The Monday Memo Jan. 9, 2017

Volume 2, Issue 9

York City

School

District

Bearcat football team gives back It was their first day of their holiday break,

but these Bearcats weren’t sitting at home.

Led by Coach Russ Stoner, about 20 mem-bers of the York High football team volun-teered their time on a Thursday morning to pick up litter throughout the city. They walked south on George Street from Smalls

Field to Jackson Street, cleaning all the way.

Afterward, the boys returned to their field house for some much-deserved pizza pro-vided by the York County Economic Alli-

ance and School Director Lois Garnett.

Hannah Penn student, CIS visit NYC Communities in Schools was se-

lected to go to New York City and

ring the opening bell at NASDAQ

during the holiday break.

Hannah Penn was given the op-

portunity to have Site Coordinator

Natasha Daugherty and a student

attend. Isis Martinez in 6th grade

went along on the trip.

Two other students from Harris-

burg High were also in attendance,

along with Communities in Schools

of PA President and State Director

Ryan Riley and Development &

Communications Coordinator Lau-

ren McManus.

Students participated in the open-

ing ceremony, completed the “Top

of the Rock” tour at Rockefeller

Center and enjoyed lunch at Gal-

lagers Steakhouse.

An unexpected but needed ‘thank you’

Days before leaving for the winter break, the

after school program students surprised the

staff and faculty at Hannah Penn with a beautiful

thank you message. It was much needed as we

entered the holiday break and needed a remind-

er of the impact we have on our students. The

students created beautiful ornaments as well as

an amazingly heartfelt poem. The poem encour-

ages the staff to know that our students are

thankful for all that we do to support them.

One of the lines states, “You may never get to

know what blossoms from this little seed, But I

will never forget how you cared and fought for

me in my time of need.”

Our students were able to give us exactly what

we didn't know we needed. We love our Bear-

cats and are thankful for their kindness just

when we needed it.

— Kelly Koerner, Hannah Penn Assistant Princi-

pal

With a special spoken word performance from William Penn senior

Shaniece Wilson!

York High sets 2017 spring musical

A new group of supporters has joined the School District of the City of York on our journey toward sustainable improvement and a posi-

tive relationship with our community.

In September of 2015, Mass Insight presented the district with a Recovery Plan outline that included multiple levers for district wide im-

provement. The plan indicated that a strong mechanism to engage the community did not currently exist within the district. Based on these

discoveries, the Key Communicators program was established, according to founder and School Director Juanita Kirkland.

The program goal is to encourage ongoing two-way communication and to solicit community input as it relates to the Recovery Plan. The

group’s mission is to address the misperceptions about the district, the lack of collaboration between school and community and to help

provide a more clear understanding of the district’s vision and strategy.

The Key Communicators program is a way for our district and our community to begin working together toward the greater good for our

children, families and the residents of the City of York.

The following group of volunteers will be introduced as Key Communicators at the Jan. 18 Board of Directors meeting at 6:30 pm.

Annette Anderson, April Murray, Barry Freeland, Bryan Wade, Gordon Harrison, Jamiel Alexander, Jemell Hill, Judy Ritter-Dickson, Leroy

Atwater, Liz Morales-Alexander, Lois Garnett, Oscar Rossum Sr., William Kerney and Tonya Morgan.

We encourage you to come out and hear more about the program and meet and greet the Key Communicators.

Key Communicators join YCSD

William Penn Senior High School

students will perform “Memphis”

on April 8 and 9 in the high school

auditorium.

Adult tickets are $5 and students

are $3.

“Memphis” is set in the places

where rock and roll was born in

the 1950s: the seedy nightclubs,

radio stations and recording studi-

os of the musically-rich Tennessee

city.

With an original score, it tells the

fictional story of DJ Huey Calhoun,

a good ole’ local boy with a passion

for R&B music and Felicia Farrell,

an up-and-coming black singer that

he meets one fateful night on Beale

Street. Despite the objections of

their loved ones (Huey’s close-

minded mama and Felicia’s cautious

brother, a club owner), they em-

bark on a dangerous affair.

As their careers rise, the relation-

ship is challenged by personal ambi-

tion and the pressures of an out-

side world unable to accept their

love.

Check out these awesome designs from Davis K-8’s winter door-decorating contest to celebrate Bearcat Pride!

LCBC has al-

ways extended

Holiday cheer

to the families

of Ferguson!

This year they

donated 50

coats to Fergu-

son Students.

They also

weathered the

storm and vol-

unteered their

time working

our Holiday

Shop and wrap-

ping gifts. We

appreciate hav-

ing them as one

of our commu-

nity partners!

