Wednesday Nights, Social Media, and Academics vs. Activities

Wednesday Evenings
We try extremely hard to be respectful of Wednesday evenings and all of the outstanding offerings our amazing churches make available for the young people of our community. This year’s “Back to School Celebration and Community Pep Rally” was held on a Wednesday so it wouldn’t conflict with school activities we had every other night of the week. With school starting a little bit later this year, our school activities actually began on the second day of school and August 23rd was the only day that we could select without a school conflict. We began to publicize this in late June but didn’t do a good enough job of making sure all of the churches in town knew the date and rationale. That’s my fault and we will get it fixed.

We were told that church offerings on Wednesday night wouldn’t begin until after Labor Day but we now know that wasn’t entirely accurate for all churches in town. We apologize for the schedule conflict. If we want to be able to have school start a little later in the future, like it did this year, we might have to stick with a Wednesday night “Celebration and Pep Rally.” We will be sure to communicate with church leaders this spring so they can plan accordingly. Thanks again to all of the churches in this community that provide so many wonderful opportunities on Wednesday evenings.

Social Media
York Public Schools is fairly active on social media. We have accounts on Twitter, Snapchat, Instagram, and Facebook. We also utilize podcasts and are always looking for ways to connect with others and share about our school system.

We have many specialized accounts on Facebook and Twitter that focus on just one program or one aspect of our school system. We also have @YorkDukePower on Twitter that will share almost anything and everything about YPS from pictures of school lunches to budget info to scores of ballgames, reminders about upcoming events, videos of our band, motivational quotes, and student achievement data highlights.

We’re not able to share every individual accomplishment of all 1,350 students on our social media outlets. Obviously, we are extremely proud of our students that do well in the classroom and on assessments but we aren’t able to share each individual accomplishment because we would just never be able to keep up. This doesn’t mean we’re more proud of the YHS Band at the Harvest of Harmony Parade or the YHS Volleyball Team at the Conference Tournament than an individual student who has a 4.0 GPA; it just means we try to post about activities that involve groups of students as opposed to individual accomplishments.


Academics and Activities
We feel extremely fortunate that YPS students have opportunities to excel in all areas of our school system. Academics will always be our top priority, although it sometimes gets less attention than “activities.” Academics don’t always make the front page of the paper or get bragged about at the coffee shop but that doesn’t mean they’re not important and not our primary focus every day. We have some outstanding students that do exemplary work in our classrooms. Academically, our student achievement scores are higher than they’ve ever been on statewide assessments.
• Over 87% of our students achieve at/above the proficiency level on state reading assessments.
• Over 85% of our students achieve at/above the proficiency level on state math assessments.
• During the 2016-17 school year, 950 college credits were earned by YHS juniors and seniors enrolled in dual credit courses
• We offer over 14 career academies and have recently added an online Criminal Justice academy

Our “Activities Department” is rolling as well. We have won multiple state championships in Fine Arts and Athletics over the past few years. We have numerous programs that are state ranked and perennial powers that battle for conference, district, and state titles on a yearly basis. We have strong extra-curricular offerings like FFA and FBLA that send kids to national contests annually. We have multiple choirs and band ensembles that produce amazing music. We have some unbelievably talented artists and student-athletes. We have many amazing individual accomplishments within all of our team programs.

It's a great time to be a York Duke.

Thanks for your support.