02/24/25 Volume 6.27

This Week at South - 6.27: Compassion

Greetings South Students, Parents, Staff, and Community Members,

Past issues of this newsletter are available at the following link: TWaS Archive.

TWaS is also sent via Canvas Messenger and linked to my Canvas Module for all students and families to access, and shared on South’s FB page.

Part I: The News

Content Disclaimer: I am not omniscient. Don’t see your event or results in the newsletter below? I rely on parents, coaches, and others to send me information to include in the newsletter. Feel free to share positive news and results anytime via my email.

Activities This Week: It’s a basketball week. Details HERE.

Family Climate and Connectedness Survey:

Please consider taking a moment to give us feedback so we can improve the connection between home and school. The survey can be accessed at the following link:

https://surveys.panoramaed.com/aasb/asdfamily/surveys?language=en

Help Needed in School Store: PTSO is looking for volunteers to help run the school store at lunch. Sign up here: https://bit.ly/4edAiBZ

AK STAR and Science Assessment Information:

AK STAR and the State of Alaska Science Assessment will be given from March 24th to April 4th. Make ups will take place through April 25th. More details are available in the following DOCUMENT.

Shout Out to South World Language Teachers and Students:

Over the weekend 38 South students competed in the World Languages State Declamation event at Dimond High School. Twenty-five of those students brought 34 medals back home to South. A comprehensive results list can be found HERE.

South Nordic Ski Team at State:

Congratulations to the following skiers who represented South High School at the ASAA Nordic Skiing State Championship races, held in Fairbanks February 19th through the 22nd: Grayson Stanek-Alward, Owen Harth, Cedar Ruckel, Braxton Thornley, Ethan Styvar, Aksel Flagstad, Maya Tirpack, Lilian Coy, Alise Elliott, Duna Snedgen, Annika Haussner and Mari Ward.

There were over 24 schools competing over the three day state competition. South Boys Finished 3rd overall in ASAA State Nordic Skiing Competition. A full discussion of the events and results can be found HERE.

Two Leadership Development Opportunities:

Senator Murkowski Internship:
Do you know a graduating high school senior who is independent, inquisitive, and mature who is looking for a valuable and interesting experience? Senator Murkowski is accepting applications for her 2025 Summer High School Internship Program. This year’s Summer High School Internship Program will be held in two sessions: June 2-27, 2025 and July 7-August 1, 2025. Ten interns will be selected for each of the two sessions. Interns shadow the Senator for a day, attend hearings and briefings, assist staff, and explore Washington, D.C. There is a $4,000 stipend to help cover transportation and housing costs. More information is available in the attached letter and at https://www.murkowski.senate.gov/assistance/students/internships. The application can be found at https://www.murkowski.senate.gov/imo/media/doc/2025_high_school_intern_application.pdf.

The deadline to apply is 11:59 p.m. Alaska time on Monday, March 24, 2025. It is preferred that applications be emailed to Angelina_burney@murkowski.senate.gov.

American Legion Girls State: Female high school students who have completed their junior year are competitively selected and sponsored by American Legion Auxiliary units for this program, where they learn about the political process by electing officials for all levels of state government and actively running a mock government. Assistance from dedicated ALA volunteers ensures the program’s nonpartisan governmental, patriotic, and civic objectives are carried out through interactive learning. Though the week is filled with many learning opportunities, there is always time for fun and the formation of long-term friendships.

https://alaskalegionauxiliary.org/ala-girls-state-application/

Spring Activities Sign Up:

We are gearing up for spring sports! Soccer, Track & Field, Baseball & Softball start (3/10). Yep, you read that right, it's the Monday of Spring Break!

All athletes need to complete Planet HS (now Big Teams), pay the fee through ParentConnection, and then see Mrs. Cravens in the Activities Office for eligibility processing and a golden ticket. All athletes are required to have a golden ticket to start practice.

Start dates for all sports can be found in the following list.
The registration process is outlined in detail in the following document.

Contact Kara Cravens at cravens_kara@asdk12.org with any questions.

Girls Soccer Meeting - February 25th:

There will be a parent meeting for the Girls Soccer program on Tuesday, February 25th at 7 pm in the South Library. Meet the coach and discuss the upcoming season and booster support opportunities.

South Voter Registration Drive - TODAY!

South High is hosting a voter registration drive on Monday, February 24th in Ms. Seward’s room H111 from 10:30 am to 3 pm. Students who will be 18 by May 25th can register to vote with a picture ID. The next regular municipal election is Tuesday, April 1st. Students must be 18 by this date to vote in the election. To be eligible to vote in the election, you must register to vote no later than 30 days before election day. The link to register to vote online is https://voterregistration.alaska.gov/.

Planning on Playing Baseball? Please Email Coach Nerland:

If you are planning on playing baseball this spring, please contact Coach Nerland via email: Nerland_Taylor@asdk12.org. Practice starts in mid-March and the team needs to order uniforms and hopes to get an idea of how many players are planning to participate.

Part II: What I’ve Learned

Let your virtues expand to fill this sad situation.

Glory ascends the heights by a precipitous path.

