About Lee High

Lee High School Facilities Description:

Lee High School is located at 200 Generals Lane, Jonesville, Virginia 24263. The school was named for former Virginia Governor Richard Henry “Lighthorse Harry” Lee and proudly displays a Revolutionary Era General as its mascot. Lee High School is Division A in the Clinch Mountain District. Serving 700+ students, it is one of two high schools, and the largest of the ten schools in the Lee County Public School System. The geographical range of Lee High School’s service area ranges approximately 30 miles. Lee High School opened in September of 1989.

In its rural setting, surrounded by ridges and traversed by a small stream, the campus of Lee high School is adjacent to U. S. Alternate 58, the county’s main transportation route. The school is about is about midway between, and within ten minutes of, the county’s two largest towns: Jonesville, the county seat, and Pennington Gap, the county’s business center.

Lee High School, in its 31 years of operation, has 249,223 square feet of space, consisting of 9 separate buildings. The 140 acre campus has a football stadium, a football practice field, four tennis courts, a baseball field, a softball field, and accommodating parking lots. Lee High School’s academic/gymnasium building, C. B. Slemp Auditorium-Music Building, and Ford C. Quillen Vocational Building are state of the art, with excellent lighting, computer controlled environment, closed circuit television, and professionally landscaped grounds.

The layout of Lee high School’s academic/gymnasium building consists of the main building with five levels. The zero level floor includes the lobby and the gymnasium. The first floor houses the administrative offices and classrooms for social studies, health, and science. The second floor is made up entirely of the commons area, a combination cafeteria and multipurpose room. The third floor is set aside for mathematics, art, social studies, special education, remedial classes and the Guidance Department. The fourth floor consists of the library-media center, English, social studies, and foreign language classrooms. Lee High School has a total of 54 classrooms.

Also included is the C. B. Slemp Auditorium consisting of a 750 seat auditorium, a chorus room, and band rooms. The athletic field house provides dressing areas, weight rooms, and office space.

Accessed by a covered pedestrian walkway, the Ford C. Quillen Career Center houses vocational education classes. Adjacent to this are the three other academic career buildings.

The community uses Lee High’s facilities for meetings, public programs and college classes. Community concerts by nationally and internationally known artists, Broadway-type productions, children’s plays, and fund raising activities of local charitable organizations are held in the auditorium. Organizations may use the facilities with approval.

Lee High Expectations and Beliefs

Lee High School has high expectations for its staff and students. It is our goal to not only become fully accredited, but to also become one of the leading schools in the state of Virginia by 2016. We operate our school on not only the district mission and motto of “Committed to Excellence”, but to our own motto “Aspire, Expect and Achieve". Our mission statement, along with our goals is the foundation to our school’s purpose.

The Faculty and staff of Lee High School will provide the highest standard of education to students of all ability levels to enable them to meet the standards of an ever-changing world. We will consistently provide updated technology and innovative educational techniques and strategies to meet the educational, vocational, social, psychological needs and interests of our students. We will strive to prepare students to be responsible citizens who have an appreciation for our democratic way of life.

Lee High School’s beliefs are:

1. We believe in the worth of all students and believe that their worth will be increased by providing tools to be life-long learners.
2. We believe that students must understand that they are the ones ultimately responsible for their learning.
3. We believe that diversity is a strength and should be celebrated, both in the content of our curriculum and the make-up of our student body.
4. We believe that a safe, positive, and supportive atmosphere is invaluable.
5. We believe that instruction should meet the needs of all students, regardless of the level of learning or the way in which they learn.
6. We believe that technology positively impacts student achievement as it changes the teaching and learning environment.
7. We believe that Respect, Attitude, Cooperation, Effort, and Responsibility (R.A.C.E.R) are integral to success, and we strive to model and teach these values as a part of our curriculum.

Lee High School maintains a curriculum that is aligned to the Virginia Standards of Learning, is diverse and frequently monitored. Our curriculum is a rigorous course of studies, leading towards the end of year SOL tests, Advanced Placement, Dual Enrollment, MOS (Microsoft User Specialist) Work Place Readiness, Customer Service, OSHA, and State Nursing Boards examinations, to name a few, that meet the needs of highly motivated secondary school students at every level and interest. Lee High is also an IT (Information Technology) Academy, active for three years. Our curriculum is ever-changing and challenging based on the needs of the 21st century student.

