Spotswood High School (Virginia)

Infobox School
name = Spotswood High School


imagesize =
caption =
location =
streetaddress = 543413 potswood drive
city = Penn Laird
state = Virginia
district = Rockingham County Public Schools
zipcode = 22846
country = USA
coordinates = coord|38|22|30|N|78|45|46|W
superintendent = Mr. Jacob W. Pankey
principal = SUPERMARIO
viceprincipal = Robert Dansey
Alicia Corral-Clark
Joe Taylor
viceprincipal_label= Assistant Principals
dean =
faculty =
staff =
type = Public
schooltype = high school
enrollment = 1,381
enrollment_as_of = 2006-07
grades = 9-12
language = English
campus type =
conference = Virginia High School League
AA Region III
AA Massanutten District
motto = All students will acquire the knowledge, skills, and values needed for personal growth and responsible citizenship.
rival =
mascot = BLAZERS
sports =
patron =
team_name =
nickname =
school_colours = colorbox|blue colorbox|gray Blue and Gray
yearbook = "The Blaze"
publication =
newspaper = none
founded = 1980
communities =
feeders =
footnotes =
picture =
homepage = [http://www.rockingham.k12.va.us/SHS/SHS.html Official Site]

Spotswood High School is a high school in Penn Laird, Virginia, in the foothills of the Blue Ridge Mountains. As of 2005, it competes in the AA division of the Virginia High School League. Its current rivalries include feuds with nearby Turner Ashby and Harrisonburg High Schools.

History

Spotswood High School had its formal beginning in 1973 when the County School Board authorized an Eastern Rockingham building study and requested a report on a proposed new high school for eastern Rockingham County.

A committee, composed of community persons from the Elkton and Montevideo attendance areas, as well as Central Office staff members, three Principals and several teachers from both Montevideo and Elkton High Schools, was organized to develop the education specifications for the proposed new plant. Although the proposal to build the new school was not implemented at this time, the work of the educational specifications committee served as a foundation for the planning of the present school.blah

During the summer of 1976 the School Board voted to build a senior high school, grades 10-12, to house Montevideo and Elkton High School students. A committee of twenty-one people was appointed to draft a set of educational specifications for the proposed new facility. The committee completed its report during the 1976-1977 school year, and later revised it when a specific starting date for construction was established.

Specific plans for names, nicknames, and colors were developed by a committee of nine persons that made final reports to the School Board in December 1978. The School Board reviewed the report and voted to name to the school the Spotswood Senior High School, in memory of Alexander Spotswood. The Board decided to leave the decision for the school's nickname and colors to the administration and students.

Spotswood High School was established in 1980 as Spotswood Senior High School, serving grades 10-12. James Upperman was the first principal. The school was named in honor of Lieutenant-Colonel Alexander Spotswood. The school colors, blue and gray, were selected from the colors of the two high schools it consolidated in the 1980s: Elkton High School (blue and gold) and Montevideo (maroon and gray). In the fall of 1984, Spotswood became a 9-12 school and changed to its present name, Spotswood High School.

Current administration

*Principal- Tim Woodward
*Asst. Principals- Robert Dansey, Alicia Corral-Clark, Joe Taylor
*Athletic Director- Mary Donnellan
*Resource Officer- Deputy Dofflemyer

Student body

The enrollment of Spotswood is approaching the 1500 mark. The students come from several small towns in the area. In 2005, the student body population was reported by the Board of Education to have the following enrollment characteristics [U.S. Department of Education http://nces.ed.gov/ccd/schoolsearch/school_detail.asp?Search=1&County=Rockingham&State=51&SchoolPageNum=2&ID=510339001872] :
*Grade

Sports

In 2005, the girls basketball team won the Group AA State Championship. Spotswood also has a very reputable competition cheerleading squad, claiming six straight district titles, a Region II Championship and runner-up, and two Group AA State Championship Runners-up and a 2007 Region III Finalist. The strong cheerleading tradition was started by former coach Wes Vaughan in 1999 and has carried through to 2007. Not only are their girls sports competitive, but their boys cross country team, the boys indoor and outdoor track team, and the boys swimming teams give area schools some tough competition. In 2007, the boys cross country team captured the Massanutten District and Region III titles and placed in the top 10 in states. In 2008, the SHS Girls Tennis team won their 8th straight district title. They also won the Region 3 title. They advance to states. In addition to traditional sports, Spotswood has a nationally ranked break-dancing team, which captured the Inter-Scholastic Break-Dancing Association (ISBDA) national title in 2007, after team captains Jacob "Electric Eel" Pankey and Trey "Skeet-Bot" Jarrels busted a series of moves so fresh that several spectators had to be hospitalized from the shock they experienced.

