Wow
- how quickly the summer has sped
by, and how much warmer and drier the weather has been prior to the arrival of
our students; if this continues, everyone will be reluctant to settle into
school. Nevertheless, on August 24th,
the staff will begin four days of in-service in order to prepare, analyze,
review, and renew for the coming school year.
I
am looking forward to a successful media night on Friday, August 21. The
boosters/coaches/parents have done a great job of organizing and promoting this
event to recognize our athletes and coaches and to introduce them to the
community. This is a great way to generate enthusiasm for upcoming sports
events.
All the buildings have been thoroughly cleaned and arranged, the field
house and the surrounding grounds look great for our fall sporting events (many
thanks to Greg Shaffer and his crew of hard workers), and the first floor halls
of the high school sport new tile to replace the worn carpet; the same upgrades
are taking place at Cambria Elementary.
A great advancement at Jackson Elementary School is the increase in the
speed of its Internet service, and both elementary buildings have added new
hardware to their technology inventory. I’m excited to note that the school’s
Goldenrod grant was used to acquire materials for a robotics course for grades
Four and Five.
In personnel news, Joe Strittmatter continues to do an outstanding job
as our district tech coach. Tracey
Heeney has been hired as the district’s Technical Services Specialist. One of her duties is to input data into
our new Student Information System; she has been busy registering/unregistering
students and bring address changes up to date. She has been a welcome addition to our district staff.
Bobbi Prokov will be the new secretary at Jackson Elementary School and Kim
Bednar will be the new secretary at the middle school. We welcome them both to our district.
A yearly reminder for all who use our campus roads during the school
day: the gate will again be closed during the school day, following the same
schedule as last year. The gate is intended to protect the campus while
school is in session and to reduce the amount of traffic on our recently paved
road system during the school day.
I wish to offer my congratulations to all students and staff on the PSSA and
Keystone test preparation this past year. We at Central Cambria are truly
blessed with a caring, devoted, professional staff!!
Moving on to the topic of sports (of course), the Steelers have not shown great
preseason promise as of yet, although Big Ben seems to be in pretty good
form. With football set to start I
am always reminded of how I enjoyed watching the games with my dad and uncle. This year, sadly, the tradition will
continue with just my uncle—although my nephew and some
brothers/brothers-in-law will occasionally round out our group, I know that, in
Heaven, my dad will proudly don his black and gold every weekend.
The Pirates seem to be gelling well as the season begins to wind down;
yet the Cardinals never seem to lose and the Cubs are really putting on
pressure. Hopefully, the Buccos
can keep up their winning ways….
Life can throw some awful curves at a person; for me, sports is a great
way to relieve the stress and heartache of these events. Each game, these
feelings are quickly transformed into yelling at the ref or ump as I focus on
the game and not on what has happened in the past. As always, I hope you enjoy
all that fall has to offer.
DR. D
