Dear Panther Families,
We already have a month in the books and this school year keeps flying by! February into March marks an important stretch in schools as we hit our last "routine" weeks. The beginning of the school year emphasizes routines, culture, and support as we lay the foundation for the school year. The third quarter is that mark where academics can get more challenging and grades 3-10 are getting prepped for Ohio's State Testing and our Juniors are preparing for the ACT. We appreciate our families' support as our students' attendance rates have been positive. Our hope is that every kid loves coming to school every day, but we also understand the battle that can present itself any given morning with getting your child to school. Thank you!
This past week we collaborated with the Delta Police Department and the Delta Fire Department on a safety training for our staff. Our staff had refreshers on the treatment of Epilepsy, de-escalation techniques, and cybersecurity. Local EMS gave our staff a refresher on basic first-aid triage, and DPD led our staff through an active shooter scenario. Our district had great conversations about areas improvement can be made, and we learned as a staff how important communication and collaboration is during the most stressful moments of an emergency. As I've said in the past, safety is a top-priority for our district and opportunities like we experienced on Monday allow us to be better prepared in the event of any emergency we may face.
Our Panther Athletics are having great seasons and I hope you get the opportunity to come out and support our Panthers! Girls Basketball play at Swanton tonight and they host Wauseon next Thursday, February 8. Boys Basketball hosts Swanton tomorrow night. Their next home game won't be until February 13 against Otsego. Delta Wrestling hosts District Duals this Saturday with 6 schools competing for the opportunity to advance to the State Duals. Bowling wraps their regular season up tomorrow at Bryan.
This week we've made some adjustments to the high school gym bleachers behind our teams' benches so walking traffic has room to go behind the team benches. This will allow better access to the stands during the game, and it will help handicap accessibility. We continue to make small changes to offer a better experience for our students and their supporters. We take a lot of pride in trying to create the best experiences for our students and their families.
We have been going through our Portrait of a Panther process. We're excited to narrow down our core competencies we want to focus on as we prepare our students to be future-ready. We'd love for you to be engaged!! Please
CLICK HERE to access a parent survey to get your feedback on the core competencies you would prioritize for our students. You will pick 7 out of 30 competencies. You can click on the second tab to see a description of each competency. We'll review our survey results at the next meeting on February 28.
We appreciate your engagement through supporting our students in all that they do. Thank you for taking to the time to attend parent-teacher conferences and thank you for attending your students' extra-curricular events. Please see the list of upcoming events for February:
February 5 – DHS & DMS Spring Parent-Teacher Conferences
February 8 - Board Meeting - 6:30 PM - DHS Auditorium
February 9 – No School – Staff In-Service
February 13 & 15 – DES Spring Parent-Teacher Conferences
February 19 – No School – Presidents’ Day
February 20-23 – FFA Week
February 27 – DHS ACT Testing
February 28 – March 1 – 6th Grade Overnight Camp
March 4 - MS/HS Band Concert
March 5 - DelAires Dinner Theater - 5 PM
March 8 - End of Third Quarter
March 11-15 - Spring Break
March 22 - DHS Student Council Lock-In
March 29 - No School - Good Friday
Go Panthers!
Jon Burke, Superintendent
Pike-Delta-York Local Schools