Hello Dolphin Community,

This past couple of week's we have closed out the "Open House" season at each of our schools. It has been so great to see the amazing turn out at each school. Seeing the staff, students, and families all interacting, smiling, and engaging around the students' learning experience has been a joy to witness. It stands as a living example of our district's Core Value of Community in action. As I traveled around to each of the schools, there were two aspects of Community from our district's definitions that stood out to me, "We value our relationships in our community. We unite to seamlessly embed character into our culture. This integration spans every facet of school life, enabling students to learn and apply essential social, emotional, and behavioral skills. AND We strengthen each other. We unite, working and celebrating our shared efforts. We serve and include all, looking out for everyone, and we own the responsibility to make our schools excel.

There will be another perfect opportunity to share in our joint commitment to the value of Community coming up tomorrow. Tomorrow, Saturday, September 27 at 10 am the Paul Funk Dolphin Dash will hit the road from D-Y High School. This is a great event that helps not only to show our collective sense of Community and build school and district spirit, it helps reduce the cost of user fees for athletics, color guard, and marching band at D-Y High School. Come on out - run, walk, and/or cheer on the participants. Everyone is welcome!

Finally, as I mentioned in August, the district is focused on student attendance this year. We need the support of our entire school community to ensure our students are present and ready to learn each day. Some of our attendance data from the first 20 days of school shows that while we started with a strong attendance rate of 96.7% it has fallen a little each week to land at 94% this week. A closer look at our data shows that our lowest attendance rate days are Mondays (93.9%) and Fridays (94.6%), with the highest attendance rate being on Wednesdays (96.1%). It is very important that our students are here all week, engaging in a full learning experience to ensure the present and future success. We appreciate your support in helping get our students to school and ready to learn. Let's work together to get our district average back above 95% daily attendance. If there is anything we can do to help your family with a student who is struggling with school avoidance, please reach out to your child's school.

Thank you for your ongoing support,

Marc J. Smith, Ed. D.

Families please take a few minutes to complete the Annual Student Information Verification Form. This form replaces the old process of paper forms that used to be sent home by the school previously. It is important for families to complete this process so that we have the most up to date contact, safety, and health information for your child.

If you are looking to stay up to date on the DYIMS field project, please visit our web page dedicated to this specific project.

For any families with an uncertain immigration status and that may be concerned about the care and custody of their children in the event of a sudden detention or deportation by immigration officials, please see this resource created by the Office of the Attorney General that provides guides and legal options. The guides are provided in English, Portuguese, Spanish, and Haitian Creole.