Avery County Schools

Parents, Please come to the YMCA for Family Day at the YMCA this Saturday, April 27th, from 10am-2pm! This is an Open House for the YMCA and is free to the public to attend. They will have Imagine Circus, Food Trucks, Bounce Houses and more! The YMCA hopes to see your family there

Attention Class of 2025! Get ready for Senior Portraits. June 10th and 11th, 2024 Avery High School 700 Pod Sign up to schedule your appointment at the link listed below.

Notification of incident involving Avery County Activity Bus April 23, 2024 at 10:47:10 AM EDT On 23 April 2024 at approximately 9:15 this morning, An Avery County Activity Bus transporting students to Watauga County was involved in a minor traffic collision on NC 105 near "Rock Crusher Hill". Thankfully, no students or staff were injured. The Avery County School System have made all necessary provisions for their transportation to their destination in Boone. Shared from the Avery County Sheriff NC app at

A Message from our Superintendent: April 19, 2024 Avery County School System Faculty, Staff, Students & Community Members: Our academic year is quickly passing, and the Class of 2024 will soon depart for their post high school endeavors. As you are aware, our annual budget development process is underway. All school systems across North Carolina - and the nation - are having similar challenges with school budgets. ESSER funds are depleted; therefore, district leadership teams and Board of Educations are seeking ways to sustain operations while improving services for children. Since 2019, inflation has continued to rise, hourly wages have increased, and the cost of goods and services have drastically increased. These impacts, combined with our loss of student enrollment (based upon which most of our state funding is calculated), continue to strain our budgets. More than 85% of our operational budgets go towards salaries and benefits, leaving us with minimal flexibility or options for reductions in our budgets. Ongoing efforts have been made over the past four years to protect our local budget and fund balances in preparation for this moment in time. Our priority is to protect classrooms and schools while ensuring the highest quality of teaching and learning continues throughout the Avery County School System. Recognizing upcoming fiscal challenges and hoping to avoid a Reduction in Force, we have been reviewing all positions throughout the district over the past two years and, when possible, absorbing positions as employees retire or leave the system. In addition to absorbing positions, we must make staffing decisions in the best interest of students and to protect our operational budgets. As done for many years, this approach will also require some staff to be reassigned to other schools or departments. Rather than making last-minute announcements, we are notifying all employees at the earliest time possible who could possibly be affected by a change in placement for the upcoming academic year. At this time, we are unsure how our budget outcomes will occur and will continue to make plans for reductions as necessary. We will continue to seek other options while protecting resources at the classroom level. Hopefully, with the reassignments and reductions in positions, use of a portion of our available fund balance, and essential funding from our county government, we will successfully sustain our current level of operations as we prepare for the 2024-2025 academic year. Thank you for your continued support as we strive to maximize every dollar while maintaining a balanced budget in the Avery County School System. Sincerely, Dan Brigman, Ed.D. Superintendent of Schools

PARENTS - The North Carolina Department of Public Instruction is requesting your participation in the Digital Learning Dashboard Parent Survey. Information you provide will be used to help target areas of need and ensure that all NC students have adequate access to devices and the internet to access learning. Note that the information gathered will be kept private and confidential. - Access the survey at this link - https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSd1Mf0OcxSkz27_guOx4txGVhbfU-E1YdlZ2rlP2478Ex719w/viewform

Parents: New SUN Bucks Program Coming Soon to North Carolina! The Department of Health and Human Services is launching a new SUN Bucks Program, a food assistance program that will provide benefits to qualifying students and families to help purchase healthy foods during the summer months. Take action now: Please confirm by March 28, 2024 that the mailing address on file with your school is up to date with the best address for the summer months. Visit SUN Bucks | NCDHHS to learn more.

