National Merit Scholarship

DFHS has six students in the Class of 2020 who have been recognized this year by the National Merit Scholarship Corporation (NMSC) for their performance on the last year's PSAT. Of the 1.6 million students who took the exam nationally, 34,000 were designated as Commended Students and 16,000 were designated as Semifinalists. Congratulations to Semi Finalists Zachary Cohen and Corbin Velonis and Commended students Nicolas Checa, Daniel Schwartz, Rachel Shornick and Grace Woodin!

Dear Parents and Community Members,

A new decade begins and we are looking ahead to exciting happenings in 2020 in the Dobbs Ferry School District. The Board of Education is busy working with our administrators and our architects to develop the final schematics for the Capitol Project, approved by the voters in October. The District is committed to making this a collaborative process where both staff and community stakeholders are giving input and feedback to the designs.

At the January 7th Board meeting, Dr. Richard Grip of Statistical Forecasting shared an update to the District Demographic Study that details enrollment projections for the next five years. Although we will be monitoring enrollment closely, it appears that there is a potential for some significant enrollment increases, especially at Springhurst in the years ahead. Needless to say, the enrollment increases will eventually bubble up through the Middle School and High School so a District-wide approach is necessary. We anticipate forming a school-community study group to examine this potential issue and consider all options in order to accommodate the new students and families moving to Dobbs Ferry.

We are also busy preparing the Superintendent’s proposed 2020-2021 School Budget to present to the Board of Education and community. A special meeting will be held on Saturday, March 14th beginning at 9 a.m. for community members to hear about all the different components of the budget and what is being proposed. The meeting will be held in the MS/HS Library Media Center.

Again we invite parents and community members to attend the Board meetings and also our work sessions, where we explore educational issues of interest. So far this year, we have engaged in a work session on Career and Technical Education, as well as Social and Emotional Learning and explored the work that teachers are doing as part of our Innovative Classroom Initiative (ICI). We also look forward to the April 28th work session on Diversity, Equity and Gender and hope you will join us.

Coming up, the District will be offering the last of three parent workshops on the use of technology in our schools, in addition to an important Parent Safety & Security Information Night. Videos of these programs will be archived on the District website www.dfsd.org for parents to watch when their schedules allow. We encourage you to peruse the website periodically to stay abreast of all that is happening across the District.

On behalf of the Dobbs Ferry Schools family, we extend our very best wishes for the New Year! Best wishes!

Sincerely,

Lisa Brady, Ed.D
Superintendent