Dear Pickerington Tiger Community – Letter #12
We are now in the midst of the holiday season. I hope that each of you had a great Thanksgiving Day weekend with your families!
As I shared in my last letter, we are proud of the large number of students that qualified for the Honor Roll after the first grading period. Using that data, as well as discipline data, attendance data, and information about students who may have fallen short of the 3.0 GPA mark, but have shown academic improvement from last year, students are selected to be a part of our largest student organization, Renaissance. Renaissance simply is our organization that honors, rewards and celebrates students that do well in the classroom, meet our behavior expectations and have no unexcused absences from school. Incredibly, just over 1,000 of our approximately 1,600 students qualified to be a part of Renaissance based upon their first grading period performance! That means that the overwhelming majority of our students are doing the right things! Along with the names of the students on Honor Roll, the names of Renaissance students are proudly posted on our showcase for all to see!
Renaissance in partnership with Key Club, is sponsoring a “Feed the Need” food drive from December 7 -18. We’ve submitted on our listserv the specifics of the food drive and think this is a worthy undertaking by our students to help families less fortunate than ourselves during this season. All collections of items will be donated to the PCMA Food Pantry. As an incentive for our entire student population to give, we are holding a contest for 3rd period classes, rewarding the most giving two classes with a breakfast. The students of PHSC truly exhibit the true meaning and spirit of the holiday season.
Staying in the spirit of giving this holiday season, the PHSC Cross Country program, in conjunction with the Columbus Running Company in Pickerington and Soles4Souls, are asking that you bring “gently worn” shoes taking up space in your home to PHSC (preferably walking and athletic shoes) or the Columbus Running Company store in order to be donated through Soles4Souls to those less fortunate and in need of adequate footwear. There are unfortunately millions of Americans without adequate footwear, and an estimated 1.5 billion pairs of unworn shoes lying around in homes. Please bind each pair of donated shoes together with a rubber band and place your unwanted shoes in the boxes provided in the PHSC lobby. We will be collecting shoes through Friday, December 11.
As millions, perhaps billions of people worldwide watched, the PHSC Marching Tigers paraded phenomenally through the streets of New York City in the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade. The Marching Tigers, marching in their 4th Macy’s parade, was selected as the band to usher in Santa Clause in the parade. All along the parade route, where an estimated 4 million people lined the streets, our students were cheered and applauded for their excellent renditions of several Christmas classics, as well as several dozen shouts of “O-H”! Aside from representing the Pickerington Community and Central Ohio, the students of PHSC were also able to experience the energy of the largest city in the United States. The members of PHSC along with their parent and staff chaperones attended the world famous Radio City Music Hall Christmas Spectacular featuring the legendary Rockettes. They shopped in the bright lights of Times Square and had the opportunity to sightsee many famous places such as the Statue of Liberty. Thanks to the staff for a job well done and to the parents who accompanied the trip to make sure it was a safe and exciting experience for our students. Next on the list is Pasadena for the Tournament of Roses parade.
In order to meet the educational needs of all of our students, we have a program called Success Academy, which is designed to get students back on their academic feet. I am delighted to share with you that in the first grading period, every single 10th and 11th grade student who started the year in Success Academy raised his or her GPA from the previous grading period. Well-done staff and students! To celebrate their hard work and success, Success Academy held their quarterly celebration on Wednesday, December 2.
Finally, I’d like to address a more serious matter. Recently, a young student in another part of Ohio took her own life as a result of the teasing and ridicule she received because of a text message she sent over her phone described as “sexting.” She is the second student in Ohio to respond in this tragic manner. Sexting, a play on the word texting, is basically sending sexually explicit messages or pictures to someone over the phone. Students do not realize the dangers of sexting, and that once an image is sent, the student loses all control over where that image may end up. In most cases, the explicit image is received and forwarded enough times to reach thousands of phones or computers in a matter of minutes, causing at minimum extreme embarrassment, to violations of codes of conducts of groups and athletic teams, and in extreme cases as we’ve recently seen – harassment and suicide. Another factor less realized is that depending on the age of child in the image, forwarding the image could be considered “pandering child pornography” with those involved possibly being open to criminal prosecution. As you see, this is a serious matter. I share this with you to implore you to be aware of what your students are sending and receiving through their phones and their computers. Periodically checking your student’s electronic equipment, although it may not be popular with them, will go a long way to keep them from getting into unintended trouble. Check with your service provider as companies are constantly developing monitoring programs for parents.
I hope each of you had a happy Thanksgiving, and remember that this week is the halfway point in grading period two, so please work with your student so that they reach their highest levels of academic achievement.
Sincerely,
M. Scott Reeves
Principal, PHS Central
If you BELIEVE you can ACHIEVE, you will SUCCEED
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