Gimme Shelter Coffeehouse Fundraiser

DECEMBER 6TH
7 PM AT HHS

Come out next Wednesday Night, December 6, to the Gimme Shelter Coffeehouse, here in the HHS Foyer. Admission is free. 

Live music performances by HHS students and alumni will start at 7pm. Food and drinks will be provided by The Beautiful Minds Campaign. 

All proceeds and donations will benefit the Y2Y Shelter in Cambridge, MA. For more information, please visit our website.

Student Feature Friday: Eamonn Powers

This week’s Student Feature Friday is senior Eamonn Powers. Eamonn used his love of fishing to develop a Vortex River Aerator to help oxygenate streams in order to allow fish, specifically trout and salmon, to survive when water temperatures rise and oxygen levels decrease. He created a system of pipes that would allow water to spin (think of a controlled underwater tornado) as it ran through them, generating higher levels of oxygen and using only the power of the water current to bring oxygen rich water downstream. Through his work with Mr. Marsh and his senior project, he has developed several prototypes and has now partnered with a scientist in Woods Hole to eventually bring his prototype to production. His ultimate goal is to have his device made of good quality, Eco-friendly materials and placed into streams all over the world. For more information on his project check out the Student Feature Fridays of the Principal's Blog.

Thank you

Nicole Bottomley,
Principal
Holliston High School

Email Update

Dear Parents/Guardians:

I recently notified the community that we were conducting an investigation into the cause of the email failure that some parents experienced during our email communication with the PreK-8 parent community regarding the October 24th lockdown at the Adams, Miller and Placentino Schools. As background, we solicit parent email addresses each fall as part of the student registration process and store those email addresses in our Student Information System (called iPass). In addition, parents who have access to iPass through the “Parent Portal” can update their email addresses when necessary. Parents who have provided their email address to us in previous years are not required to re-share that information annually.  Several times a year, we extract the email addresses from our iPass database and upload them into the database used by our email notification system, called iContact. iContact is a commercially-available email marketing system that offers the ability to distribute emails to large email lists. This functionality is not available in iPass. Our investigation has concluded that some email addresses were inadvertently deleted from our iContact database during a recently-conducted manual periodic-maintenance review of our email lists. After discovering this human error, we performed new extraction of email addresses from iPass and uploaded them into iContact, providing us with an up-to-date email list for each school and the district. 

People who were not receiving emails earlier this fall from iContact should now be receiving Announcements in their inbox (they will show on your email server as being sent by:
HPSAnnouncements hpsannouncements@holliston.k12.ma.us via icontactmail3.com ). If this is not the case, it is likely due to one of three possible reasons:

1. your email address has a misspelling in iPass and your email is being returned as undeliverable;
   
2. the “SPAM” filter in your individual email account is identifying the email as “Junk” and placing those emails in your “Junk” folder. If this is the case, you need to reconfigure your email account to allow emails from: HPSAnnouncements hpsannouncements@holliston.k12.ma.us via icontactmail3.com
   
3. the firewall on your email server is blocking all emails from iContact. We find this from time to time, particularly if you are asking that emails be sent to a corporate email system (your work email, for example). If you are not receiving emails from HPS on your corporate server, we recommend you contact your corporate IT department and ask them to pass-through emails from iContact, or that you change the email account to which you want emails sent to a private email account through vendors such as gmail, yahoo, hotmail, etc.
   
4. at some point in the past, you may have clicked an “Unsubscribe” link at the bottom of one of the messages, either intentionally or accidentally. Due to anti-spam regulations, Holliston Schools does not have to ability to re-subscribe you when this occurs, but there are steps you can follow to re-subscribe yourself. 

Moving forward, we recently received funding to purchase a new Student Information System to replace iPass. Relevant to this issue, this new system will not only have the capability to send emails directly from a Holliston Public Schools account but will also include the ability to send text alerts and conduct mass notifications via phone. This new system will be operational by August 2018. For the remainder of this school year, we will continue to rely on HPSAnnouncements and our social media pages to provide timely information to the community. Like us on Facebook at www.facebook.com/hollistonschools or follow us on Twitter at www.twitter.com/Holliston_PS


Bradford L. Jackson, Ed.D.
Superintendent of Schools
Holliston Public Schools
370 Hollis Street
Holliston, MA 01746

Student Feature Friday: Connor Hennessy

This week’s Student Feature Friday is Connor Hennessy, a senior at Holliston High School who has already found a way to gain full-time employment harnessing his passion for marketing. What struck me most about my conversation with Connor is that he already has a clear vision for how he wants to live his life and is working hard to accomplish his goals. Connor described working at his first job in 10th grade at a dog daycare. He described working there for one week and deciding that the job was not for him and that he wanted to be his own boss. “I want freedom, I don’t want to be tied down to a schedule.”

To read more about Connor check out the Student Feature Friday section of the Principal's Blog.

Fall Musical "GREASE" Nov. 16-18

Holliston High Theatre370's Fall musical production of GREASE is fast approaching! We have over 50 students participating onstage and behind the scenes this year, 170 costumes, numerous dance sequences and tons of fun!

Welcome to Rydell High, 1959!

When Danny Zuko's summer fling, good girl Sandy Dumbrowski, transfers to Rydell, he struggles to keep his bad boy image together in front his too-cool-for-school friends, the Burger Palace Boys and the Pink Ladies. Can the group accept an outsider? Does Sandy have what it takes to hang with this crowd?

Follow their adventures as they skip, steal, and jive their way through the halls of high school.

Full of notable songs and standout dance numbers like, "We Go Together," "Greased Lightning," and "Summer Nights," GREASE is an upbeat musical for all ages. This show will leave you humming and bopping in the aisles!

"Grease" is presented by special arrangement with SAMUEL FRENCH, INC.

Ticket Information

Tickets can be purchased at the door, at Coffee Haven or online at grease370.brownpapertickets.com

Performances are November 16th, 17th, and 18th @ 7:30pm.

Tickets are $15 Adults and $10 Seniors and Students

We hope to see you there!

Student Feature Fridays: Aidan Krantz

This week I am pleased to highlight Aidan Krantz for our Student Feature Friday. If our students are our future, then it is clear after meeting Aidan Krantz that our future is bright and hopeful. Aidan is an 11th grader who cares deeply about her community. She is kind, intelligent, generous, and passionate about showing appreciation for others.

 Last year she created Give Back to Givers to promote volunteerism in Holliston. On her website, www.givebacktogivers.com, she displays the following quote: “The heart of a volunteer is not measured in size, but by the depth of their commitment in the lives of others.” Her commitment to others is remarkable and I am excited to watch her charity make a difference in the lives of so many. 

For more information on Aidan and her charity, visit the Student Feature Friday section of the Principal's Blog.

Thank you,
Nicole Bottomley
Principal
Holliston High School

Winter Sports Registration Now Open

Registration for 2017-2018 Winter Sports is now open!

Registration for HHS sports has three required pieces:

1. Filling out the registration form at http://hhsathletics.holliston.k12.ma.us/registration
2. Submitting an up-to date physical exam (requirements)
3. Paying the athletics fee. You may pay on the Town of Holliston website or by check dropped off at/or mailed to HHS Main Office Checks must be made out to "Town of Holliston- Athletics" for $225.00.

The due date for all forms, physical exams, and payment is November 23, 2017.