Hello everyone. This is Peter Bailey, the
Head of School at PSD. I’m thrilled to be
with you for the month of April, although
it is hard to believe it is April already.
The year has been flying by and
we are approaching the end of a school
year in a couple months. I had several
updates from last month and I have
several from this month again starting
with the Read Across America event. We
selected a book that would be used
throughout the school and the book we
chose was “Jack and the Night Visitors.” The
author of the book, Pat Schories, found out
that we selected her book to use for
this event at our school and was so
honored to have had her book chosen that
she sent bookmarks to the school with a
message on it for our students. She also
let us know that we would be getting
first access to her new book which is
called “When Jack Goes Out” so she will be
sending that to the school for us as
well, which is a great relationship for
us to have with her. It is great in
general to see the many connections and
relationships that PSD is building with
the community and the area.
We have another announcement, an update from the
bird watching event we had last month.
The state of Pennsylvania came in second
out of the entire country for the
competition. We were second this year, but
we do have a goal of participating again
next year and coming in first. This is
not specifically PSD but for Pennsylvania as part of the national
competition and PSD will be
participating. It’s a competition run by
the Audubon Society. The bird watching
event will be happening again and we
look forward to participating in that.
I also shared last month about the
basketball teams. Both girls and boys
teams won the championships, and
we have received several recognition and
and honors for the players that won this year
including from the Mayor’s Office. They said
they would be sending us an official
recognition and we received that
citation, which is the official message
from the Mayor’s Office honoring the two
teams that won the championships. We
still are hoping to be going to
Harrisburg with the players from both
teams as well to meet with Senators and
Legislators. As soon as they give us a
date we are eager to go and be able to
meet with the folks there.
I also mentioned last month that the
Harlem Globetrotters are going to
invite our students to come to a game,
and that happened. The players were able
to go watch a game and there was a lot
to take in at the event, being on the
court, actually being on the floor in
front of all of the fans, all of the people
there for the Harlem Globetrotters game,
but the students were able to take their
picture with the players from the Harlem
Globetrotters and you can see that
information on our Facebook page, on our
website and also on our Instagram.
There are several things that are
happening around the school from last
month that I wanted to update you on
including the CEASD conference. We had
the Advocacy Day in Washington, D.C. and
were able to bring a group of our
students to meet with Legislators,
Senators and Representative to talk
about the way things work in D.C. and
different tips for how to navigate that
system. We also planned a visit to see
Gallaudet University’s campus, which is
something that many of our students have
not had an opportunity to do so far, so
getting exposure to those things is
really important. The next thing we are
planning for the next month includes
some postings for our school. We are
currently looking to make some changes
in our Institutional Advancement
(or Development) Office, including looking for
a Director of Institutional Advancement.
We are looking for people that might be
interested in applying. In the
meantime we have asked Ruth Cella, who many
of you may already know because she worked here
for 28 years and was the previous
Director of Institutional Advancement.
She has graciously agreed to come back and
work with us on a temporary basis until
we have the new Director position
filled. Her heart is still with PSD
so we are thrilled to see that she will
come out of retirement, temporarily, to
continue giving us her support.
We are actively looking for the Director of
Academic Affairs as well, which is
similar to the principal position but a
higher level position to oversee all of
the academic affairs school-wide, from
early intervention through high school.
We want this person to be responsible
for several projects under the umbrella
of Academic Affairs,
but we are hoping that we will be able
to hire someone for that position in the
near future. If you have anyone in
mind, please send their names our way.
We did have two students who were able to
participate in an event. We had Briona
Hayes, who is a current senior, and Jacob
Cross, and the two of them went to the
Deaf Teen America Pageant and it was a
great experience for both of them. They were able
to meet students from other schools,
participate in the competition and the
pageant. Neither of them won, but it was an
experience worthwhile either way. PSD
will also be hosting the next Deaf Teen
America Pageant in the year 2020 which
obviously is a year we are planning
several events to correspond with our
Bicentennial, so that celebration and
more information about the events will
be shared later.  You may also know that
PSD has a long history and connection
with Mr. Jim Maguire and the Maguire
Foundation. We have had the Maguire
scholars and the scholarship that is given
to students that are selected who
are Deaf or Hard of Hearing who attend a
college or university. They will be
having their Maguire Scholars
celebration and we look forward to
continuing the relationship with the
Maguire foundation and participating in
their awards ceremony in the near future.
We are hoping that some of our students
will be able to apply and get the
scholarship again. Coming up in the month
of April we also have the CEASD
conference in Connecticut. You may
know that PSD won the bid to have the
conference, the CEASD conference, in
Philadelphia in the year 2020. We will
have more information about that, but in
the meantime this year’s conference will
be in Connecticut and we have about
7 people going to the
conference to represent PSD and there
will be people from all over the country
represented. Last but not least I do have
an announcement about our annual Art
Exhibit. We will have the Art Exhibition
on April 21 and this is our annual
event. We will have more information about
it, but it will be on Facebook and
Instagram and the PSD website and
we hope to see you all there. That’s a lot
but that’s all for April. We are keeping
ourselves busy and I’m sure we will have
more information as we approach next
month and going towards graduation.
Until then, take care.
