The video below was put out by the Pennsylvania House Democratic Caucus. It focuses on York and what budget cuts did for the 2011-12 school year. Thoughts?
The video below was put out by the Pennsylvania House Democratic Caucus. It focuses on York and what budget cuts did for the 2011-12 school year. Thoughts?
Commonwealth Connections Academy, a cyber charter school, recently announced the winners of the 2012 South Central Scholastic Art and Writing Awards.
The competition is open to students in grades 7 to 12 in 28 categories, such as poetry, painting and comic art. The 350 winners, chosen from 1,100 entries, include many from York County, according to a news release.
Here are the local winners (* indicates the student won more than one award):
Central York High School: Mina Fair; Chris Garling; Elena Ream; Aruba Tariq
Dallastown Area Senior High School: Sarah Berger; Nicole Daniell; Daniel Friedland; Lauren Gillespie; Mary Hess; Ntiense Inyang ; Jean Kwon*; Kevin Moore; Meilin Zhu
Hanover Senior High School: Austin Brown; Carly Forbes; Caleb Gerlach; Calvin Hersh; Lily Tran; Nikki Vlahos
Homeschooled (York): Willow Pinkerton*; Gabriel Ryan*
Kennard-Dale High School: Skyler Brandt
Northeastern Senior High School: Jessica Reider; Katie Schweitzer
Northern High School: Taylor Gilmore; Hayly Hoch; Karley Ice; Elise McAneny; Christina McCown; Katelyn McGlynn; Courtney Potteiger*; Alyssa Resh; Christian Rider; Kenneth Searfoss; Abigail Smith; Jason Swartz; Caroline Van Pelt
Northern Middle School: Kate Colgan; Juliana Coover; Katherine Hixenbaugh; Nicole Jaquette; Makenna McGill; Madisyn Powers; Alyssa Swartz; Aria Walker
Southern Middle School: Adelaide Achterberg
Spring Grove Area Senior High School: Jeremy Seitz-Brown
William Penn Senior High School: Mylaya Jones
York Country Day School: Meg Brace; Thomas Brooks; Geron Countess; Ian Danner*
York Suburban Senior High School: Margaret Sullivan
Students are invited to participate in the York County Department of Emergency Services annual poster contest, which focuses on helping to educate children so they are prepared for an emergency, according to a news release.
This year, children in kindergarten through grade eight are asked to focus on the role of 911 dispatchers, the release says. Posters should show the importance of dispatchers in an emergency.
Students in grades 9 to 12 should create a poster exploring one or more actions to take when flooding occurs. Students can learn more about flood response at www.ready-york.org.
Posters must be submitted on or before March 31. Any York County student in kindergarten to grade 12 can enter, and one winner will be selected from each grade. Winners will be announced in April, the release says.
Posters can be mailed or delivered to Amy Smith, York County Department of Emergency Services, 120 Davies Drive, York, PA, 17402. For full rules, visit www.ycdes.org and click on “poster contest. Anyone with questions can call Smith at 840-2948.
Remember Lauren Hodge? She’s the Dallastown Area School District student who
beat projects from around the world to win her age group at the Google Science Fair last year.
Her project looked at the effect of using different marinades on carcinogens in grilled chicken.
Lauren’s mom, Brenda, emailed me this week with an update. Lauren’s been busy, it seems. In October, she was invited to the White House to meet President Barack Obama.
In December, she spoke in a TedX Talk. Watch the video below – the crowd loves her!
And if that weren’t enough, Brenda says the White House invited Lauren, 14, to a science fair being hosted there Feb. 7.
Today, I am visiting with students in Shannon O’Malley’s sixth-grade class at Locust Grove Elementary School. I’m talking to them about how to write a news article and some of the things we do online, like this blog.
For this class, I thought I’d ask them what stories they could write about their school. Here are some answers:
Here is a photo of the class!
Today, I was chatting with the principal at St. Rose of Lima School and she mentioned that tomorrow is Digital Learning Day, so teachers were being asked to step out of their comfort zones a bit and try some new things with technology. Students were invited to bring Nooks and Kindles, too (provided parents said it was OK).
Digital Learning Day is meant to be a nationwide celebration of innovative teaching and learning through digital media and technology, according to its website.
“On Digital Learning Day, a majority of states, hundreds of school districts, thousands of teachers, and nearly 2 million students will encourage the innovative use of technology by trying something new, showcasing success, kicking off project-based learning, or focusing on how digital tools can help improve student outcomes,” it says.
Any schools in York County trying anything new tomorrow?
Hannah Penn Middle School’s annual “Kings and Queens of Soul Food” cook-off will be held Feb. 18.
“Would you like to claim the bragging right as York City’s best soul food cook?” asks a flyer.
If you think you can make the best fried chicken, barbecue chicken, collard greens, potato salad, macaroni and cheese, “church rice,” corn bread/biscuits, desserts, then you’re in.
If you want to participate in the cook-off, there’s a form posted on the York City School District website.
A week or so ago, I visited George Andrews at York Catholic High School to talk about his decision to leave the school at the end of the school year.
After we talked for a few minutes, he took photographer Chris Dunn and I on a quick tour of the school. Along the way, he pointed out various renovations and upgrades that had happened in the 1958 building during his 14 years.
One interesting point was that many of the upgrades were done using recycled materials or materials obtained from other districts.
For example, he pointed out the bleachers in the gymnasium. They had original wood, but the underpinnings came from an ice rink in Philadelphia. The only new pieces were green safety railings. New bleachers would have been $150,000 to $160,000, but this cost the school about $80,000.
Auditorium seats, he said, were a little of the old and new – old frames with padding and upholstery added.
In the new weight room, some equipment came from area gyms that closed. To get other pieces, the school sold donated equipment to buy better.
He pointed out the window to bleachers at the stadium. Steel for those came from old Dallastown Area School District bleachers. And the desks – those came from Spring Grove Area School District.
“We try not to pay full price for anything,” Andrews said.
Certainly, there were some upgrades that can’t be secondhand. New gym lights were installed, but they’ll be more efficient and save on energy costs, he said. Same goes for new windows.
It was nice to see a school official clearly excited to have been able to upgrade items without breaking the bank. Andrews has to keep an eye on costs – if he keeps expenses down, that keeps tuition down.
The Pennsylvania State System of Higher Education recently approved three new academic programs in STEM (science, technology, engineering and math) disciplines, according to a news release.
The new programs are:
PASSHE advises that anyone interested should contact the appropriate university.
Are you interested in the STEM field? Are the right programs available in Pennsylvania for you?
Dallastown Area High School will host a free community screening of the documentary “Out in the Silence,” which chronicles the fight of a gay teen and his mother against school authorities after the teen is attacked for coming out at his small western Pennsylvania high school.
The film will be screened at 6:30 p.m. tonight in the high school auditorium and will be followed by a question-and-answer session with Gay-Straight Alliance advisers and local community representatives.
The “Out in the Silence” Campaign for Fairness and Equality has already conducted more than 300 town-hall style screenings across the country.
Click here to learn more about the film.
