School Calendar
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September 2010 |
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Home  About Veritas Prep Family Handbook Parent Involvement
The primary way that parents are involved in the school is by supporting their child in their journey through the Academy. Parents will want to have an established plan for listening to and then encouraging their students when they are working hard. Likewise, parents may want to communicate frequently with their son’s or daughter’s teachers so the parents can develop an understanding of the Academy’s expectations of how preparatory-level, liberal arts studies form habits of learning. Also, parents should contact the teachers to share important information on how their child approaches the curriculum at home and if he or she is experiencing difficulty. VPA students invest a great deal in their education, and thus teachers and parents should be unanimous in their support of the students and one another.
The teachers of the Academy are honored by the great trust that parents have placed in them. This trust between the parents and the school must be maintained not only by ongoing communication, but by a mutual understanding of the “big picture”: what a VPA education will offer young people in the long run. It can be difficult for both young people and adults to maintain a focus on the long-term benefits that a liberal education offers. Likewise, students, especially younger students, may not fully sense the extent of their own intellectual and moral growth over time. When students are applying themselves on a particular part of their journey, they will look to their parents and their teachers for a reaffirmation that their investment is yielding positive gains. As such, mutual trust between parents and teachers is essential to convincing students that we have an achievable plan in place for them that is also in their best interest.
We know from experience that students find the curriculum more manageable in the upper grades, even though the course work there is the most advanced. VPA offers a core curriculum in which each of the grades builds on previous grades over the student’s six-year tenure. The 11th and 12th grades in particular will be culmination years that gather all of the previous years of liberal arts study together to offer the student a critical and comprehensive understanding of the Western tradition. All parents and students should maintain a vision of what the VPA graduate will look like at graduation. Our graduates will be confident, articulate, and prepared to live full human lives. They will have studied some of the greatest works in the history of the world; they will understand the intellectual foundations of the world in which they live; they will have been trained in advanced mathematics and science; they will appreciate art and culture as expressions of the human spirit; they will be approaching (after Latin) fluency in a modern European language; and they will possess the intellectual skills and disciplines that make a lifetime of learning possible. Of course, a liberal arts education is not one that can be completed hurriedly or with a sense only of its immediate benefit or material value. The formation of our students’ characters and imaginations involves an exposure to great works and thinking over time, and it is not complete even at graduation. VPA does not claim to offer a definitive or exhaustive education, for as the great American philosopher and teacher Mortimer Adler once wrote, “Education stops only with the termination of life; the only fully educated human being is a dead one.”
VPA provides an outstanding educational offering unprecedented in the public arena, "in the tradition of the finest private schools" but free of tuition. VPA is a state-funded public school, but the state funding formula does not provide sufficient dollars for capital improvements or ownership of our campus, nor does state funding provide completely for our unparalleled student to teacher ratio. Further, charter schools, unlike regular public schools, cannot levy taxes. Consequently, we must regularly seek outside charitable funding and grants to develop and maintain the high level of our program. Volunteerism is thus strongly encouraged. Without this practical proof of your belief in the value and quality of the Academy, we could not exist. VPA humbly asks for each parent’s time, talent, or treasure. Each parent must consider making all of the following a part of their tenure at VPA: 1) volunteering regularly to assist in the office and/or on campus and/or through membership in the Parent Organization, 2) supporting the Academy’s material structure through donation of a unique talent or service, and 3) financial assistance to the Academy via participation in the $200/$400 extra-curricular tax credit program, and regular contributions to the Community Investment Annual Giving Campaign. VPA is a non-profit, 501(c)3 corporation; as such, your gifts to the Academy may be tax-deductible. Since only 80% of VPA’s budget income actually comes from the state, your donations are absolutely vital to the health of the school. These donations directly address the reality (the bottom line) that VPA is not just a public school, but a unique institution that asks for so much more from everyone involved. The Veritas Preparatory Academy Parent Organization (VPO) helps in the planning and management of school community events. The VPO supports all other aspects of the community through periodic festivals, dinners, and parties, through fundraisers that support student-teacher activities, and through many acts of kindness and school spirit. Parents, teachers, and community members may also be actively involved in decision-making by involvement with the Parent Advisory Council (or PAC). Through council meetings, families meet regularly with the Headmaster throughout the school year to discuss school life and make policy recommendations, as needed, to the Headmaster and Board of Directors. Unless otherwise specified, PAC meetings take place during the hour preceding Parent Organization meetings. All employees of charter schools, and all adult school volunteers who work with students, are required to be fingerprinted and have a criminal background check done by the Arizona Department of Public Safety and the FBI. In order to minimize the inconvenience to our parent volunteers, we will announce one day at the beginning of each school year when a private organization will come to campus to fingerprint all new volunteers or potential volunteers. If you are dedicated to working this year with students as a chaperone, a tutor, a coach, an office volunteer, or for any other purpose, we encourage you to come to the group fingerprinting day. The Academy will cover the cost of fingerprinting for its volunteers at that time. At other times during the year, new volunteers will need to go to the local police department or another agency to have the fingerprinting done. In order to receive a fingerprint clearance card application, please contact the office manager at the reception desk. |
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