Wednesday, August 19, 2015

So long summer...

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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