Poughkeepsie City School District

Kids ages 18 and under in the City of Poughkeepsie will be able to get free lunch and breakfast Monday through Friday throughout the summer once again.
The Poughkeepsie City School District Summer Meals program will provide free food at five open locations each weekday from July 6 through Aug. 28. Due to construction at both Poughkeepsie high and middle schools planned for most of the summer, the Pioneer on the Run bus location will be at Pulaski Pool rather than at a school.
Students taking part in the district’s in-building summer programs will receive their meals inside the schools.
No registration is required. Lunch will be provided at all five sites; breakfast will only be available at the Pioneer On The Run bus. The district is also sending food to a wide range of summer camps, churches and programs. While some participating camps provide breakfast and lunch, others provide just one meal; contact your camp to learn more.
The five locations, subject to change, will be:
• Pioneer on the Run at Pulaski Pool: 62 Washington St. Breakfast 8:30-9:30 a.m.; Lunch 11:30 a.m.-1 p.m.
• Thurgood Marshall, 109 Delafield St. Lunch 11 a.m.-noon
• Harriet Tubman Terrace Apartments, 21 Williams St. Lunch 11:45 a.m.-12:45 p.m.
• MLK Apartments, 159 Washington St. Lunch 11:45 a.m.-12:45 p.m.
• Hudson Garden Apartments, 120 Hudson Ave. Lunch noon-1 p.m.
The district, each day, prepares hundreds of meals for children around the area through funding provided through the state. To find sites outside of the area operated by a different entity, visit www.fns.usda.gov/sfsp

Want to spend Sunday afternoon playing with Lego while supporting the Poughkeepsie City School District?
The Poughkeepsie Public Schools Foundation is hosting LegoPalooza! At Dutchess Community College this Sunday from noon to 4 p.m. The afternoon promises to be a load of fun for all ages, with a little bit of competition mixed in. Every dollar raised from ticket sales and sponsorships will go to support the educational experience for Poughkeepsie students.
While tickets are $10 for individuals and $25 for a family of five or fewer, there are 120 free tickets available to district families on a first-come, first-served basis; check ParentSquare for the special promo code. (Pre-registration is required; limit five free tickets per family.) To secure your tickets, visit https://www.eventbrite.com/e/legopalooza-tickets-1986023741473?aff=oddtdtcreator
A free shuttle will be available from three different district schools, at which you can pick up your admission wristband. Please arrive early to check in for the bus.
Departure times:
• From Krieger at noon
• From Warring at 1 p.m.
• From Poughkeepsie Middle School at 2:40 p.m.
If you provide your own transportation, please visit a bus location first to obtain a wristband.
Return times from Dutchess Community College are:
• Leaving for Krieger 1:30 p.m.
• Leaving for Warring 3:10 p.m.
• Leaving for Poughkeepsie Middle School 4 p.m.
All ages are welcome but anyone under the age of 18 must be accompanied by an adult aged 21 or older. Middle and high school students must bring their student ID as proof of their PCSD student status; elementary students will be verified at each bus location. No food or drinks are allowed in the building, and no smoking, v**e or to***co products are allowed on campus; no animals are permitted on campus with the exception of service dogs. Please see other rules on the registration page.
Sponsorship opportunities are also available. Visit https://ppsfonline.org/sponsorship/ to learn more.
LegoPalooza! Will be within DCC’s Falcon Hall physical education center; use address 53 Pendell Road.

