NNPS Attendance and Menchville High win 2025 Attendance Innovation Award
The Newport News Public Schools attendance department and Menchville High School won the 2025 Attendance Innovation Awards Grand Prize from EveryDay Labs for outstanding attendance initiatives.
Implementing a special soccer league to improve attendance for students who are English Learners, Menchville staffers engaged students through love of the sport, which not only brought more students into school but also introduced them to skills beyond athleticism, including statistics and public speaking. By scheduling tournaments on days with historically low attendance, school officials saw that day’s average daily attendance improve, and the overall English Learner chronic absenteeism rate drop by four percentage points.
Denbigh Aviation Academy students place 7th in national robotics competition
Two students representing the Denbigh High School Aviation Academy competed at the National Technology Student Association Conference over the summer in Nashville, Tennessee.
Rising 12th graders Teofilo Henderson-Saunders and Tationa Ward took seventh place in the national competition’s robotics category. They had qualified by earning third place at the state competition.
“They were one of a handful of teams to fully complete the course and excel at the interview,” said Stephen Millner, Aviation Academy teacher and TSA advisor. “This got them to the finalist podium in the closing ceremony.”
The finishers’ places put the students in the top 2 percent in the nation for this event in TSA, according to Millner.
Warwick HOSA students qualify for International Leadership Conference
Four students representing the Warwick High School Governor’s Health Sciences Academy’s chapter of HOSA-Future Health Professionals competed at the HOSA International Leadership Conference this summer in Nashville, Tennessee.
Rising twelfth grader Elmer Sierra-Velazquez (Pharmacology) and 2025 Warwick graduates Fernanda Bravo (Dental Terminology), Dominic Nezey (Nutrition) and Rudolph Vazquez-Lozada (Pathophysiology and National Geographic Anatomy and Physiology), along with 2025 graduate Jennifer Flores Higuera (World Health Disparities) and rising eleventh grader Faith Jackson (Behavioral Health), had placed first at the Virginia HOSA State Leadership Conference in March in their respective competition categories to qualify for the ILC.