— Melanie Still,

Ferguson Princi-

pal

Goode kicks off reading project Goode K-8 started the One

School, One Book program last

week in support of Ms. Jeanne

Lippy’s Distributive Leadership

project. Our school had the op-

portunity to vote on the book that

every student in K-8 would be

reading and The One and Only

Ivan is the book that was chosen

for the first round of this program.

I am extremely impressed with

how well our school community is collaborating with this project.

Over break, teachers had the op-

portunity to read the book in

advance, and I saw numerous Fa-

cebook posts to Ms. Lippy (Goode

teacher) telling her how awesome

the book was and how excited

teachers were to start this book

once winter break was complete.

After the school kick-off to the

book, I saw more Facebook posts

of families on our school page

reading the book together. One

family even typed up copies of the

questions in the back of the book

for every child and parent so they

could discuss the book together.

In the building, you see a sea of

“Ivan” books as kids are carrying it

between classes, to encore classes,

in the cafeteria, and some are

reading while walking in line.

In my own classroom, students

are reading the book every chance they get and are days ahead of the

schedule set up by the program. I even had

students reading the book while waiting out-

side during a fire drill! Also, students who

usually give me a hard time about independ-

ent reading can’t put the book down!

This book has brought our close school

community even closer. I hear stories of

siblings reading to younger siblings, parents

asking teachers for more work to go with

the book and teachers sharing resources

for the book with each other across

grade levels.

Thank you, Ms. Lippy, for bringing our

school closer together!

— By Stefanie Moyar, Goode teacher

BMA to honor YCSD trailblazers Congratulations to four members of our Bearcat

family!

Among its recipients for this year’s MLK Image Awards. the Black Minis-ters Association of York has selected Superinten-dent Dr. Eric Holmes, As-sistant Superintendent for Special Education Dr. Lin-da Brown, School Police Chief Michael Muldrow and School Director

Juanita Kirkland.

This is the fourth year

the BMA is honoring “trailblazers in and around York, who like Dr. King, promote

community improvement, relationships, faith, education and community service.”

All recipients of the award will be formally recognized at the event Saturday.

Kirkland Muldrow Brown Holmes

Page 7

For the second year,

McKinley’s site coordinator

for Communities in Schools

organized students for a

winter community service

project. The coordinator,

Alex Kadyszewski, calls it

“Scarves in the Park.”

Scarves are donated to

McKinley, and then stu-

dents take them to Penn

Park and hang them on the

tress for the homeless and

needy. They wrapped more

than 40 scarves around

Penn Park’s trees this year.

This is just one of the many

ways McKinley reaches out

into our community to help

and support them.

McKinley wraps ‘Scarves in the Park’

Students at Devers K-8 in grades K-6 were involved in a holiday singalong be-

fore the vacation. Music teacher Karen Kesavarmanujam used music classes lead-

ing up to the event to practice with the students. They were working hard learn-

ing the lyrics to tunes such as “Up on the Housetop,” “Oh Christmas Tree,” and

“Rockin’ Around the Christmas Tree,” as well as motions to perform. Each grade

level was then the song expert that stood during the performance of their

song. All students were encouraged to sing with the if they knew the words.

The event culminated with retired librarian Ruth Wolfe returning for a fun-filled

reading of the classic tale “Twas the Night Before Christmas,” as well as a final, all

-school singing of “Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer.”

Thanks to Ms. Kesavaramanujam and Ms. Wolfe for all of their hard work lead-

ing up to the event, as well as during it. The students were not only excited but

showed off their talent extremely well.

We look forward to many more school events with this type of enthusiasm!

— Craig Linn, Devers Principal

Fourth grade students in Room 105 at Jackson spent two weeks exploring the Benchmark Essen-tial Question: “How do we respond to nature?” Students read nature-laden excerpts by American writers. Then, their teacher, Ms. Rodriguez, got an idea to take the students somewhere to allow them to experience nature and reflect in writing. The students excitedly agreed that a walking field trip to meet a special tree was a fantastic oppor-tunity. Ms. Rodriguez reached out to the Unitari-an Universalist Church in the neighborhood. The church eagerly partnered with the class to host the group for a morning gathering under their

impressive weeping copper birch tree.

So, on the coldest morning of the school year with the weather threatening flurries, the stu-dents bundled up and walked to the church grounds. Their teacher gave each student a pen-cil, paper and a board to write on and charged them to find a private spot under the expanse of branches that reached the sky and brushed the ground. They had to write something —anything about their feelings, thoughts or visual impres-sions of their natural environment. The students balked at the lack of parameters but settled down

and really began to look.

Every student including those in special educa-tion and the English Learners composed sentenc-es, paragraphs or poems from their direct experi-ence with nature. The longer they settled and observed, the more writing they did. What began as a task became an eye-opening, enlightening experience. In the days following, the students wrote heart-felt words of thanks to the church

for sharing the tree with them.

— Dr. Philip Livelsberger, Jackson Principal