October 4, 2024
Dear Panther Families,
Happy October!! October is one of my personal favorite months. I love the backyard fires in the cooler fall nights. I love the leaves changing colors. I love spending weekends watching college football and spending time at soccer tournaments watching my kids. October also brings on new challenges as it gets darker earlier, gets colder, and school work starts getting a little more challenging. It’s important as weather and patterns change that we stay consistent with routines and habits.
At PDY, our students are excelling both inside and outside of the classroom! PDY earned 4.5 stars out of 5 stars on the Ohio State Report Card for academic performance. A big indicator on this is attendance. We’re happy to announce that we met our chronic absenteeism goal from last school year and we had a 94.7% attendance rate. We want to thank all of our parents and guardians for your support!
Fall sports are hitting the end of their seasons and we have some exciting things happening! Going into tonight’s football game at Wauseon, our football team is 5-1. Our boys soccer team had a big win over Evergreen last night that puts them at 12-3 overall, and 5-0 in the league. Our girls soccer team is 10-2-2 and 3-0 in the league. They play Archbold tomorrow who is 4-0 in the league. Volleyball has continued to improve throughout their season. Be sure to follow these teams as they enter the postseason!! We want to congratulate our boys and girls golf teams on successful seasons. Kalleigh Mignon and Lane Lopez both qualified for districts. Cross Country has their league meet next week and then they start their state tournament run. Good luck to all of our Panther athletes!
I’m sure you have heard by now, but we are thrilled to have received a $2.5 million career technical equipment grant from the state of Ohio. This money will help PDY start programs next school year in career exploration and technical skill development. As early as 5th and 6th grades, our students will start exploring a wide range of future career fields using hands-on labs. In high school, we will be building a greenhouse and an industrial kitchen for our farm-to-table initiative to provide our students experience in agriculture, sustainability, culinary arts, and food science. We will also transform our current industrial arts lab into a cutting-edge Innovation Lab, which will feature a virtual heavy-equipment operator simulator, industry-grade metal fabrication equipment, and advanced engineering design tools.
At PDY, we want to prepare our students to be Future Ready to be enrolled, enlisted, employed, or an entrepreneur. Ideally, we can set our students up to be debt-free entering whichever career choice they enter.
Our district is on the ballot this November for the renewal of the Substitute Levy. This levy keeps our programs and initiatives sustainable without increasing taxes. We are currently in the process of bringing our facilities up to the level of the programs we are offering. Continued support allows us to keep budgeting for upgrades, repairs, and maintenance to have facilities that we are all proud of. If you have questions about the levy, please reach out.
There are many exciting initiatives already taking off and many more are in the works. Stay updated by following our Facebook and Instagram pages. Continue to follow us at pdys.org for more updates!
Go Panthers!!
Jon Burke, Superintendent
Upcoming Dates and Events
October 5 – HS Band Tag Day
October 7 – DMS & DHS Fall Parent/Teacher Conferences
October 14 – DMS Fall Spirit Week
October 15 – DMS Concert Choir – 7 PM
October 16 – Board of Education Meeting – 6:30 PM – DHS Auditorium
October 17 – End of First Quarter
October 18 – No School for Staff Inservice
October 19 – DHS Dinner Theater & Concert Choir – 5 PM
October 21 – Marching Band Concert
October 22 – DES Fall Parent/Teacher Conferences
October 23-26 – National FFA Convention
October 24 – DES Fall Parent/Teacher Conferences
October 24 – DHS Picture Retakes
October 25 – DMS Picture Retakes
October 25 – Senior Citizen’s Luncheon 11-noon at DHS
October 28 – DES Family Reading Night