The diversity of curriculum options is one of the highlights of Lee High School. Students may choose to study a combination of subjects in greater or lesser depth according to their own requirements. Outside of the compulsory courses of study, student may choose many options from the Art discipline (for example, Band, Chorus, Foreign Languages such as Spanish and French) or from the Vocational and Technical disciplines such as CIS (Computer Information Systems), ITF (Information Technology Fundamentals), Computer Networking, and Culinary Arts to name a few. Lee High offers many levels of core course work to help meet the needs of each student. Our main focus is our students. Our classrooms accommodate various learning styles, multiple intelligences and require each student to use higher-order thinking and problem solving skills. We will leave no child behind as we are continually striving toward differentiated instruction and collaboration. Our vision for each student, no matter the learning level, is to help each student reach his/her maximum potential through our vision towards differentiated instruction:

No two students enter a classroom with identical abilities, experiences, and needs. Learning style, language proficiency, background knowledge, readiness to learn, and other factors can vary widely within a single class group. Regardless of their individual differences, however, students are expected to master the same concepts, principles, and skills. Writing assignments may be adjusted to allow more time to complete; questions may be added to allow comprehension; tests may be extended to allow the students ample time to give the best possible results and chance for success. Most students with special needs or at risk of failure generally find the tasks of reading out loud or responding to questions the most difficult both academically and emotionally; therefore, the classroom environment must be made to feel that all students regardless of abilities or skills, will be treated the same and have the best possible chance at success. Giving the student the understanding that the classroom environment and teacher are working for the best possible outcome for student success allows the student to learn and move forward in their skills rather than be boxed into the traditional label attached to them that inhibits or prevents their success.

Ways in which differentiated instruction may be done are:

• Identify the level at which individual students are working
• Determine student interests. On a regular basis, ask students to identify topics that interest them and activities that occupy their non-school time
• Based on Content Utilize pre-tests to assess where individual students need to begin study of a given topic or unit
• Encourage thinking at various levels of Bloom's taxonomy
• Use a variety of instructional delivery methods to address different learning styles
• Break assignments into smaller, more manageable parts that include structured directions for each part
• Choose broad instructional concepts and skills that lend themselves to understanding at various levels of complexity.
• Based on Process Provide access to a variety of materials which target different learning preferences and reading abilities.
• Develop activities that target auditory, visual, and kinesthetic learners.
• Establish stations for inquiry-based, independent learning activities
• Create activities that vary in level of complexity and degree of abstract thinking required.
• Use flexible grouping to group and regroup students based on factors including content, ability, and assessment results.
• Based on Product Use a variety of assessment strategies, including performance-based and open-ended assessment.
• Balance teacher-assigned and student-selected projects.
• Offer students a choice of projects that reflect a variety of learning

The faculty and staff encourage and promote a culture of high expectations in academics and behavior for all.

Lee High offers our faculty and non-teaching staff professional development that will meet and resolve challenges in their area of responsibility. Professional development is a priority of not only our school, but our school district as we strive towards full accreditation, as well as our goal to be a top school in the state of Virginia.

Lee High prides itself on its determination to include our community in all of our activities, as well as actively work with our community to collaborate with the school to prepare our students to become life-long learners and productive members of our community and worldwide society. Our community is what makes Lee High strong. Through various organizations and our community leadership, we will provide the best support network to our students and families.

Lee High School continually seeks to improve itself in order to provide our students the best possible education we can give them. Despite the hardships our community has faced in the past years and the growing economic difficulties our stakeholders and our school system face, Lee High will stand by its belief in doing “whatever you need me to do” in order to ensure the success of our students.

Curriculum

The curriculum is designed to meet the needs of each student. A variety of academic and vocational classes are offered to prepare the student for further education and/or employment. Governor's School, Dual Credit, Advanced Placement, and the Honors programs are in place. Governor's School classes are awarded college credit and are available only to students participating in the Gifted and Talented Program. Those courses include Anatomy and Physiology, Western Civilization, World Civilization, Probability and Statistics, Principles oh Physics, and Engineering and Robotics. Dual Credit classes include English 12, Calculus, French, Anatomy and Physiology, Biology, Pre-calculus, Political Science, and many vocational classes for college credit.

Accreditation

Lee High School is fully-accredited with warning by the Virginia Board of Education.

