Hoover Website and Daily Bulletin

Thanks so much for all your amazing work on the Hoover Website and Daily bulletin. This is such an important communication tool for our staff and Hoover community. It is really looking fantastic!!! I can’t thank you all enough for making our dream a reality in this area.

 

http://www.sandi.net/Page/29355

 

 

 

Hoover Staff – I’ll continue my work with my Student Leadership Team  as we reach out to all of our Hoover Alumni and community via Blog, Twitter and Facebook. Also, I am reaching my goal of getting emails turned in 48hrs or less –yeah!!! I continue to appreciate the face-to-face communication method at lunch, in the classrooms and walking around campus (much more relaxing and fun).

 

https://cpodhorsky.edublogs.org/

 

http://twitter.com/DrP_HooverHigh

 

Cheers,

 

Chuck 🙂

September 23, 2011 — Amazing Week at Hoover High !!!

What an amazing week at Hoover High  School !!!

 

Thursday -We had a wonderful Open House. This is always such a special time of the year for our Hoover Families to come together. We started off in the big gym to welcome all the parents and students. Of course, there were performances by our inspiring Drum Line and Cheerleaders. I can’t even tell you how much I love the sound of Cheerleader stomps and the drum line resonating thought our historic Hoover gym. Of course it is hard not to be inspired with all of the pictures of great the Hoover Alumni—including Ted Williams hanging high on the wall of this 80 years old landmark.

 

Friday – We had a rally in the Big Gym at lunch with more students than I have ever seen for a lunchtime rally—700+ students!!!  Watch out Hoover community, our students are catching Cardinal Fever and showing their school pride. This is absolutely what the High School Experience is all about.

 

Hoover Students and families:

Amazing Facts about Hoover –Did you know…

  • Hoover High has increased 219 point on our State accountability API measure (10 year gain).  Hoover has had the largest in San Diego Unified School District School District  (more than La Jolla High, Scripps Ranch High, Serra High, Kearney Construction High and Crawford). Are we proud? YES WE ARE!!!

 

  • 37 point API growth (this past year) is one of the largest in San Diego Unified

 

  • Hoover High is the only high school in San Diego Unified School District with guaranteed admission via College Avenue Compact to SDSU —this is all for our Hoover students and families

 

  • Last year alone –Hoover High increased our graduation rate +5% (last year)

  

  • We have a NEW FACES Medical Academy Program with internships to all areas of the Children’s Hospital –including surgical rotations

 

  • Our Hoover Academy of Information and Technology (AOIT)- has a partnership with Qualcomm and is a Model Academy for the State of California

 

  • Over 400 student are part of our AVID academy and receive daily support about college study skills, applications and financial aid—our AVID is also a model program for San Diego County

 

  • Hoover High has a Comprehensive Community Health Center (on the Hoover campus) with 2 nurses, 2 full time therapists and even a dental clinic

 

  • We have a fully staffed Parents Center with social workers available to parents all day (5 days per week)

  

  • Our Hoover Cluster meets each moth with all Cluster Elementary, Middle and High schools.  Each month all of these amazing partners (Parents, Teachers, Students, Administrators, Community Business leaders) focus on student success and shared decision-making.

 

  • Each year we give away over $800,000 to our graduating seniors. Our Hoover students go off to places like UCLA, UC Santa Barbara, UCSD, SDSU, UC Berkeley, UC Riverside, Brown University–just to name a few

We are incredibly Proud at Hoover of our Cardinal Spirit! And academic growth!!!

  

Are we Proud at Hoover—YOU BET WE ARE !!!

 

 

I wish you a fantastic School Year,

 

-Chuck Podhorsky 🙂

Chuck Podhorsky, Ed. D.

Principal – Hoover High School

Phone: 619-283-6281 x2104

Fax: 619-280-5837

 

Hoover High School (Future Distinguished School)–

Doing “Whatever It Takes” to help all students succeed!!!

 

cpodhorsky@sandi.net

 

http://lessonstudy.net/

Amazing Thanksgiving break and continued reflection …

Hoover Staff:

I hope you all had an amazing Thanksgiving break and enjoyed some well deserved rest and relaxation. Our family was in NY and had a very nice time.

We have three more weeks until winter break ….yeah !!!  Seriously, you all are doing an amazing job at supporting all of our Hoover students in wonderful ways  this year. I will continue to share all the great data as it comes out. We will also continue more in-depth data analysis at our ILT, SSC, ELA, Math, AOIT Team meetings, Governance and staff meetings.

As we always constantly reflect on our practice, we will be making some school wide modifications (after the Thanksgiving break) to continue supporting your work in the classroom and raise the bar for our students. Here are a few of my focus areas as we come back:

  1. We will be implementing our Attendance Intervention Council (starting immediately). This team will meet with the families of our most habitually tardy/truant students. We showed great growth last year with this plan and look forward to having in-depth conversations with the families about supporting a culture of success at Hoover.
  1. While the numbers of 1st period tardy student continue to decline, it is not good enough. We have implementing several other consequences for habitually showing up tardy to school. These students will be assigned lunch detention and/or after school detention. Habitual tardiness and truants will be assigned Sat School. These students will be getting daily wakeup calls (from me) and get a ride to attend Saturday school.
  1. Embedded Support tardiness: we will be automatically locking these tardy student out and will automatically assign them same day lunch detention and well as develop a plan for support.

