Want to know how your child is doing in school?   Beginning on Friday, February 6, 2015 DASD parents will have access to more information than ever before thanks to upgrades in our Home Access Center/Parent Portal. New features will allow parents and guardians to have the most updated information available to them 24 hours per day, seven days per week.

 Why are we making these changes?

•  To increase and improve school to home communication about student achievement via weekly emails with grade updates
•  To better partner with parents around their child's achievement in school
• To encourage conversation at home about assignments and school work
• To encourage a more informed parental base so that there will never be a time where a parent would say, "I didn't know about the academic progress of my child."
• To improve dialogue between parents and teachers if there is a need to conference at any point during the school year.

Should a parent forget their username and password, they are urged to call their child's school office to redeem this information.  

Beginning today - "How's my child doing" is just a mouse click away.

Thanks to a unique partnership between the Downingtown Area School District, Downingtown Borough, Downingtown Main Street Association and the Downingtown Community Education Foundation, a student designed bike rack will soon appear in the Downingtown Borough.

Kindergartners through 12th graders were invited to submit a bike rack design. Of the 60 submitted designs, most were drawn with markers and crayons, but others were made from pipe cleaners, balsa wood or generated on a computer. Students could submit as many designs as they wished. The racks had to be designed to hold two to six upright bikes and withstand all types of weather. Suggested ideas from the organizers included incorporating recycled materials, bike-related elements, or symbols of Downingtown.

On Wednesday, January 28, 2015 twenty designs submitted by students attending DASD schools were selected to move forward to the next phase of the Bike Rack 2015 Competition. Miniature models of these designs will be created by volunteer technology students in Downingtown high schools. The twenty models will go on display for the public to enjoy.   A panel of judges, representing a variety of Downingtown organizations will vote for the winning design.

The 20 selected designs were submitted by student artists attending the district's high schools, middle schools, 6th grade center and elementary schools. Two artists had more than one design selected. The judges looked for innovation, creativity, designs that were "uniquely" Downingtown and whether the imagined bike rack could actually be created and placed on a Borough street. 

Bike Rack 2015 organizers are currently seeking donations to manufacture the first design. Possible locations for the first bike rack include the Borough parking lot on Lancaster Ave., Kerr Park, or the Downingtown Log Cabin area.

The Pennsylvania Department of Education recently released a list of Pennsylvania high schools ranked by SAT and ACT scores.  The list looked at the average scores received by students taking the SAT test in 2014.  Out of 653 public high schools on the list, the Downingtown STEM Academy had the second best scores in the state with  DHS East #59 on the list and DHS West placing #92 on the list. 

What is interesting to note is the high number of Downingtown High School students taking the test.  At the Downingtown STEM Academy 171 students took the test.  AT DHS West, 328 students took the exam with 339 students taking the test at DHS East.   Some of the highest numbers in the state.

(Figures taken from the PDE website)  

The Experience - An After School Enrichment Program 

Friday, February 6 at 7:00 p.m.
Saturday, February 7, 2:00 and 7:00 p.m.
Sunday, February 8 at 2:00 p.m.
 

Stephanie G. Heavens, Music Teacher at Brandywine Wallace will be performing the world premier of Valerie Crescenz, music teacher at West Bradford's Song Cycle "Songs of Ruth" at Moravian College on Friday, February 20, 2015 at Peter Hall on the Moravian Campus, Bethlehem, PA.   Outside of their busy schedule as teachers, Stephanie is also a professional operatic soprano. Ms. Crescenz has had a number of her compositions performed by professional choirs across the United States.   For more information call 610-861-1650 or email music@moravian.edu.

Congratulations to the following DHS West Band members who have successfully auditioned for the 10 time DCA World Champion Reading Buccaneers Drum and Bugle corps.

Jack Beam - Senior - Trumpet (returning member)

Joe Bucci - Sophomore - Trumpet

Dominick Costanzi - Junior - Trumpet

Robbie Inforzato - Junior - Baritone

Julia Otto - Junior - Mellophone

Mike Renzulli - Junior - Trumpet

This group is an all age drum corps consisting of 128 members from all over the tri-state area as well drawing members from Ohio, New York, Virginia and the New England areas. They will perform on July 25th at the annual Downingtown Classic and hopefully attend the 2015 DCA Championships held in Rochester, N.Y. over the Labor Day weekend.

The fifth grade at East Ward Elementary School participated in the Great Kindness Challenge.  Over the course of the week the fifth grade logged over 700 kind acts.  Some of those kind acts included: complimenting a classmate, giving a teacher an apple, making a card for their first grade buddy, writing a nice note to a classmate, and simply making someone smile.  To go along with this week, many spirit days were established to bring the school even closer together.  Pictured below are Crazy Hair and Clothes Day and East Ward Spirit Day.  Even though the challenge only lasted one week, the fifth grade has vowed to continue to perform these kind acts.

Uwchlan Hills

Fourth grade students at Lionville Elementary tackled tough new topics! This year, 4th and 5th graders will be challenged by a new questioning style called Text Dependent Analysis. Students will be expected to analyze grade-level texts and answer related questions using their own insights and evidence cited directly from the text. Our great fourth graders have been working hard to learn this new type of writing and came together as a grade level team to learn a brand new organizational style to help them on the road to success. Gathered in our large group room, students discussed what an introductory paragraph and thesis statement should look like. Later lessons will focus on the "body" of our essays and how we should State It (right a solid sentence to state our supporting reason), Cite It (find evidence directly from the text to support our statement) and 'Splain It (explain or analyze what makes our statement meaningful to our answer.)

The Downingtown East students got a dose of musical culture on February 4, 2015 as they welcomed the Doc Gibbs Ensemble to present an assembly about African percussion and dance.

Doc Gibbs is one of the most sought after percussionists in the music industry today. He has played on more than 200 albums and toured with artists such as Whitney Houston, Wyclef Jean, and Erykah Badu. The ensemble was comprised of drummers, percussionists and dancers trained in all styles of African rhythms and dance. This Musicopia Assembly was made possible by a generous grant from the Valley Forge Music Fair Trust.