To be eligible to join the PAC email groups, you must be a member of the HB community, which is defined as HB students and their parents, grandparents, and guardians; HB staff; HB alumni (parents/students/staff); members of the Arlington County School Board; and senior APS staff. Once you are a member of News or Talk, you will not be removed unless you ask to be removed—or unless you violate the guidelines (see Usage Guidelines below) even after reminders from the moderator.
There is no directory for HBW-News or HBW-Talk listing all the members. Only the moderator, PAC officers, and HB administrators have access to the subscriber list. This means that you may join a group and receive messages while remaining anonymous. However, if you send a message to one of the email groups, you must sign your name and include your HB connection (e.g., parent of 9th grader, Grade 7 English teacher).
How to Join
How To Unsubscribe
Usage Guidelines for HBW-News
Usage Guidelines for HBW-Talk
Message Archives
Email Group Management
Membership is by user subscription only, i.e., you must ask to join. Only members may send messages to or receive messages from the email groups. In joining the PAC email group(s), members agree to abide by the guidelines for each group.
To subscribe, complete this form or send an email message to the moderator, Tiffany Volonakis (volo911@gmail.com), with the following information:
Your first and last name
Your connection to the HB community (parent/guardian, staff, student, etc.)
The name(s) and grade(s) of your child(ren) who attend HB (if you are a parent/guardian)
The group(s) you wish to join (HBW-News, HBW-Talk, or both)
Please note that requests with incomplete information will not be processed. Once the moderator has added you to a group, you will receive an automated welcome message providing a password. The password is not needed to send or receive messages; it is needed only to view archived messages.
Problems with your subscription (e.g., you aren"t receiving messages) should be reported directly to the moderator, not to the whole group.
To have your address removed from a group or to change your email address, contact the moderator directly. The current moderator is Tiffany Volonakis (volo911@gmail.com).
HBW-News is a moderated email group and messages must be approved by the moderator before they are distributed to the group. This prevents inappropriate messages, including spam, from being sent to the group. It also delays delivery of your message by up to 24 hours, so please plan ahead. (A few individuals, such as HB administrators and PAC officers, have the ability to post directly to the list.)
The content of messages submitted to HBW-News should be limited to issues directly related to HB or the HB community. This may range from announcing school events to changes in the instructional program to highlighting school board policies that have an impact on HB. The moderator will follow the general rule that issues may be the subject of messages on HBW-News, but the content of the message should be limited to education about the issue and identifying any meetings or further steps. Advocacy or calls to action in support of a particular cause are not appropriate for HBW-News EXCEPT in instances where the PAC has agreed to support a particular cause or course of action. Such messages would typically be sent by a PAC officer or a designated PAC representative. Commercial advertisements and advocacy for political candidates are never appropriate for HBW-News.
HBW-News will also follow the general guidelines for PTAs allowing announcements of events to meet candidates where anyone may attend or for debates to which all candidates for office have been invited. No other messages about candidates for public office should be submitted to HBW-News.
You should take care to compose a subject line that describes the nature and general content of your message. The moderator will hold messages with ambiguous subject lines and ask for the sender to modify and clarify them before they are posted to the list.
Remember that you are creating a written record; write only what you are willing to have attributed to you now and in the future.
Only HBW-News members may send messages to the group. On occasion, the moderator, principal, or PAC Chair may forward or approve a message from an outside source, if it meets guideline requirements. This is kept to a minimum.
HBW-News is not a forum for questions. If you need more information about a message that was posted to HBW-News, contact the individual who sent the message; do not reply to the group. (If you reply to the group, your message will be rejected.) Or you can post your question to HBW-Talk.
Don"t send graphics or large attachments. Large files can clog our host server and may slow delivery of email to members. If you have a flyer you want to share, it is best to copy the important information into your email message rather than attaching the flyer itself.
HBW-Talk is an unmoderated email group. Messages written by members do not go through an approval process but are sent directly to all group members. (Non-member messages are not distributed.) As such, the goodwill of those submitting messages is what keeps HBW-Talk relevant to the subscribers and prevents it from becoming an endless soapbox rather than a forum for discussion about HB.
Content should be limited to discussing issues directly related to HB or the HB community. This may range from school events to the instructional program to school board policies that have an impact on HB. Do not send commercial advertisements or engage in partisan political commentary involving political candidates. However, messages advocating for a particular cause that is relevant to the HB community (e.g., maintaining funding for the planetarium, securing funding for a new field at HB) are allowed on HBW-Talk as long as the guidelines concerning civility, respect, and courtesy are followed.
