Superintendent's Message
Marc J. Smith - Dennis-Yarmouth Regional Schools
Falling Forward
Hello Dolphin Community,
This week surely felt like Fall. Cool air, leaves quickly falling from the trees, smoke billowing from chimneys; all signs that Fall is officially here and that we are on our way to the Winter season. We have many things to be proud of at this time as a Dolphin Community. Our athletic program has many teams in the state tournament including field hockey, volleyball, football, and cross-country. Additionally, our marching band defended their state title last weekend and remained very competitive in the New England region. The DYIMS ran their Boosterthon Fun Run this week and it raised a significant amount of money to support extra programming at both schools. The schools raised over $30,000! Thank you to the community for your support! We also received notification from the state this week that 41 of our seniors qualified for the John and Abigail Adams Scholarship which is awarded due to high academic achievement on the MCAS. Each of these items is a celebration of our collective work as a Dolphin community to support the success of our students.
One way that we can ensure continued success for our students is to do our very best to support students in being present for school. This is a joint effort of us working together, homes and school, to ensure students are present for learning as many days as possible. As a district, we recognize that there has been a significant amount of messaging at all levels (national, state, county, district, and school) over the past several years telling families to keep their children home if they in any way did not feel well. We also recognize that the world was responding to an international pandemic and that information was continually developing and evolving. As a school district, our chronic absenteeism rate (percentage of students missing 10% or more of school days) has been high over the past two years. In grades K-8 it was 29.2% in the 2021-2022 school year and 22.6% in the 2022-2023 school year. Our high school rate was 46.7% in 2021-2022 and 32.1% in 2022-2023. We are heading in the right direction and we need to continue to work together to keep this trend going.
Why is this so important? Research has shown that "students who miss more school than their peers consistently score lower on standardized tests, a result that holds true at every age, in every demographic group, and in every state and city tested" (Ginsburg et al., 2014). I know that we all share a common desire to ensure that D-Y students are set up to be successful and competitive once they leave our school district. I also know that we all want to make sure they are not placed at a disadvantage because they have missed more school days than graduates entering the job market, college, military service, etc. from other school districts. In order to be successful, this will require us working together. Schools, classrooms, families, teachers, and students all working collaboratively to ensure that each student is present as many days as possible to ensure a future filled with possibility and success. We look forward to working with you on this.
Thank you and have a wonderful weekend.
All the best,
Marc J. Smith, Ed. D.
Superintendent