Attention Parents who use the K12 Payment Portal for Lunch account payments: Avery County Schools Child Nutrition Services will be changing our Point of Sale Software during Spring Break. We will be shutting the K12 Payment site down as of Thursday evening, March 28th, 2024. You will be able to set up a new account in the new system in Linq Connect at https://www.linqconnect.com. You will not be able to put funds on student accounts until Tuesday, April 2nd, 2024. All current balances on the old software will be transferred to the new system on Monday, April 1st, 2024. When you set up your new accounts in Linq Connect, you will still be able to view accounts in the new system as we are currently doing in the K12 payment system. Please set up your new accounts today at: https://www.linqconnect.com If you have any questions, please feel free to email Tammy Woodie, Child Nutrition Director at tammywoodie@averyschools.net.

The Avery County Board of Education has approved the 2024-2025 Instructional Calendar. The calendar can be viewed at this link: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1PmpQJAQAvbm3l9K58OoetkVHeIXubrXzWbuft6oAMiw/edit?usp=sharing

Due to the impending weather and potential icy conditions throughout the county, the Avery County School System will be CLOSED with a REMOTE ACADEMIC DAY today, Friday, March 1, 2024. Students should work on their “Day 1 Snow Packets” that were sent home earlier.

Good evening! Due to the current winter weather forecast over the next 24 hours, the Avery County School System will operate on a TWO HOUR DELAY on Friday, March 1, 2024. We will reassess conditions in the early morning hours and make a decision by 6:30 AM if schools must be closed. Thank you and stay safe!

Tonight your Vikings travel to Mountain Heritage High for the Conference Basketball Championship matchups. The JV Girls play at 4. Varsity girls will follow and the Varsity boys will end the night. Admission is $10. Go Vikings!

The information contained in the document linked below is to provide the public with information concerning the hiring practices of Avery County Schools. As you can tell from the data, over 93% of our hires over the past two years have come from Avery County or a neighboring county. https://5il.co/2eq8o

Due to hazardous travel conditions throughout the county, the Avery County School System will be CLOSED with an OPTIONAL WORKDAY on Tuesday, February 13, 2024

Good morning! Due to the current weather conditions across the county, the Avery County School System will operate on a TWO HOUR DELAY today, Tuesday, February 13, 2024. We will continue to monitor weather and travel conditions. If further changes to our schedule are necessary, including a school cancellation, that decision will be made by 7:30am. Please be careful traveling this morning!

ACS parents and community members who are also customers of Carolina West Wireless can sign up to have 3% of their phone bill donated to a school of their choice. Please follow this link to either sign up or renew your school preference. https://c4e.carolinawest.com/

Avery County High School will host a FAFSA and Scholarship information session on Thursday, February 8th from 5:30 to 7:00 in the media center. Seniors and their parents are encouraged to attend for assistance with completing the FAFSA and learning about scholarship opportunities.

Good evening Avery County Schools Families, In preparation for more winter weather, remote learning packets have been prepared for your child. We have one more "old-fashioned" snow day for students. After that, we will begin remote instruction. Students will be coming home with remote learning packets today. After missing one more day of school for weather, students will need to begin work on these packets. (We are allowed up to five remote days, so students will be coming home with five days worth of work in case it is needed.) Please see chart for grade level information and information on remote learning. The chart can be found attached to the message email, on our school webpage under "live feed" and on our Facebook page. Please note that technology/internet is not required to complete these assignments.

School level spelling bee winners will be competing for the district championship on February 2, 2024 at 1 pm. Watch a Live Stream of the Avery County Schools Spelling Bee - 2024 at the link below: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tzIxj_6dK7s

Good afternoon! The Avery County School System will operate on a regular schedule on Friday, February 2, 2024. However, buses will not travel on the following gravel roads: Chestnut Dale, White Pine, John Greer, Reuben Wooten, Old Beech Mountain Gravel, & Dogwood Knob Gravel. Thank you and have a good evening!

Avery County Schools will be conducting Substitute Teacher Training on February 20th. Interested candidates should click the link below to complete the registration form. https://forms.gle/m8xJH8kz2Ffi2qX37