HBW-Talk is intended to be a forum for active discussion about issues relevant to HB, while HBW-News is intended to be limited to announcements. While a message on HBW-News might provide some background on an issue directly relevant to the HB community, HBW-Talk would be the forum for comments about the issue, including information supporting all sides of the issue. The normal pattern of use on HBW-Talk has been for a few issues a year to generate perhaps 6 to 8 messages each. There have been exceptions, including a 100-message exchange on a topic that engaged many parents and students. If you do not want to be subjected to that possible traffic, you may not want to subscribe. HBW-Talk is the only forum where parents, staff, and students can communicate easily on HB issues; therefore, civil communication is not cut off regardless of the number of messages. That said, traffic on the list is usually quite light.
Every message should identify its sender and his or her relationship to the HB community.
It is crucial that subject lines fully describe the content of the message. Because HBW-Talk may generate a number of messages on particular topics, helpful subject descriptions allow subscribers to organize those messages they are interested in and quickly delete those they are not.
No message should refer to a particular student, teacher, or staff member by name. While HBW-Talk considers HB policies, it should do so in the context of the issue and not the individuals involved.
All messages and comments should be respectful and courteous. HBW-Talk is intended to be a conversation, not an argument or shouting match.
As you compose a reply, please consider whether it is appropriate for the entire subscriber list or just the original sender.
Please limit attachments. Large files are rarely welcome. It is appropriate to offer to provide such large files to those who specifically request them.
All messages are archived on the APS servers. This should lead everyone to recognize the lasting nature of comments in messages sent to HBW-Talk. It is best in this context to avoid rumor and speculation, maintain a civil demeanor, and allow for minor mistakes without a reaction posted to the entire group.
Finally, although HBW-Talk is not moderated, the moderator does review the messages and will raise any concerns with specific senders.
Only HBW-Talk members may send messages to the group. Messages from outside sources should not be forwarded to the group unless they provide background for a point a member is making. This should be kept to a minimum and should be done only with permission from the source of the outside message.
What is written to HBW-Talk should stay within HBW-Talk. This group is intended to be an internal HB forum, and messages should not be forwarded outside the group.
The HB PAC email groups moved to the APS facility in February 2006. All messages sent to HBW-News and HBW-Talk since that date are in the message archive maintained for each of those groups. Messages are archived in chronological order and may be accessed by any current member.
To link to the message archives, go to https://www.lists.apsva.us:13443/wws/lists/hb
- Click on the Login button in the upper left hand corner of the page.
- Enter the full email address under which you are subscribed and the password you received in your welcome message, then click on the Login button.
- The screen should display all HB email groups to which you belong. If not, click on the Your Subscriptions button on the top right of the page. You should then get a list of all the email groups you have joined. Click on the name of the list whose archives you want to view.
- Scroll down the left-hand column and click on the Archive button.
- The current month’s messages are displayed by subject. Click on a message to view it. Messages from previous months are stored by year and month. Click on the month you want to review and a chronological list of messages for that month will be displayed.
- You will need to use the Back button on your browser to return to your previous view after reading a selected message.
Searching the Archives
The archive for each group may be searched for messages on a particular topic. Note that the search feature needs to be improved; tests of this feature resulted in either incomplete responses or server errors. It works best for searching recent messages on a topic.
- To search the current month, enter the topic you want to search for, then click on the Search button. The content of the messages containing your search criteria will be displayed.
- To search all past messages or to specify how you want the results displayed, click on Advanced Search (the link directly under the search parameter box) and specify additional parameters and/or time periods.
The HB PAC is the operator of HBW-News and HBW-Talk via the Arlington Public School listserv facility. The PAC Chair and/or the moderator are the final arbiters of usage in lieu of actions taken by the PAC as a whole. The moderator serves at the discretion of the PAC Chair. The role of the moderator is to (1) maintain the memberships of each of the groups and (2) ensure that guidelines for usage are being followed by members. For HBW-News, the moderator reviews and approves messages prior to distribution. This is done within 24 hours of submission; messages are generally reviewed and approved every evening. In cases where some content may be outside guidelines, but other information is time critical, the moderator may edit a message submitted to HBW-News prior to distribution. (Otherwise, a revision is requested from the originator.)
For all questions or issues related to HBW-News and HBW-Talk, please contact either the moderator or the PAC Chair.