-Ovid, Tristia

Tomorrow evening the Anchorage School Board will pass a budget, which will diminish every school and affect every community across the city. No program, school, sport, teacher, administrator, counselor, nor support staff member will be untouched by this action. Although staff will remain after the cuts are made, there is simply no way to sustain the level of teaching and learning to which most have become accustomed.

At the same time, I appreciate all those who have sent me emails over the last two weeks urging me to maintain programs and staff. Your advocacy reminds me there are still large parts of our community that value public education. That said, I want to be absolutely clear. It’s not my choice to cut teachers, classes, programs or extracurricular activities. However, based on growing inflation and flat funding, we must get smaller. That involves difficult choices, which will have to be made next month.

So, this is a reckoning. What happens in the next few weeks in Juneau, and subsequently in Anchorage, will determine our fate next school year. It is challenging because we cannot plan next year’s schedule, know what classes will be offered or what programs or staff will get cut until we have a final budget, which might not be until early summer.

Amidst this chaos and uncertainty, I can only be confident about one thing: we can all practice more compassion. In a time when mockery, insults and anger are monetized and go viral, compassion is a revolutionary and radical act. Seeing someone beyond their facade, as a fellow traveler, often leads to empathy, which is the best precursor to small acts of compassion that can make our system more humane just as it appears to be crumbling around us.

Since I take compassion to be a virtue, and virtue does not come naturally and must be practiced, where might we look for examples?

Two come to mind. The first is from an essay by Barbara Lazear Ascher, aptly titled, On Compassion, where the author alludes to the conditions in Dickensian London in the middle of the Industrial Revolution when the contrast between opulent wealth and absolute destitution could not be ignored. It’s worth citing at length,

Ladies in high-heeled shoes pick their way through poverty and madness. You hear more complaints at cocktail parties.... And yet, it may be that these are the conditions that finally give birth to empathy, the mother of compassion.... It is impossible to insulate ourselves against what is at our very doorstep. Compassion is not a character trait like a sunny disposition. It must be learned, and it is learned by having adversity at our windows (when it) becomes so familiar that we begin to identify and empathize with it (p. 37, full text here).

When a Greek-style tragedy, like the one Ascher describes, plays out right in front of us, the virtuous response is to acknowledge that we, too, are one accident, mistake, or illness from the abyss. And when we realize that, when we see ourselves in others, even when we might not have experienced their struggles, we have the choice to attempt to relieve suffering when we see it.

This doesn’t require an outsized effort. As Malcolm Gladwell recently pointed out on his podcast, Revisionist History, it only takes 11 acts of kindness to save a life (full episode here). Successive small acts of kindness make lives better.

The second example is the Italian cyclist Gino Bartali, whose valiant effort helped save countless Jewish families as they were being deported by Fascists in Italy. The story is recounted in the book, Road to Valor.

In short, Bartali, who was a devout Catholic, and also a target for Mussolini’s inhumane regime, used his reputation as a world class Italian cyclist to sneak papers between Florence and Assisi in order to save a group of persecuted Jews who were hidden and protected in a monastery amidst widespread deportations. Under the guise of training for the next Giro d’ Italia, he snuck papers in his seatpost through Nazi checkpoints to the monastery at Assisi.

He completed the trip over 40 times, risking his own life. Bartali could have easily rested on his reputation, continued to train, and avoided the worst of World War II. Yet, his compassion and bravery show us what is possible when one uses their strengths to help others. Notably, after the War concluded, he returned to his championship winning ways and rarely talked about this radical feat of compassion.

While we are not on the mean streets of the Industrial Revolution in London nor on dusty, Tuscan backroads, it’s not too far a stretch to imagine that we are in another kind of revolution. Not industrial, but perhaps technology and AI driven and one that alienates us from ourselves. This revolution undermines peace, collective effort, and common sense.

So, if we lose nine members of our staff and the classes, programs, support services, and extracurricular activities along with them, the best we can do is practice compassion. To try to make the lives of those around us just a little bit better.

In particular, the students who rely most on the structure and support a public school provides will need more support from elsewhere next year. We will continue to do the best we can, but there is a breaking point. A snack, a word of encouragement, or help with homework can make an exponential difference and cannot be overstated. Anyone can start these small acts of kindness right now in the community and in our school.

Likewise, the remaining staff will pick up the work that will no longer be done by those who were forced out. They will still be responsible for keeping our school safe, structured, supportive, and engaging despite the chaos right outside the door. If you have a minute, send them a quick email and let them know how they have made a positive impact on your student(s). It’s a quick, compassionate act that lets them know the work they do still matters. They don’t hear that enough.

So, just as compassion has made a difference in the past, it can make a difference right now. While we are facing uncertainty and feel that our effort has been dismissed, small acts of kindness, a word of encouragement, and consistent commitment to compassion will make the interim better. We can do that much for one another.

If we can do this, we can reverse the trend that Prospero utters in The Tempest, when he forgives the brother who helped steal his position and exile him:

The rarer action is in virtue than in vengeance.

Let’s make virtue commonplace again.

Want to share this part of the newsletter beyond our school community?

Please consider using this link to my Substack: substack.com/@onprincipal

As Always, Onward!

Luke Almon, Principal