Sara Price and Matt Dooley swap ideas with Mountain Middle School 8th grade Humanities teacher Anna Layden

Greetings Osprey Community,

Our faculty and staff have been busily preparing for the start of the 2016-17 school year, and we are so excited to welcome our students back to the nest next week!  As a reminder, 9th graders begin Monday morning at 8:20, on the AHS campus.  Sophomores, juniors and seniors will join the freshmen on Tuesday, when we'll all be at Fort Lewis College for the day.  All students are at AHS on Wednesday.  For more details about times and locations for next week's activities, please refer to this letter, which we sent to families earlier this week, as well as the letters from 9th,

1 0th

, 11th and 12th grade teaching teams, all linked here.  Confused about anything? Just give us a call or drop us an email and we'll happily steer you in the right direction.

Stephen Sellers shows off his tourniquet style at this week's CPR and 1st Aid refresher class

If you've driven by campus on Highway 160 recently, you know that the Twin Buttes team has been hard at work building a new intersection to access AHS and Twin Buttes, just west of the old entrance.  Please use care when you're approaching school next week as things may look unfamiliar.  We will use our old entrance for another couple of weeks, until the new entrance is complete.  All student parking is in the lower lot, which is also where the Hub Bus drops off and picks up.   It is critical that we all use the path to get from the lower lot to campus, rather than walking along the road, especially now that there will frequently be heavy machinery on the road.  Families are welcome to drive up to campus to drop students off and pick them up, but we ask that you please do not park in spots other than those marked for visitors.  Thanks for working together to keep everyone safe.

Plans for the Stronger Schools, Stronger Community campaign for the 3A Mill Levy  continue to develop and we encourage AHS families and supporters to learn more and get involved.  Visit the website here, l ike the campaign's Facebook page here , attend weekly meetings on Thursdays from 5:30 to 6:30 at the Powerhouse Science Center or contact AHS Board Member Linda Fitts-Liberman at [email protected] to learn more about how to get involved.  There will be a Mill Levy Kick-Off event on Thursday, September 8, beginning at 5:30 at Rotary Park.  We'd love to see strong AHS representation there as our broader community rallies to fund all public schools in Durango.

	students, alumni and staff turned out in loving droves to support Ashley Carruth as she performed at The Raven Narratives, a live storytelling event at the Durango Arts Center last weekend

Finally, please join us for our rescheduled Feathering the Nest Campus Clean-Up next Saturday, August 27 from 10:00 to 4:00.  While our campus is certainly ready for our students, there are always additional projects that can make it an even more beautiful and supportive learning environment.  Stop by for however much time you can spare and we'll find a job for you.

We hope that you are all able to savor the last little stretch of summer break this weekend so that everyone arrives ready to dive fully into the year ahead next week.  We can't wait to see you all!   Thanks for all you do to help the Ospreys soar!