Clarksburg High School (Maryland)

Clarksburg High School
Location
22500 Wims Road Clarksburg, Maryland, USA 20871-4100
Coordinates	39°13′32″N 77°15′58″W / 39.22556°N 77.26611°W / 39.22556; -77.26611Coordinates: 39°13′32″N 77°15′58″W / 39.22556°N 77.26611°W / 39.22556; -77.26611
Information
Type	Public Secondary
Motto	"Leadership - Scholarship - Relationships"
Established	2006
School district	Montgomery County Public Schools
School number	249
CEEB Code	210381
Principal	James P. Koutsos
Assistant principals	Mike Smith Brenie LeGrande Rhoshanda M. Pyles Dr. Jim Berry, Jr.
Faculty	110
Grades	9–12
Enrollment	1900
Color(s)	Carolina Blue, White, & Navy
Mascot	Coyote
Rivals	Seneca Valley HS Damascus HS Watkins Mill HS
Newspaper	The Howl
Yearbook	kayh-oh-tee
Website	CHS - MCPS

Clarksburg High School is a public high school located at 22500 Wims Road in Clarksburg, an unincorporated community in Montgomery County, Maryland, United States. It is part of the Montgomery County Public Schools system - Maryland's largest public school system.

Feeder patterns

Rocky Hill MS (6-8) (shared with Damascus High)*

Cedar Grove ES (K-5)*

Little Bennett ES (K-5)

Clarksburg ES (K-5)

Gibbs ES (K-5)

Neelsville MS (6-8)

Fox Chapel ES (K-5)

Daly ES (K-5)

Increasing Enrollment forced Clarksburg to install 4 Portable classrooms for the 2008–2009 schools year. 3 More portables have been installed for the 2010–2011 school year. Currently 2 Math Department teachers and 2 English Department teachers are housed in the portable classrooms near the Athletic Fields and 3 Social Studies Department teachers are housed in the portable classrooms near the Student Parking. The Art, Science, and Technology departments cannot be relocated to the portables due to specialized lab equipment in their classrooms.

Name

Clarksburg High School is the name that the MCPS Board of Education announced for the "Clarksburg area school" after recommendation from the school's PTSA. The name won out over the following:

• Wilson Wims High School - a tribute to the founder of the Clarksburg community
  
• John G. Clark High School - a tribute to the Harvard psychiatrist (most likely a pun on the CLARKsburg community)
  
• Sandra Day O'Connor High School - a tribute to the Supreme Court Justice

Faculty

A list of teachers and staff can be found, along with e-mail addresses, at the Clarksburg HS School-o-dex Staff Directory Page.

School Day

The Clarksburg High School instructional day runs from the Warning Bell at 7:20, the Class Bell at 7:25, and the Dismissal Bell at 2:10. Classes run approximately 47 minutes on an average day with 5 minute transition time. A complete bell schedule can be found here (PDF)

Academic Support Keystone (ASK)

Starting with the 2009–2010 school year, Administration implemented a new program weekly, replacing Homeroom and/or Advisory Period. The ASK time is a rotating schedule whereby each week a different period is extended by 20 minutes (originally 25), with time taken from each other class. This is a time for students to complete makeup work for that specific class, work on assignments for other classes, and enrich their education, respectively. The program was discontinued in the 2011-2012 school year.

Lunch

The typical lunch period for students runs about 50 minutes. Students are not allowed to leave the campus during lunch, nor are they permitted to visit cars without a pass. While many students eat in the Cafe, the hallways, stairwells, and supervised classrooms are also available to eat in. While not a place to eat, students are also allowed to spend their time in the media center or computer labs.

Graduation

Clarksburg High School seniors have graduated at the Mount Saint Mary's auditorium since the school's opening. This is opposed to most MCPS schools who hold their graduation at DAR Constitution Hall. For the first 3 years, students have selected teachers as their graduation speakers: Mr. Lannie Seymour (AP World History), Mrs. Jacqueline Bragg (AP Biology), Mr. Michael Oakes (AP Language 11). The administration and senior graduation coordinators have announced to the senior class that they wish to keep a staff speaker for the coming years due to budgetary constraints with bringing in outside speakers.

Notable Alumni

• Anik Saha ^[1]
• Awkweirdos ^[2]
• Vigneshwar Manickam ^[3]

Web Site

The Clarksburg High School web site is housed on the Montgomery County Public Schools web server called the 'MCPSWeb' and is maintained by the school's student web team as well as by teacher sponsors Sarah Costlow and Stephen Sell webmasters. It is located at http://www.montgomeryschoolsmd.org/schools/clarksburghs and can be accessed via http://www.chsmd.org.

Athletics

Soccer

The boys' soccer team, coached by Jeremiah Spoales, won the state championship for the 2009 season. The girls' soccer team is coached by Troy Bowers.

