SHS Students Collect More Than 100 Bags of Children's Clothing for 914Cares
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- Written by Daniel Love
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On September 15, 2022, Scarsdale High School’s Baby2Baby Club organized a used clothing drive for 914Cares, a local non-profit organization whose mission is for everyone in Westchester to live a full and happy life free from the hardship of poverty. 914Cares distributes tangible, essential items to families in need throughout Westchester.
Baby2Baby collected more than 100 bags of all types of needed children’s items donated by our local Westchester community. In addition, SHS Baby2Baby, cooked a pasta dinner and put together over 40 lunches for St Bartholomew Church’s Soup Kitchen. SHS Baby2Baby is run by Scarsdale High School students, Tyler Ziffer, Ali Schwartz and Claudia Rosenberg.
Last year, the Baby2Baby club collected and donated over 4000 diapers to 914Cares and more than 2500 to Bundles of Joy, a not-for-profit charitable organization that provides essentials to babies, toddlers and new parents in critical need. It also donated 50 brand new coats
to the church and raised over $1000 for UNICEF for Ukranian children.
Baby2baby pivoted during Covid from doing fundraisers to building partnerships with local agencies like 914Cares and local soup kitchens to collect goods directly from the community and donate them to the people who needed it the most. To meet the evolving needs of the
community, this past year Baby2Baby also started making take away lunches to distribute throughout the community.
Baby2Baby would like to thank the Scarsdale community for its generosity and positive impact on helping children in need. They are currently holding a coat drive. For more information on how to donate please email tziffer24@scarsdaleschools.org.
(Pictured at top: Stevie Rosenberg, Claudia Rosenberg, Jordy Rosenberg, Joey Pappalardo, Tyler Ziffer, John Pappalardo)
Young Girls Varsity Soccer Team Excels
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- Written by Amelia Fader
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Goalie Lilly Tessler (sophomore) makes an amazing save during the girls 2-0 win against Carmel.After a tough loss to John Jay East Fishkill last year in the semifinals, the Scarsdale Girls Varsity soccer team has certainly proven that they are hungry for more this season. The girls have had an amazing season so far, and this trend is likely to continue.
The team has welcomed 9 new players this year, including freshmen Gia Asen, Leah Brown and Salma Sherrell. The new sophomore players are Lilly Tessler and Caitlyn Wu, while the new juniors are Abby Etra, Emilia Gomez, and Drew Frank. Senior Mykaela Madoff is also new to the team this fall.
In their most recent game against Ursuline on 9/23, the girls walked away with a 6-2 win. Alison Kahn scored the opening goal putting the girls up 1-0. Freshman Leah Brown then netted the second goal of the game, bringing the score to 2-1. Next senior Molly Klein and junior Ivy Boockvar scored 2 consecutive goals, assisted respectively by Olivia Lee and Leah Brown. The girls ended the game with 2 more goals from junior Brady Silberfein and senior Olivia Lee.
The girls have had a very successful season so far, with 6 wins, 1 tie to John Jay East Fishkill, and 1 heavy loss to New Rochelle. Captains Lizzie Wachs, Ella Sherrell, Olivia Lee, and Molly Klein have undeniably led the team admirably. “The captains and I are really proud of how well the team has been doing so far and we’re excited to see how the season is going to end. We have a good chance in playoffs so we’re working extra hard during practices and games to meet that expectation!” says captain and senior Olivia Lee. Olivia is a D1 commit to the University of Pittsburgh.
The girls pictured celebrating after a goal by senior and captain Lizzie Wachs during the game against Carmel.
This team certainly has a promising future ahead of them, and the Scarsdale community can’t wait to see how the Varsity Girls Soccer team does in the playoffs in October.
Upcoming home games:
10/3 vs Mamaroneck at 5:00
10/6 vs Lincoln at 4:30
10/7 vs New Rochelle at 7:00 (Senior Game)
10/13 vs Mount Vernon at 4:30
Who Is Dr. Derrick Gay, the DEI Expert Working With the Scarsdale Schools?
