Hello Dolphin Community,

On Friday before the start of the April Vacation wee, I had the opportunity to take in a bit of the D-Y Middle School Staff vs. Police basketball game. This was another one of our great D-Y community events that I have come to truly enjoy as a member of this school district. It was so great to see the interaction between our school staff, our public safety officials, and our students and families. Earlier in the same week I attended a STEAM night at the Ezra Baker School and while a completely different type of event, it was equally well attended and an excellent community experience. It was wonderful to see students, families, and staff engaged in science, engineering, math, and arts projects. This was a joint effort between the school staff at EHBi and the school's PTO.

A couple of weeks ago in my last newsletter, I shared information regarding the school district's budget and the pending votes in both Dennis and Yarmouth regarding a proposition 2 1/2 override. View that message on the budget here. Recently I went onto the Town of Yarmouth podcast to provide some additional information for the school community as well as residents in general on this topic. You can view the podcast here. I wanted to share that Town meeting for Yarmouth is Tuesday, April 28 @ 6pm in the D-Y Intermediate School Auditorium. Town meeting for Dennis is Tuesday, May 5 @ 6 pm in the D-Y Intermediate School Auditorium. Child care will be provided at both meetings. The override is a two-step process in both towns, after town meeting there will be a ballot question that will need to be voted on and those votes will occur Dennis - Tuesday, May 12 and Yarmouth - Tuesday, May 19.

Finally, last week I was able to hold the second of two listening sessions with families. This one was in-person at the D-Y Middle School Library. While we only had a few participants, we were able to have a great conversation. We recorded the session (with the help of some of our high school students) and it is currently in final production. It should be ready right after the vacation and I will share it in my next newsletter for any families unable to attend and interested in viewing.

Thank you for your ongoing support,

Marc J. Smith, Ed.D.

If you are looking for a brief (20 min) overview of the school district budget you can view a presentation on the budget here.

This presentation was designed to provide information on:

On March 25, I held my first listening session of the school year. The listening session occurred over Zoom and almost 40 people participated. The topic of the conversation was, "Why D-Y? What are the opportunities students have as the progress through D-Y and how can we improve?" If you were unable to attend you can watch the listening session here.

I will be holding an in-person version of this same listening session on April 15th (yes same date as the budget information session) in the D-Y Middle School Library at 1 pm. We will have interpreters available for Haitian Creole, Portuguese, and Spanish speakers. I look forward to seeing many of you there!

Following our Snow-cation you may be wondering, "So now when is the last day of school?"

First, I want to point out that there is still more winter in front of us. The missed week of school following February School vacation week was very challenging in many ways, one of those has been the impact on our school calendar. I will be taking that into consideration as future weather events play out over the remainder of this winter.

That being said, so far we have had 6 days cancelled due to weather. The 180th day of school was, in the original school calendar, scheduled for June 16th. When you add the 6 days and account for the fact that school will be closed on the Juneteenth Holiday (6/19), that currently puts the last day of school as June 25th.

Let's hope that there is no more snow in the future.