion honors after their success in elimination rounds. West also cleared to elimination rounds in Lincoln-Douglas, student congress, national extent, and oratory. This victory is West Debate’s second consecutive championship. The team now turns its focus to preparing for national competitions. Individual achievements are noted below

Public forum: Teams Marissa Goodman & Tejita Agarwal and Nick Carlin & Noa Taussky are quarterfinalists. Teams Jane Galian & Zach Braford and Lauren Bacon & Lauren Berensen are semifinalists.

Policy debate: Teams Kiyan Banuri & Ramis Banuri, Matthew Kim & Kenny Nelson, Madeline Galian & Hanna Rice, and Dylan Hefley & Isaiah Ortiz are co-champions.

Lincoln Douglas: Lizzie Peterson is a quarterfinalist.

Student Congress: Olivia Hoffmann is a finalist and Tyler Shumway is the state champion.

National Extemp: Alicia Du won second place

Original Oratory: Arianna Meinking is a finalist.

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MathCounts Competition

West High School just took 1st place at the state MathCounts competition earlier today. We even had 3 of the 10 countdown round winners from our school. Please help us congratulate the following people

West High Team Winners
Marianne Lui* (2nd place overall)
Chloe Parke (8th place overall)
Diya Oommen (10th place overall)
Brendon Young

*Marianne Lui also qualified for the national team and will be going to Orlando in May to compete with the top 200 math students in the nation.

We also had three students qualify from the AMC A exam for the American Invitational Mathematics Examination. We may get a few more students qualify later in the week.

AIME Qualifiers
Zachary Barbanell
Sanjula Pingali
Malavika Singh

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A'cappella soloists advance to State UHSAA Festival!

West High took 6 soloists and 2 ensembles to UHSAA Regional Vocal Solo Ensemble Festival on 3/4 at Murray High. All vocal entries earned superior or excellent ratings! In addition, 3 WH soloists: Nano (Saulala) Feletoa accompanied by Livia Zhang (2018 state pianist for WH), Melanie Woodbury, and Stephen Grant advanced to state competitions which will take place on April 27th at Northridge High! West High Vocalists are making history! Go panthers!

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National Recognition for FBLA

Join us in congratulating the following members of our FBLA club on receiving National recognition for Business Achievement Awards. The FBLA Business Achievement Awards (BAA) is an intensive leadership development program that recognizes FBLA members for achievements in a variety of career-related projects, goals, and programs:

Future Level: Mark Guerra-Garcia, Sylvia Xi, and Alicia Zhang
Business Level: Mark Guerra-Garcia and Sylvia Xi

Our local West Chapter also received National recognition for achieving the following awards and will receive pins and recognition at the National Leadership Conference in San Antonio this summer:
Non-Stop November
Super Sweeps
Action Awareness

West High School also received from the National FBLA the FBLA Outstanding Chapter Recognition Award. FBLA chapters must complete twenty (20) membership, community service, and education activities in order to receive this award.

This is the first time that West High School has ever received any of these awards!

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Debate Wins Region

After two days of competition in speech and debate, West came out on top to become the 2019 Region VI Champions.Individuals finishing in the top three of their respective events include Tyler Shumway in second place and Olivia Hoffman in first place of congressional debate. In impromptu speaking, Adam McVicker won second place. In Lincoln Douglas debate, Jane Zhang won third, Lizzie Peterson won second, and Sriram Srinivas won first. In oratory, Masha Zaitsev won third and Arianna Meinking won second. West policy teams filled out the top four - Madeline Galian & Hanna Rice in fourth, Kiyan Banuri & Ramis Banuri in third, Kenny Nelson & Matthew Kim in second, and Isaiah Ortiz & Dylan Hefley in first. In public forum debate, West also filled out the top four. Jane Galian & Zach Bradford in fourth, Noa Taussky & Nick Carlin in third, Tejita Agarwal & Marissa Goodman in second, and Lauren Bacon & Lauren Berensen in first.

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FTC Utah State Championships

The annual FIRST Tech Challenge (FTC) Utah State Championships was held on Saturday, February 23rd. West High's Robotics Program fielded 4 of the 36 teams at the event. Each of our teams had to qualify to participate in the event. We had roughly 30 students participate, as well as 3 teacher mentors and several student volunteers. Everyone spent many hours this year preparing robots, logistics, outreach and fundraising for the teams.

The 7th grade ELP rookie team "Powder Panthers" finished in 6th place in the field, placing higher than all the other West teams. Their robot was reliable and a consistent scorer through all the qualifying rounds, where they finished with 4 wins and 1 loss. The Powder Panthers won the Promote Award, for making a video used to motivate others to participate in robotics and STEM fields. Also finishing with a 4-1 record and in 9th place was the all girls team, the veteran "Robo Raptors". Their robot was the only one from West's Program that employed vision tracking to remove a block from the field in autonomous. The Raptors nominated me and I won the Compass Award, for being a mentor that points them in the right direction. Finishing 22nd out of 36 was Raspado Robotics, an all Hispanic Team. Raspado engineering a robot with a lead screw mechanism that could successfully land and latch a robot to a spacecraft. Raul Rodriguez, the captain of the Raspado team was selected as a Dean's List Finalist for the state of Utah. This is a prestigious award which qualifies him to compete at the World Robot Festival in Houston, Texas. Finally, Black Ice Robotics finished in 27th place. Their robot scored higher on average than any of the other robots fielded by West High.

The event was attended by following mentors: Patrick Doty, Rob Gabriele, Enrique Arce-Larreta, Elena Balasa, and Elijah Greenfield. Volunteers from our Robotics Program included: Dan Hutten (Lead Queuer), Eric Bulson (Judge), and Avery Shumway (DJ). Student Volunteers included: Sophie Byde, Ryan Shin, Sam and Charles Bonkowski

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