Video Description:

In the blue background on the left side of the brief animation of motion of PSD logo of yellow hands open with white roof and columns, yellow roof and door come out. On the right side, Yellow lettering of “PB’s Corner December 2021”

Fade and Peter Bailey appear. He is wearing a black dress shirt with several shades of grey diamond tie . He is sitting on the chair. Background: There is a blue wall with few frames on the wall. The file cabinet and shelf show in the background. There is a PSD logo on the bottom right corner: Blue and yellow PSD logo with 50% opacity.

Hello everyone, these are my updates for December 2021. That means it’s almost time to celebrate another new year.  2020 and 2021 have been challenging years, so we’re looking ahead and hope that 2022 will be better.  This month I’d like to start with an update about the Thanksgiving Day Parade. Philadelphia has the oldest parade in the country, and we were honored to be involved again. We’ve been involved for over 20 years, but this year was particularly special. This year they highlighted an entire video of our students performing with other groups in the parade.  It was wonderful to see PSD students and I’m so proud of all the students and the staff that worked so hard to make this happen.

I’d also like to talk about a special opportunity for giving. Every year we have our  annual fundraising appeal and Giving Tuesday.  Thank you so much to those of you who have already supported us, and if you haven’t it’s not too late. Information about the annual appeal will be going out soon, so keep an eye out for that. We appreciate your support so much.

I also want to update you on the Bicentennial. You may have already registered for the Gala. Formal invitations will be going out soon.  Once you get that, you’ll see the beautiful artwork on the invite and hopefully that gets you excited to be there in March. We look forward to seeing you!

Now to share updates about the school itself. We’ve been keeping an eye on the CDC  and their regulations and guidelines for the last almost two years.  What we’ve been learning is the state of Pennsylvania and the city of Philadelphia do things very differently.  The state has been setting guidelines for everyone in the state to follow whereas philadelphia has its own set of rules. PSD is keeping a close eye on all the mandates and regulations for the city. I’m very proud to say that our staff are currently 97% fully vaccinated. The remaining three percent are staff that may have a medical or religious exemption. Aside from those accommodations we’re at 97%, which is great. We know the next question is always ‘but what about student vaccinations.’ We know that Rite Aid and CVS and other pharmacies are giving vaccines, so we’re trying to arrange for them to come to campus and do a clinic. If they can’t do it on campus, then we may have an opportunity for students to get the vaccines at the pharmacy. Those are the updates so far, but we will share more information about the students and everything that we’re doing next month. I also wanted to share with you a ‘heads up’ about our athletics program. We did cancel all sports this Fall, and now we’re preparing for basketball and the other winter sports that begin next month. We know that we will have some athletics starting up again, but we’re not sure exactly what it will look like. In particular, we’re not sure if there will be an athletics program operating fully in tournaments with other schools for the deaf so at the moment we’re focused primarily on local games and competitions. Going forward, we hope that we can reopen; but we’re talking with other schools to see what they’re doing as well. In the meantime, stay safe and be well.

End with a blue background. Top PSD logo of yellow hands open with white roof and columns, yellow roof and door. White Lettering “Pennsylvania School for the Deaf” Four social media outlet logos on the bottom of Facebook, Instagram, Twitter and Youtube logos. Yellow lettering “@psd1820”