This Week in the Ann Arbor Public Schools

September 17, 2012

This Week’s Good News!

•  In addition to summer programs at the secondary and elementary levels, there was also an Extended School Year (ESY) option offered at Logan and at the Preschool and Family Center.

•  Congratulations to the 61 Ann Arbor Public Schools students who  qualified as Semifinalists in the 2013 National Merit Scholarship Program.  These academically talented high school seniors have an opportunity to continue in the competition and possibly receive one of the 8,300 National Merit Scholarships.  To become a National Merit Finalist, the Semifinalist and their high school must submit a detailed application in which they provide information about the Semifinalist’s academic record, participation in school and community activities, demonstrated leadership abilities as well as honors and awards received.  A Semifinalist must have an outstanding academic record throughout high school, be endorsed and recommended by a high school official, write an essay and earn SAT scores that confirm the student’s earlier performance on the qualifying test.

The 2013 National Merit Semifinalists from Ann Arbor Public Schools from each high school are listed below.

Skyline High School

Madeleine Boisvert
Emma Borjigin Wang
Ying Cai
Arun Datta
Karen Duan
Daniel Fendrick
Caroline Gallagher
Shoham Geva
Alexander Kaldjian
Eric Larson
Hannah Le
Mingquan Ma
Alexander Pepin-Bean
Kaavya Puttagunta
Patrick Walker
Edith Zhang

Pioneer High School

Aaron Baum
Samuel Blackburn
Boris Burman
Oscar Cojocariu
Ruby Emberling
Zachary Fogel
Azba Gurm
Clare Higgins
Elizabeth Hines
Joshua Kaplan
Giancarlo Latta
Siyan Li
Yiran Liu
Danny Luan
Ananya Mayukha
Jordan McKay
Akanksha Sahay
Siddhartha Sarkar
Alyssa Skelton
Yupeng Wang
Enze Xing
Gabrielle Zacks

Huron High School

Eric Ambruster
Jung Soo Chang
Keeley Erhardt
Jiaao Hou
Deniz Karabakal
Linda Liu
George Lu
Reid McCallister
Caroline Nikolaidis
Cyrus Nikolaidis
Valerie Peng
Lilia Popova
Mary Taylor
Luke Thompson-Kolar
Zibo Zou

Community High School

Leah Awkward-Rich
Tamar Cohen
Molly Kraus-Steinmetz
Harald Miller
Kelsey Moran
Rebecca Shipan
Acer Xu

•  Skyline High School's fall production of Arthur Miller's The Crucible, has been chosen to perform at the 2012 Michigan Thespian Festival this December. The Michigan Thespian Festival is the biggest festival honoring secondary educational theatre in the state. A panel of adjudicators from across the country will be flown in to critique and provide feedback to the cast and crew of the production with the ultimate goal being an invitation to perform at the International Thespian Festival in June 2013. 

•  Congratulations to Logan 1st grade teacher Ann Marie Borders who was invited to present at the 2013 Learning Disabilities Association of America (LDA) conference in San Antonio, TX.  This year, the LDA is hosting their 50th Annual International Conference. Congratulations Ann Marie!

Patricia P. Green, Ph.D.

Superintendent of Schools
Ann Arbor Public Schools
Ann Arbor, Michigan 48104