School District Honors Teachers and Students

The began its Thursday meeting at by recognizing the efforts of outstanding teachers ad students from around the district.

The PHS Academic Decathlon team was honored for taking first place in the first division of the state Academic Decathlon Competition of America.

The team went on to compete at the national contest in New Mexico, where the members earned a spot in the finals and won the award for Team Rookie of the Year.

PHS Principal Natalie Betz and advisor Nancy Lennon were on hand to congratulate the decathletes, who include: Sakirde Amar, Spencer Chen, Jonathan David, Jenny Ze Dong, Jeffrey Huang, Christina Hum, Jenny Hyejin Kim, Emily Kwan, Tiffany Lee, Phebe Luar, Quan Ly, Adam Mansur, Maria Paleologo, Anthony Pin, Joseph Sun, Emily Weng, Eva Xu and Alice Zhou.

Also honored were faculty members who distinguished themselves through their classroom performance and for developing, implementing and sharing creative ways of imparting knowledge to their students and to those in schools throughout the district and the state.

While Interim Curriculum and Instruction Director Ruth Anne Estler noted that the district is blessed with many talented educators, a special red plate award was given to one faculty member from each school named as a Teacher of the Year.

For 2011-12, those teachers are:

The Board also recognized two of its staff members with Distinguished Faculty Awards. These educators are commended each year for recognized excellence, development of outstanding projects and programs and being commended by the community with praise or grants for their work. 

The honored teachers are elementary school resource teacher Chary Butyn and secondary school math teacher Jamie Wall. 

Superintendent of Schools LeRoy Seitz praised the evening's award winning educators as "just a few of the exceptional, outstanding teachers in this district."

"At the end of the day, every day," he told teachers, "you need to feel you are valued, respected and trusted. If you are feeling that way, we [as a district] have done our job."

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