 

  1. The district auto dialer calls going home to inform parents of late or truant issues will become much more directive. It is critical that parents know what the implications for missing class are. All of our Hoover students now have way too much loose –with our College Avenue Compact, it is critical for our families and communities know what is at stake.

 

  1. Celebrations: We will continue to get better at celebrating student success. Last week we passed out the iPods and other prizes to student who represent the finest at Hoover. Please continue to share ideas you have in this area.

***I am a strong believer that we need to do both at 110% if we are truly change the Culture of Success !!!

Also, I have made some modification to our Hoover Principal Blog to help support some professional reading and continued professional dialogue. I have also added an area for staff resources and these should be up in the next few days. I believe that you will enjoy these first few articles posted.

  1. Chuck Podhorsky – Hoover High Principal’s Blog:

https://cpodhorsky.edublogs.org/

As you know, we also have a twitter account to help keep our student, parents and community informed. Please feel free to post this information for all you students and families.

  1. 2.     Twitter -Hoover High School@DrP_HooverHigh

http://twitter.com/DrP_HooverHigh

 

 

  1. 3.     Hoover High Website (Teacher site- Chuck’s Site)

http://www.sandi.net/78832099162456633/site/default.asp

  1. Surveymonkey – we utilize this tool on a regular basis to help get feedback and make mid course modifications as we continue to reflect and do the best job we can for our students. This current survey will continue to remain open and we will discuss the confidential result at our public forums. Please share these links with students and families. We will also be bringing some students in to get a better voice form them –regarding ways to build a Culture of Success.

http://www.surveymonkey.com/s/Hoover_High_6_week_check_in_2010

Cheers,

Chuck 🙂

Chuck Podhorsky, Ed. D.

Principal – Hoover High School

Phone: 619-283-6281 x2104

Fax: 619-280-5837

Hoover High School (Future Distinguished School)–

Doing “Whatever It Takes” to help all students succeed!!!

cpodhorsky@sandi.net

http://lessonstudy.net/

Hoover Continues to Shine !!!

Hoover Staff:

I wanted to send a quick “Cardinal Kudos” to the entire 10th grade English teaching and support team !!!

As you know, the Hoover English department has been working for the past 3 years with our colleagues from the SDSU Rhetoric and Writing department (Liane Bryson and Cali Linfor). The Hoover English teachers have focused on the skills and content to insure a successful transition for all of our Hoover College Avenue Compact students (no remediation and successful coursework when they enter SDSU).

At the 10th grade ELA planning meeting yesterday, the teachers examined the results from their Summative #1 assessment. They also worked on the intervention plan for the students who scored “Basic and Below Basic”….awesome job !!!

(Below is a graph of the results from the ELA Summative #1 assessment — all 10th grade students)

Hoover Senior High

  Hoover ELA

   

69% of the students at Proficient and Advanced —Wow !!! 

 A huge congratulations to all of the 10th grade ELA teachers and students.

I know many more of the Hoover academic departments will be administering their Summative Assessment #1 soon and I look forward to more Cardinal Kudos.

Please keep up the great work and support for our students as we prepare them for College and Career.

Cheers,

Chuck 🙂

First Blog :)

Dear Hoover Community,

This is my first blog 🙂  I will continue to look for ways to engage our staff, students, and community members as we create amazing changes and increased levels of “Real Time” supports for our students.

As you know, I worked with many of our amazing planning teams this summer as we prepared for an incredible year. I look forward to continuing this dialogue and reading your feedback as we continue to make Hoover a world class school– where ALL students succeed!!!

While I know that 2nd order change is difficult for any organization, everyone has been doing an amazing job at providing feedback so we can continue to refine our student support services. Please keep the wonderful ideas flowing. We will also be working hard to connect teachers with each other to share some of the amazing work that is going on.

I have also posted a Survey Monkey web link ‘’week 6 check in survey” to get feedback and continue to refine our process for student success. It consists of only 3 questions and will help guide our thinking. I will also be using these to monitor student perceptions as we continue through the year.  Thanks in advance for your time.

http://www.surveymonkey.com/s/Hoover_High_6_week_check_in_2010

As you know, this year will be filled with a great deal of excitement as we continue to celebrate our 80th Anniversary at Hoover High. We have such an amazing school with an incredible rich history. This school year, we are incredibly pleased to bring back the Cardinal Spirit with our mission of “Building a Culture of Success” at Hoover High. Our 80th celebration activities will extend throughout the school year. On October 9, 2010, we had our homecoming game against our historic rival — San Diego High School. On October 10, 2010, we also hosted a grand celebration for all alumni at the Hall of Champions in Balboa Park. This was an amazing event with inductions into our Hall of Fame, celebrity guest appearances, a silent auction, and a wonderful dinner with friends from the past. Please see picture from the game and dinner… http://www.sandi.net/788320719172837533/blank/browse.asp?a=383&BMDRN=2000&BCOB=0&c=72093&7883Nav=|&NodeID=4602