Grading Scale and Weight

The following grading scale applies to all students:

Course Types

A

B

C

D

F

AP, DC, and GOV

100-90

4.0

89-80

3.0

79-70

2.0

69-60

1.0

59-0

0.0

Honors

100-93

4.0

92-83

3.0

82-73

2.0

72-66

1.0

65-0

0.0

All Others

100-95

4.0

94-85

3.0

84-75

2.0

74-70

1.0

69-0

0.0

Graduation Requirements

Graduation requirements are consistent with the guidelines from the Virginia Department of Education for the standard diploma, the advanced diploma, modified standard diploma, special diploma, and the certificate of completion.

Why Lee High School

Lee High School offers to students many opportunities that other schools do not. While our students are faced with obvious hurdles, both financially as well as socially, our school makes it our priority to give them a well-rounded experience through our extensive curriculum opportunities, as well as our extra-curricular activities, clubs and programs. In talking with former students who have gone on to larger Universities and Colleges, the majority of the students felt that despite not having the same opportunities in some academic classes that their fellow college classmates had, perhaps not having higher math or science class or even the same rigor in a particular class, the extensive curriculum and extra-curricular opportunities afforded them at Lee High School helped to make them a better well-rounded student. As one student who is a senior at the University of Virginia, Charlottesville stated, the opportunity to be in Band, Computer Systems Technology/ Information Technology Fundamentals, along with his Dual Enrollment, Governor’s School and Advanced Placement courses, allowed him the opportunity to experience the full high school experience without being pigeon holed into a strictly SOL course-load or Advanced Diploma structure that does not allow for the non-SOL tested electives. While that may in many factors leave the student appearing to have a lesser college preparedness than other students from I.B. or Charter Schools, in this students opinion he felt that he was better prepared for the rigors of college/university expectations because he had a fuller range of curriculum preparation.

Another former student who attended the University of Tennessee at Knoxville for her undergraduate degree in Psychology and African Studies and afterwards received her M.A. and Ed.S. in School Psychology from James Madison University stated the following about her education from Lee High School:

“After I graduated from Lee High and went to UT and got settled into "college life", I often did look back and think about my experience at Lee High and how it prepared me for college. I remember talking to my friends at UT and sharing High School stories with each other and I remember on many occasions thinking to myself, "Wow, I was fortunate to have that at Lee High...." or "I'm glad I didn't have to worry about that at my high school...."

In terms of academics, I was offered a lot more at Lee High than I thought I was... From the DC, AP and Governors School classes that I took at Lee High, I went into my first year at UT classified as a sophomore. Not only did this allow me to take many exploratory classes at the college level that I would not have had time to take, I was also able to take other classes of interest and declare a second major.

Another strong point that Lee High offered was realizing that the relationships that I built with my teachers at Lee High did not have to end at graduation. When I graduated from Lee High, I knew that my high school "career" was over, but the relationships that I built with my teachers, principals, coaches were something that (if I wanted them to) could last a lifetime. Talking to other students that I met at UT, they could not say the same. A lot of them came from larger high schools where they did not have an opportunity to build these relationships with their teachers because they were often seen as just another student among thousands in the school. Even after I graduated, my former Lee High teachers were just a phone call away if I needed help on an English paper, with Statistics or when I needed specific sheet music to use for my audition for the Marching Band at UT. I knew that I could call you or any other teacher for assistance.

The variety of extracurricular activities that Lee High offers students was very helpful for me. Not only did participating in many of these extra-curricular activities help me be a better candidate when applying to college, they also helped me be a more well-rounded student at UT. I was able to join many college level organizations and hold leadership roles within them because of my previous experience in organizations at Lee High.”

Lee High also proudly offers its students many opportunities to participate in extra-curricular opportunities that allow the students to grow socially and physically, while at the same time have opportunities to travel outside the societal stereotype of illiterate, backwoods, poverty stricken hillbillies. Lee High has consistently competed at the highest level in many of our athletic and academic competitions. Many times in a school improvement, the focal point on what a school system is lacking or not doing overshadows what a school is doing right or well. Extra-curricular activities have garnered our school over 30 District Championships on both the AA and A levels, a State Championship in Golf, an individual State Championship in Wrestling, a state championship in Odyssey of the Mind with a place also in World Competition, three district championship, a regional championship, a third place finish in state competition and 19th place finish in the National Championships for Scholastic Bowl, two straight VHSL Sportsmanship Awards, two Sportsmanship, Ethic and Integrity first place awards, ten 1,000 plus points basketball scorers, one 1,000 kills volleyball player, one 1,000 point scorer, one 2,000 point scorer and one 3,000 point scorer in Scholastic Bowl and two Virginia All-Star competitors. Most impressively, Lee High has had one of the most decorated bands in the state of Virginia with over 330 awards in its twenty-five year history, including two participation in the Toyota Gator Bowl Halftime Shows.

