NNPS launches Every Day Counts attendance initiative
Newport News Public Schools (NNPS) students focused on the importance and benefits of attending school daily as the school division kicked off its Every Day Counts — We Need You Here divisionwide attendance initiative with numerous activities in March.
Students in all grade levels participated in an attendance challenge, distributed attendance pledge cards, created materials to promote attendance and participated in an elementary school design challenge.
Students explored ways to connect attendance to their learning, goals and well-being. The program will bring school communities together to find long-term ways to combat chronic absenteeism, which is when a student misses 10 percent or more of the school year, and to set students up for success.
NNPS hosts first Social Studies Symposium
Newport News Public Schools Department of Teaching and Learning PK-12 Social Studies hosted its first annual Social Studies Symposium on April 18 at Gildersleeve Middle School.
This year’s event was themed “America at 250: What Stories Can We Tell?” It focused on the 250th anniversary of the founding of the United States being celebrated in 2026 and the many layers of stories that have unfolded within that history.
The symposium’s three main components were a series of brief lectures by historians, an exhibit hall featuring local museums and a student art contest on display. Interactive exhibits, artifacts, games and trivia were featured.
Greenwood and Woodside library art project hits ceiling
Library and book-inspired drawings that Greenwood Elementary School second graders made in art class were interpreted into paintings by Woodside High School students on ceiling tiles that will adorn the Greenwood library’s ceiling.
The project took place over several months this spring and is the third year of a collaboration between the two schools’ libraries and art departments.
This year, Woodside librarians read books and showed a slide presentation to Greenwood students, and the two classes of second graders sketched their impressions of the stories in art class. The sketches were taken to Woodside where students in the National Art Honor Society interpreted and painted them.
Greenwood students didn’t know the last step until a surprise reveal event where the two groups met and celebrated their creations together.