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- Written by Wendy MacMillan
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Scarsdale School District is starting the 2022-23 school year by renewing its commitment to maintaining a diverse, equitable, and inclusive environment for all its valued school community members. As parents may have read in Dr. Drew Patrick’s “Message From The Interim Superintendent,” the district aims to “reorganize DEI to include well-being as a co-equal partner in the work of creating an even more inclusive, diverse, and equitable learning community.” According to Patrick, the new acronym WIDE (Wellbeing, Inclusion, Diversity, Equity) “reflects both a fundamental precondition for learning and an ambitious goal. We want our students to be good at learning AND at life; and we all must seek to thrive, not just survive. Thus, we must find ways to make everyone in our learning community feel like they belong and are included.” To help the district achieve these goals, it will continue its productive partnership with the world renowned DEI expert Dr. Derrick Gay.
Dr. Gay began his journey with the Scarsdale Schools when, after a months long search of multiple candidates, he was hired as a DEI consultant during the 2021-22 school year. As the District website states, “Dr. Gay is an educator, activist, and consultant working across a broad spectrum of sectors on a range of topics related to diversity, equity, and inclusion.”
According to his own website, Dr. Gay is a graduate of Merit School of Music; Oberlin College, Oberlin Conservatory of Music, Columbia University, and The University of Pennsylvania. Fluent in several languages, Dr. Gay works in countries all over the world helping businesses, schools, foundations and others, engage in diversity and inclusion work through designing and supporting diversity and inclusion strategy, providing inclusive leadership trainings and coaching, designing and facilitating inclusion workshops, and so much more.
In schools, “Dr. Gay draws on 18 years of experience in schools to empower boards to cultivate inclusive 21st-century global communities. This work includes exploring community life frameworks, national and regional demographic and inclusivity trends, and best practices to strategically embed inclusive values into curriculum and pedagogy, student life and programming, admissions, and the intentional cultivation of an inclusive school community.”
Specifically in Scarsdale, Dr. Gay will assist with long-term planning and will provide support for students, teachers, and the larger school community through workshops and presentations. In his “Message From the Superintendent,” Dr. Patrick also demonstrated how Dr. Gay’s support has already begun to impact our district with the following illustration: “Last year we were challenged by our DEI consultant Dr. Derrick Gay to reconsider the word diversity, and to do so in two important ways. The first, to see diversity as a space to which we all share a claim, because we are all diverse. The second, to shift our mindset from thinking about diversity as a particular type of person to thinking about it as a goal that adds value for everyone in our community by focusing on excellence and equity simultaneously.”
The Scarsdale PTA is working to provide a program for our community with Dr. Gay as the presenter later in the school year. Stay tuned for details!
Wendy MacMillan is a former teacher and now a proud mom of two, school aged children. With a background in psychology, education, and mindfulness, Wendy has long been passionate about wellness and helping others.
Calling All Candidates for the Citizens Nominating Committee
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- Written by Joanne Wallenstein
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Do you have views on how Scarsdale should be run? Here's your chance to get involved in our local government and make a difference.Residents are needed to support our Non-Partisan System and run for the Citiaen's Nominating Committee who selects candidates for Village Trustees and Mayor.
Scarsdale residents are encouraged to run for a position on Scarsdale’s nonpartisan Citizens Nominating Committee (CNC). The CNC is comprised of 30 members in total, with six members from each of the five elementary school districts. The CNC interviews, evaluates and selects candidates running on the nonpartisan slate for open Village offices in the Tuesday, March 15, 2023 Village Election.
A CNC candidate must be a U.S. citizen, 18 years or older and a Scarsdale resident for at least two years. The CNC application consists of a short biographical form and a 10-signature petition.
The deadline for submitting the CNC application is Friday, September 30. The CNC election will be held at the Scarsdale Library on Tuesday, November 15 from 7 am to 9 pm or by mail-in ballot.
The CNC meeting dates for 2022-2023 are: Monday, November 28, 2022; Wednesday, December 7, 2022; Wednesday, December 14, 2022; Wednesday, January 4, 2023; Wednesday, January 11, 2023; and if necessary Wednesday, January 18, 2023. All meetings are at 8pm.
For more information contact Procedure Committee Chair Michelle Sterling, michellesterling1@gmail.com, or Vice Chair Peri Zelig, perizelig@gmail.com.
Patrick Prioritizes Well-Being, Diversity, Equity and Inclusion For the 2022-23 School Year
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- Written by Joanne Wallenstein
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Interim Scarsdale School Superintendent Drew Patrick sent the following message to the community communicating his ethos for the coming school year.