In conjunction with the Vocational and Technical School, our students have won state awards and national recognition in Robotics, as well as FBLA, Skills USA and DECA competitions. Our students participate in the Society of Naval Architects and Marine Engineers boat competition each year with the group consistently qualifying for their boats to be built by the Apprentice School, operated by Newport News Shipbuilding.

Lee High strives for excellence in all that we do. We are proud of the accomplishments that we have made towards becoming fully accredited. However, what we are most proud of is our students, their accomplishments both inside and outside of the classroom, but most importantly, the accomplishments they make once they leave Lee High. Our students have become authors, engineers, doctors, teachers, military personnel who protect our country, parents and boosters, who watch their own children enjoy the offerings of Lee High just as they did. There are no bubble sheets or statistics or tests or even accreditation that can measure the intangibles we offer our students. Lee High School is more than Fact and Statistics. We strive to be as Charles Dickens wrote in his novel Hard Times, “…the immaterial part of [a student’s] life, the spring and summer of [his/her] belief, [his/her] refuge from what is sordid and bad in the real things around [him/her], [his/her] school in which [he/she] should [learn] to be more humble and more trusting …,and to hope in [his/her] little sphere to make [the world] better.” (161)

Communications Plan

Lee High School's objective is to provide all stakeholders and community members with current and continuous updated information about all school related activities and academic achiements at Lee high School. This information is provided in one or more of the following manners:

• School Website
• Power Announcer
• School Marquee
• Extracurricular Activities
• Student and School Report Cards

The goal of the Communication Plan it to:

• Increase awareness about the positive impact of student education
• Improve public perception of Lee High School
• Generate consistent information flow
• Generate engagement and support for Lee High School from all stakeholders and community members

Recognition/Awards:

• Josh McCall
• 2014 State Wrestling Champion
• 2014-State Wrestling Champion-Josh McCall
• 2012 Girls Clinch Mountain District Champions
• 1989-2011 Lee High School –Fully Accredited
• 2010-2011 Boys Tennis Region D Champions
• 2010-2011 Boys Tennis Team Clinch Mountain District Champions
• 2010-2011 Girls Track Region D Champions
• 2010-2011 Girls Track Clinch Mountain District Champions
• 2010-2011 Boys Basketball advanced to state tournament
• 2010-2011 Boys Basketball Clinch Mountain District Co-Champions
• 2010-2011 Wrestling Team Clinch Mountain District Champions
• 2010-2011 Girls JV Basketball Clinch Mountain Tournament Champions
• 2010-2011 Boys JV Basketball Clinch Mountain Tournament Champions
• 2009-2010 Lee High School Marching Band – McChesney Champions (13/21 years)
• 2010-2011 Football Team – Battle of Lee Champions (2/2 years)
• 2008-2009 Lee High School Marching Band – Papa Joe Smiddy USSBA Regional Champions
• 2008-2009 Girls Basketball – State Semi-Finalist
• 2008-2009 Academic Team – Clinch Mountain Champions
• 2007-2008 Lee High School Marching Band – Walt Disney Magical Music Days - Champions
• 2007-2008 Academic Team – 3rd Place State Competition
• 2007-2008 Academic Team – Qualified at the National Competition
• 2007-2008 Academic Team – District Champions
• 2007-2008 Academic Team – Regional Champions
• 2005-2006 Lee High School Marching Band – Toyota Gator Bowl- Runner –Up
• 2005-2006 – Lee High School Marching Band – Governor’s Inaugural Parade
• 2004-2005 – Lee High School Marching Band – Lonesome Pine- Champions (4/8 years)
• 1989-2008 Forensics – Qualified for State Competition
• 2001-2002 Lee High School – Toyota Gator Bowl – Grand Champions
• 2000-2001 Duo Interpretation – State Finalist
• 1998-1999 Prose Interpretation – State Finalist
• 1993-1994 Lee High School Marching Band – Six Flags Over Georgia – Silver Medalist
• 1990, 1991, 1993 & 1995 Lee High School Marching Band –National Winchester Apple Blossom Fest. - AA Champions
• 1993-2002 Track –State Qualifiers
• 1990-1991 – Football Team – State Runner Up
• 1990-1991 Golf Team – State Championship