Spotswood's Academic Team is also reputable, having a vast array of trophies seen in a glass case in the English hall, as well as a trophy from Nationals found in the cafeteria near the band hall. In tournaments, Spotswood sometimes surprised other teams, often from private schools, with their skill with education from a "country school." They have captured the 2007 Massanutten District Tournament Championship and taken 3rd in the Regionals of the same season.

The new home page for Spotswood Blazer Sports is - www.spotswoodathletics.org

Marching Band

Spotswood High School was named a Virginia Honor Band in 2007-2008. This is the first time the band program has received this honor since 2004-2005. The Spotswood Fine Arts Program has also been nominated for the VMEA Blue Ribbon Award, which honors programs in that have worked towards a superior rating for the Marching Band, Concert Band, and Choir-which Spotswood High School did in 2007-2008.

Spotswood High School, in Penn Laird Virginia, has several musical groups - currently, concert band, wind ensemble, two percussion ensembles, a jazz ensemble, and the Marching Trailblazers, composed of winds, percussion, and the color guard.

The band program at SHS has won numerous musical awards in many categories for each group, including several Honor Band awards, which require a superior rating from each the Symphonic Band and the Marching Band. A Virginia Honors Band award requires that the marching band receive a superior rating (I) at the annual state marching festival, and the highest level concert band of the school also receive a superior (I).

There are usually two or three 'stage' concerts, in some combination of Concert, Symphonic, and Jazz, at SHS per year; in addition, the two concert bands perform yearly at the VBODA District Band Festival. The marching band performs at every home football game on Friday nights, as well as various competitions throughout the fall. [SpotswoodBand.net http://spotswoodband.net/ May 4th 2007]

The band program at Spotswood is directed by Gregory Oaks.

Some of their recent awards include [Spotswood High School Bands www.freewebs.com/spotswoodband] :

Sept. 27, 2008 - Stonewall Showcase of Bands (Staunton, VA)-1st Place-Class AA Marching, Music, General Effect, Drumline, Drum Majors3rd Place-Class AA Color Guard

OVERALL GRAND CHAMPIONS, OVERALL HIGHEST MUSIC SCORE, OVERALL HIGHEST MARCHING SCORE, OVERALL HIGHEST GENERAL EFFECT SCORE, OVERALL BEST DRUM MAJORS

Sept. 27, 2008 - Stuarts Draft High School's Blast in the Draft (Stuarts Draft, VA)1st Place - Class AAA Band, Color Guard, Music2nd Place - Class AAA Drumline3rd Place - Class AAA Drum Majors

Overall Best Color Guard

The new home page for Spotswood Bands is - http://www.freewebs.com/spotswoodband

Controversy

Spotswood made headlines briefly in 2000, when teacher Jeff Newton, with the backing of freedom of speech advocacy organizations including the ACLU and American Library Association, went to court over an incident covering several weeks in September 1999, when then principal C. James Slye ordered Newton to remove anticensorship pamphlets from his classroom's door that had been posted in observance of Banned Books Week. The pamphlet in question was a list of books that had been challenged or banned in schools, libraries and bookstores around the country during the late 1990s; these books include several revered and widely read American works, such as "Huckleberry Finn", "The Color Purple", "Of Mice and Men" and "Death of a Salesman", but also include highly sexualized or "vulgar" books that the US Supreme Court found legal to exclude from public schools in the 1982 case of Board of Education v. Pico. [http://www.ala.org/ala/oif/bannedbooksweek/challengedbanned/challengedbanned.htm] The ACLU charged that Spotswood was effectively censoring the anticensorship message of the pamphlet outside of his constitutional rights and blatantly failed to follow the Rockingham County School Board Policy for mediating issues related to controversial and sensitive materials. The suit was dismissed before the case could be heard, when Newton resigned from the district.

Spotswood also came under fire recently in 2007 when it came to light that every Friday, students put away all their books and school materials, and instead watched BattleBots re-runs in the auditorium. This practice, known as "Kick-Ass BattleBots Friday" and put into existence by former principal Adam Burkett, was ruled unproductive by the school board, who attempted to end the practice. The entire school administration wore nothing but elaborate suits made out of tin-foil for the next two weeks as a sign of protest. Eventually, the school board relented and let the students go back to watching six hours of BattleBots each Friday.

External links

* [http://www.rockingham.k12.va.us/SHS/SHS.html Spotswood High School website]
* [http://www.rockingham.k12.va.us/rcps_history/Spotswood.html History of Spotswood High School]
* [http://www.aclu.org/FreeSpeech/FreeSpeech.cfm?ID=8779&c=83 ACLU letter to Spotswood High School] : December 1st, 1999 letter to Spotswood High School regarding the school-instituted ban of the American Library Association banned books pamphlets.

References

www.SpotswoodAthletics.org