For those who have been at Amador for multiple years, many continue to see a decline in the school spirit and how connected Dons are to their school. At football games, Scott Garman (‘23) leads the Amador Valley Don Squad, a group of seniors who are there to hype up the crowd.

“I think that underclassmen specifically are pretty quiet towards the top of the stands especially when we are losing,” said Garman.

Athletes are known to be driven by the support of their fans, so hearing crickets from the home stands can be very demoralizing. This can also provide a competitive disadvantage for our school.

“The crowd is a huge part of sports games so when they are disconnected it makes the games a lot harder and looks bad on us as a school,” said Garman.

Amador is also facing the trouble of finding teachers to chaperone Junior Prom this year. English teacher Stephanie Kamali, who has chaperoned prom pre-covid, gave some insight as to why this may be happening.

“It is fun seeing the kids have so much fun but it’s a weekend. A lot of us teachers have families so the time commitment and timing of the event is probably why they are having so much trouble,” said Kamali.

Prom is a six-hour commitment for teachers if they are planning on chaperoning. This becomes almost a day-long commitment for teachers on one of their two days off a week.

“I have my daughter’s birthday party and a lot of other teachers want to spend their time together with their family instead of staying out late. I believe they are paying now which is nice because they didn’t when I went,” said Kamali. 

For certain teachers, going to Prom is something that they genuinely enjoy doing. ASL teacher Kyra Britto sees both sides of the story when it comes to chaperoning.

“Teachers spend their entire week with students so I am sure you can see why some don’t want to spend Saturday night, but I enjoy watching you guys have fun, so I go every year,” said Britto.