Track and field

The 2006–2007 outdoor track and field team had a very successful season with the boys ending with 4 wins and 1 loss for the regular season and the girls' team ending their regular season with 3 wins and 2 losses. It also sent many athletes to the Maryland State Championships despite the lack of a senior class. The 2007–2008 outdoor track and field team had another very successful season with the boys ending with 6 wins and 0 losses for the regular season and the girls team ending their regular season with 6 wins and 0 losses. The 2008–2009 outdoor track team ended the year with an undefeated 6-0 record once again. Both the boys and the girls won the division. The boys won the 2A West Region while the girls placed second. In the state competition the boys finished first and became the school's first ever state championship team.

Cross country

In the 2007–2008 cross country season the boys' and girls' teams became Division III Champions with records of 5-0.

Field hockey

While scoring goals has been a problem for Clarksburg the past few seasons, the Coyotes have been known for their stingy defense—not this year. The Coyotes scored eleven in their first five games led by junior Katie Bertrand (forward/midfielder) with five goals and five assists. Among the top scorers in the county, Katie scored four goals and had three assists closing out the final game in September, earning Athlete of the Week honors at Clarksburg and receiving Honorable Mention. “Katie Bertrand is my most experienced players,” says Head Coach Sissy Natoli. On the first real crisp, cool day of fall, Bertand finished off the scoring with a late goal on September 29 as Clarksburg won its second in a row, defeating Watkins Mill, 4-0, at the Coyote Canyon. In that game, Olivia Pond had the game’s first goals Herietta Lee also scored in the first half. Pond and Bertrand had second half goals. The match at Wootton gave the Coyotes their first win of the year. They defeated the Patriots, a state semi-finalist last year, with just a few minutes in the second overtime. Zeona Walker-Latney, a junior forward/midfielder, scored both goals with assists from Bertrand and Anna Hackett, another junior forward/midfielder. “We have been playing good hockey but couldn’t seem to pull out a win, so it was a great effort by my kids, stepping it up and pushing for our first win,” said a patient Coach Natoli.^{[attribution needed]}

Activities

APPS program

One of the new programs that has been established is the APPS Program, which stands for Advanced Placement Power Scholars Program. Members are required to take a certain amount of Advanced Placement classes, even 9th grade members. This program was modeled after Walter Johnson High School's APEX Program. By the end of a member's graduating year, they will have fulfilled an amount of at least 6 AP classes and taken the respective exam distributed by the college board for each class. The sponsor of the group is Signature Program Coordinator Sarah Costlow. The standard pathways of AP Classes include:
Social Studies: Government, US (9) → History, US (10) → History, World (11) → Psychology / History, European (12)
Science: Biology/Physics (11/12) → Chemistry (12)
English: Language (11) → Literature (12)
Math: Statistics & Calculus AB/BC (11→12)

The Program most often includes a Capstone Project, in which students design and test experiments dealing with issues important or interesting to them or their group.

The Advanced Placement courses offered at Clarksburg includes: Language, Literature, Government, US History, World History, European History, Psychology, Biology, Chemistry, Physics, Environmental Science, Computer Science, Calculus AB/BC, Statistics, Studio Art, Music Theory, & Spanish

Honor Societies

Clarksburg offers students the chance to participate in the National Honor Society (NHS), Science National Honor Society, Spanish National Honor Society,International Thespian Society, and the National Art Honor Society.

The Howl

The Howl, Clarksburg High School's award winning student-run newspaper, is produced by a small but growing group of student writers and editors. The paper comes out with an average of six issues per year.

InvenTeam

The Clarksburg High School InvenTeam is one of 16 high school teams in the nation to receive grant funding from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). The team presented its TorchCord invention at the March Madness for the Mind event in the National Museum of American History, part of the National Collegiate Inventors and Innovators Alliance's 13th annual meeting in Washington, DC. The team also traveled to MIT for the Lemelson-MIT EurekaFest event in 2009 inventing a pressure-sensitive illuminated computer cable.^[4]

Marching band

The Clarksburg High School Marching Band, with 65 members, made a trip to Shanghai, China to perform in a parade for the Shanghai Tourism Festival at the beginning of the 2009–2010 school year, under the direction of Mr. Charles 'Chuck' Orifici.

References

1. ^ "Cornell University". http://rso.cornell.edu/keyelements/. 
2. ^ "YouTube Stats". http://socialblade.com/youtube/user/awkweirdos. 
3. ^ "United States Navel Observatory". http://ad.usno.navy.mil/edboard/100819g.txt. 
4. ^ "Lemelson-MIT EurekaFest 2009 - Clarksburg High School InvenTeam Presentation", MIT Tech TV

External links

• The Paper's Website