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 November 2021”

Fade and Peter Bailey appear. He is wearing a light green dress shirt with black jacket . He is standing outside. Background: Outside on the grass. 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 the month of November. It is nice to finally be out of my office. It is a nice day to do this and it is also nice to see that things with COVID are slowing down. I do have some updates for you this month. The first is about our formerly called “Master Plan” which we are now calling our “Campus Plan.” The campus plan is part of the reason I am recording from this background. This property did have three structures on it when we acquired it. Since then we have gotten approval to take down the two smaller structures. They have since been demolished. We are using that area for parking and I will share a picture of that with you later. We are still figuring out what to do with the main structure so it is still here. In the meantime we are patching the roof, repairing the gutters and doing some minor repairs to keep the house in order and protect it from rain. We are also looking school-wide at what else would be involved in the Campus Plan; other ideas for renovations, changes in the buildings indoors, what we would do for the campus and the grounds themselves. We have shared the plan with the board and is has been approved. Once it is shared with the staff then the next step will be to share it with all of you in the community. We hope that soon you will have an opportunity to see that. The other thing we are doing as a school right now is thinking about, both externally and internally, how we are overcoming COVID and how we can come back from the ways that it has created barriers in celebrating our bicentennial. This year is the first time in a long time that we have brought in so much money from the Walk4Hearing with $3000 raised. That was very exciting this year. Also, PSD alumni and their Board invited me to join their meeting. I attended the board meeting and met with them. We talked about what was going on with the school and I look forward to a continued partnership with them. We agree that the time is not right, yet, for us to reopen campus and welcome alumni and other visitors back. We hope that it won’t be long before you can all come back to campus. We are working closely with the PSDAA Board to figure out some events for the future.

In terms of the school itself, we are continuing to run things as normal as possible. We are working hard on Restorative Justice. This is a program that we have been implementing through various presentations and professional development here at PSD. We are calling all of that our Professional Learning (PL). We are working ongoing in our efforts to be a transformational school.

In addition to that we also want to recognize that we recently celebrated and honored Unity Day. We actually call that Carl Way Day. Many of you who were here in the past knew Carl and remember how he worked hard to keep everyone connected. That is why we honor him by naming it Carl Way Unity Day. We display his favorite colors of orange and purple, the staff had a cookout in the afternoon and all of this has become an annual tradition.

The other update to share with you is our Thanksgiving Day Parade. PSD has been involved for over 20 years with the 6ABC Thanksgiving Day Parade. It was impacted last year with COVID so the parade went virtual. That was a very different experience. This year we are trying a hybrid version. There will be a live component and a virtual component. The live component will limit the number of people in attendance but we will still be involved in that parade. We also had some filming done here so that it could be uploaded for 30 days to see the parade for the City of Philadelphia.

Last but not least I want to share with all of you that since it is November it is time for us to work on our annual appeal. We have Giving Tuesday as well. Those will both be efforts that you should see reflected in a mailing so keep an eye out for that. We are celebrating our bicentennial and we are also looking forward to another 200 years! More information will be shared with you next month. Take care.

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”