Inside TSD February 2024

The February 2024 episode of Inside TSD is now available for listening! Also find the transcript below.

Hello and welcome to Inside TSD. I'm your host superintendent of schools Dr. Rich Machesky. Great to be with the Troy community again, celebrating 2024 with Inside TSD.

In recent news, thanks to all of our families who joined us for our preschool and IA East information nights. It’s the first time we've done these evenings well in advance of enrollment and so forth, we had tremendous turnout, thanks to Kendra Montante and our team for bringing that all together. I know that our community appreciates having opportunities to hear the great things happening across our district, and the various programs that we have to offer. So again, thanks to all those who attended.

Thanks also to all of you who attended and participated in the MLK Day of Service celebration. What a tremendous day, our Superintendent Student Advisory Board did a tremendous job bringing this event together. Despite the weather, if you recall, that was a one of our really cold days, despite the weather, we had hundreds and hundreds of individuals, families, students who came out to do service in celebration of Dr. Martin Luther King and his legacy. So thanks to all of those who were involved in that particular day, we started the day off with breakfast, we had a very, very nice celebration ceremony, and then went directly from there in to doing several service projects. And again, I would be remiss if I didn't mention our student advisory board who, this is one of their main roles during the course of the year, they plan for this day of celebration. It takes months and months of planning and preparation to bring that all together. But thanks to everyone who came in again, another successful MLK Day celebration and service.

For our new families, we hope that you gathered a tremendous amount of information from our kindergarten orientation night. But we also want to mention that just around the corner, believe it or not, for the class of 2037 is kindergarten round up. April 3, put on your calendar for all of our incoming kindergarten families. April 3 is kindergarten round up. So again, circle that on the calendar, we look forward to seeing you all that day.

Upcoming across the Troy School District, this is the time of the year we get to celebrate our Teachers of the Year. That happens in February, we're very excited to celebrate all of our teachers of the year. And although I can't give anything away, I can tell you we had tremendous amount of nominations this year, I think close to a record number of nominations this year. And we now have nominations at the preschool, at the elementary, at the secondary. It's so nice to be able to celebrate all of our teachers across our school district. So as we, in future episodes of Inside TSD, we'll be able to share it with you exactly who the winners of those were. But just so you know, that's coming up in February.

Another really important event for us has been our focus on connecting the district to our business community, our larger business community, we have so many great things going on around the city of Troy. And we wanted to make it a point to find a way to consistently reach out. So we have our first meeting for the Business Council that will take place February 28. We're very excited to have Andy Gutman from the Farbman Group, who will be our main speaker for that day. This is an opportunity for individuals from various businesses across the city to come mingle with one another, get to know one another. Again, we have a tremendous speaker with Andy Gutman, and it's our opportunity to build bridges between business and education. So as we move forward, we'll be continuing to identify keynote speakers for those events, and continue that connectedness across our city with our businesses.

We'd like to take a moment and congratulate a number of individuals across the district. Let's start with our musicians from Smith Middle School, the advanced orchestra, who performed at the Michigan Music Conference in Grand Rapids earlier in January. I can tell you it was a tremendous concert. I had a chance to be there, thanks for the invite. But I did have a chance to go, 45 minute set that they played. They were tremendous. If you haven't had a chance to hear the advanced orchestra at Smith, they really are a spectacular group of musicians. And that goes for all of the musicians across the Troy School District. We have such great instructors who prepare our students to be able to play in venues like the DeVos Performing Arts Center, and so congratulations to those eighth graders from Smith Middle School.

Also a huge shout out to all of the students who competed, or I should say performed, in the Festival of Choirs. All of the choirs across the Troy School District over the course of a week have an opportunity to be on stage at Athens and perform. So very thrilled that they had an opportunity to do that, considering that was also a week where he had some pretty bad weather. We had to decide whether we were gonna close evening events and some evenings, but the show did go on, and our students had a chance to perform and of course, they did a tremendous job.

A couple of closing thoughts, really important events that are coming up across the school district that we'll be able to report on again in future episodes of Inside TSD. We're looking forward to a couple of very important events that will take place across the Troy School District. First, let's start with the Troy High School Activist Week, which is coming up. Our students will have a variety of wonderful activities planned, they have a variety of wonderful activities planned for them during the course of that week. I know I'll have an opportunity on Monday evening to see Troy High School has talent. Looking forward to seeing our students on stage, our colts on stage, performing and demonstrating their acts of talent.

The following week, we will have the Athens Charity Week. Those of you that follow Athens Charity Week know that in February, there is a string of events that take place and their goal is to raise as much money as possible to support local charities. I'm also looking forward to having an opportunity to referee the volleyball tournament that will take place on Tuesday the 13th. So any of our students that are listening that are playing in that volleyball tournament on the 13th I will see you there and best wishes to you.

Also, I know of great interest to students and staff across the Troy School District, our midwinter break is just around the corner, February 19 and 20. So circle those dates on your calendar if you haven't already.

Tremendous opportunities across our school district, Inside TSD gives us an opportunity to talk about what's happening, to talk about what's upcoming, to give shout outs to the various individuals across our school district who are doing wonderful things. And we want to thank you as always for tuning in to Inside TSD.