News

Albany Options School is in the news for continual improvements in student achievement. For the last four years, the school has been among the top performers among alternative schools statewide.

AOS has better results than the seven similar schools around the state in four-year complete rates, five-year completer rates and dropout rates.

Read more about the school culture and steady improvement records in the Democrat-Herald’s Oct. 15 story, Staying the course: Albany Options School stats continue to rise.

This week, schools are celebrating National School Lunch Week. GAPS joins schools around the country in recognizing the hard work and dedication of school food service staff members who work hard to prepare healthy and appealing meals for students.

Here are a few facts about nutrition services in our schools from Nutrition Services General Manager Kathy Pitzer:

We serve an average of 7,700 meals per day. That is broken down by 2,500 breakfasts, 4,500 lunches, 700 other (after school suppers, ala carte purchases, etc.).

There are around 90 food service employees in the 21 schools plus four support staff at the Nutrition Services Department.

We buy locally grown/produced food where/when we can. Currently there are about seven local vendors we work with, including Lochmead Dairy for milk, Truitt Family Farms for beans and Bob’s Red Mills for granola.

On Oct. 6, high school students visited local companies to learn more about career opportunities in manufacturing. Students from South and West Albany high schools and Albany Options School joined the nationwide Manufacturing Day event to “celebrate modern manufacturing and inspire the next generation of manufacturers.”

In Albany, Pipeline to Jobs organized tours for students at industry, including ATI, National Frozen Foods and Wood Castle Furniture. Students toured the facilities, spoke to employers and learned about skills to help them get hired and advance in a career.

At National Frozen Foods, students learned and practiced welding skills and won prizes for welding activities. Wyett Luttrell, pictured above, won a welding helmet provided by General Manager Armando Nunez.

After the tours, students returned to LBCC to learn more about LBCC programs that train students for local jobs. Students toured training space for Machine Tool, Mechatronics, CADD, Welding and Non-Destructive Testing programs.

This week, the School Board honored Student All-Stars from Albany Options School for earning the highest scores on the Oregon Smarter Balanced state tests last spring.

The students were introduced by Principal John Hunter. Albany Options students are (from left):

Andrew Middleton

Andrew is a bright young man who has used his time at AOS to catch up on credits so that he will be able to start taking classes at LBCC later this year with the intent of transferring to a four-year college to attain his computer science degree. He is in leadership class, volunteers regularly, and earns consistently high grades and academic awards in all of his classes.

Stefani DeMello

Stefani came to us her sophomore year from out of state as a pregnant teen. She used her situation to motivate herself to not only make up credits, but to get herself back on track to finish early and is now enrolled in the LBCC automotive program. In addition to being an exceptional young lady, she is extremely smart, driven and a natural leader.

Albany Options School will have picture day with Lifetouch School Portraits on Monday, October 9th at 1:00 pm. Students will receive packets for ordering prior to the weekend.

See the office manager, Mrs. Barker, or the school counselor, Mrs. Harryman, for more information or if you have any questions.