Dear Parents, Caregivers, and Community Members,
As we say in the schools, Happy New Year! As the summer gives way to an exciting new school year, I do hope you have all taken the time necessary to rest, recuperate, and reflect. I am delighted to add my own welcome to the 2022-23 school year to those extended by our Board of Education and our building principals.
On Wednesday morning, the faculty and staff gathered for our annual convocation ceremony on Butler Field to launch the new year. In addition to staff, Board of Education members were in attendance, along with this year’s Parent Teacher Council President, Lauren Grossberg. Board President Amber Yusuf shared words of encouragement for the year, as did Ms. Grossberg and Mr. Joe Vaughan, the President of the Scarsdale Teachers Association. As I stood to deliver my own message, I was energized by the fact that there were strong overlapping themes among our words. We each acknowledged the shared hardship of the past two and a half years, along with the hope for a return to the familiar. We also communicated messages about building community, and the importance of reengaging with our parents and with each other, as the challenges of the pandemic start to give way to more inclusive and collaborative opportunities. In short, we are unified in our view that the year holds incredible promise for our students and families!
That’s not to say we won’t have challenges to address and overcome. As I noted in my remarks, we are in new territory as educators, operating at a unique moment in the history of public education. Our responsibility is to fulfill Scarsdale’s mission to sponsor each student's full development, enabling our youth to be effective and independent contributors in a democratic society and an interdependent world. We must do this at a time when our democracy seems increasingly fragile, with the first generation of young people living their entire lives in the presence of social media, and in a landscape where truth and facts are expertly distorted and disguised. On top of this, we continue to confront the circumstances of raising and educating kids in the midst of a devastating global pandemic. As I said, there are challenges, but I assure you we are up to the task.
One of our strategies this year will be to organize our work as educators around a few key priorities. We are calling this effort Connecting our WIDE Community. Connecting refers to both connecting the dots- helping our educators to see the full K-12 picture, and to recognize how their individual goals and work support the mission and the larger purposes of the education we provide. Connecting also refers to working with one another in partnership. Our best work happens when we are working well together, sharing, and learning with and from one another in order to advance something greater than ourselves.
The acronym WIDE stands for Wellbeing, Inclusion, Diversity and Equity. This reorganizes DEI to include well-being as a co-equal partner in the work of creating an even more inclusive, diverse, and equitable learning community. WIDE reflects both a fundamental precondition for learning and an ambitious goal. We want our students to be good at learning AND at life; and we all must seek to thrive, not just survive. Thus, we must find ways to make everyone in our learning community feel like they belong and are included. Last year we were challenged by our DEI consultant Dr. Derrick Gay to reconsider the word diversity, and to do so in two important ways. The first, to see diversity as a space to which we all share a claim, because we are all diverse. The second, to shift our mindset from thinking about diversity as a particular type of person to thinking about it as a goal that adds value for everyone in our community by focusing on excellence and equity simultaneously. We expect to continue this work by aiming to adopt shared definitions for the terms inclusion, belonging, diversity, and equity, and by constructing a visual representation- a model- that communicates both these definitions and our vision for how DEI, or WIDE, can guide our practices. Simultaneously, we will continue our collaboration with Dr. Gay to deepen our knowledge and skills, even as our seven schools continue their WIDE work in unique and specific ways. We look forward to communicating more about this important work in the near future. In the coming months, I will be attending elementary school general PTA meetings to hear from parents about their hopes and interests with respect to our work in this area.
Finally, nurturing community is our fundamental charge as educators and human beings, and it is the surest route to wellbeing. However, the pandemic, coupled with the challenges of digital life, has surfaced disruptions in typical patterns of social emotional growth and development, as well as challenges to concentration, engagement, and deep thinking for our students. Complicating things further, the pandemic also upset our normal patterns of school:home connection. Our ability to confront these challenges depends on our willingness to come together as a community, and to actively work to create community in all of our spaces, interactions, and encounters. This is because each of us plays a role in creating community, utilizing partnerships and leveraging the urgency of our purpose. We will be challenging ourselves each day to think of ways we can build community and help our students, families, faculty, staff, and leaders flourish.
In conclusion, it is my hope that this simple framework, Connecting our WIDE Community, can serve as a helpful structure for collaborating to fulfill our mission. I want to thank you, our parents, caregivers, and community members, for entrusting us with your children. We look forward to engaging with you in our schools and events, and expect this to be a transformative school year!
Sincerely,
Dr. Drew Patrick
Interim Superintendent of Schools