Students are expecting to find few new additions when they return to Sojourner Truth Elementary School Tuesday morning.
The school has been incubating chicken eggs inside its Innovation Lab for the past 19 days and, Sunday, they’re expected to hatch.
Principal Alicia O’Connell said the unit is part of a larger push to not only use the space to learn more about life science, but also to have her young scholars benefit from interactions with them. After the egg unit is finished the school plans to grow tadpoles before the year ends. And, for the past two months, the school has been home to a pet axolotl named Rosie The Riser.
“That’s what I want my Innovation Lab to be,” O’Connell said. “I’m building it into the schedule for next year, too. Everyone’s really excited.”
The school purchased two incubators to make the unit possible; she noted, having the Innovation Lab as a central place where all students can benefit from having just the two units makes the lesson cost effective.
The lab also has a set of 21 plastic eggs, numbered for each day of the anticipated development cycle of a real egg. Each day a new egg is opened and, inside, there’s an illustration of what the chick embryo looks like inside. And, teachers have used the science lesson to teach vocabulary words like “sequence,” “incubate” and “pore.”
O’Connell, whose voice fills with energy while she describes the small details of raising eggs – “I’ve learned so much,” she said – plans to come into the school Sunday and Monday to check on the hatching. However, she said, a couple things she’s learned is chicks survive without food or water for their first day or two, and the incubator should only be opened once, when the process is complete, after Day 18 of 21.
“You can’t open it to take one out and wait for the rest,” she said. “Plus, they need to dry out a little bit.”
The lab has a “brooder box” for keeping the chicks enclosed after hatching, complete with a heat lamp and a small piece of playground equipment. The school plans to keep the chicks in the lab for about 10 days before various teachers take them home.
“They’ve been learning all about the kinds of chicks they could be, based on the different colored eggs,” O’Connell said.
The incubator is located in the lab right next to Rosie’s water tank. She, too, has been much more than a pet to the students, O’Connell said. She’s doubled in size since coming to the school in March. She’s also regrown an arm, and the teachers have taught students about regeneration.
“Scientists study them because they will regenerate their spine, their brain, their heart, anything,” the principal said, before showing off how the axolotl will follow her finger on the other side of the tank. “She really is like a puppy. I was trying to teach her how to do flips. We’re not there, yet.”
She noted also the effect it has had on some of the more energetic students.
“They’ll come over here and they’ll regulate,” O’Connell said. “They know they need to be calm for Rosie.”

For the third consecutive month, Smith Elementary School set the pace for all Poughkeepsie City School District Schools in the Poughkeepsie Reading Challenge in April.
On Friday morning, the school celebrated again with an assembly in which Principal Jessica Baruffo announced to the students their latest accomplishment and handed out congratulatory certificates to 20 top readers in the school.
“If you read as much as you can … you’re going to be up here for May,” Baruffo reminded the rest of her students. As the school that has finished each month with the highest average of minutes read per student, Smith has not yet let go of the Monthly Literacy Leader trophy.
“Are we going to win May?” Baruffo asked them.
“YES!” the students loudly responded as one voice.
Smith fifth-grade student Nathanyel Bautista-Riano was the top honoree across the district and will be invited to be honored at an upcoming Board of Education meeting. Other individual honorees from each school include fourth-grader Rachel Li (Clinton), first-grader Estella Gorman (Krieger), second-grader Alvarado Daleyza (Truth), fourth-grader Janiyah Campbell (Warring), eighth-grader Makhi Mayfield (Poughkeepsie Middle School) and sophomore Graciela Martinez (Poughkeepsie High School).
As May winds down, district students have read roughly 800,000 cumulative minutes, as recorded in the myOn system, placing them on pace to reach the goal of 1 million minutes mid-June.
Read more at https://poughkeepsieschools.org/readingchallenge

Krieger Elementary School students on May 13 celebrated Asian American Pacific Islander Heritage Month with a visit from the Ajna Dance Company.
The experience was “amazing,” Principal Melissa Barrow said, calling it “a profound cultural experience.
“Our students and teachers were fully immersed in the vibrant energy of Bollywood and Punjabi dance, bringing a wonderful spirit of celebration to our school,” she said. “Exposing our students to diverse perspectives early on is key to preparing them to thrive as compassionate, informed and inclusive adults.”

A group of Poughkeepsie Middle School students will take the stage at the Bardavon 1869 Opera House Thursday evening to show the community what they’ve learned about their community, their culture and themselves.
Several dozen sixth grade students for the past two weeks have been exercising dance, poetry, creative writing and artistic skills through the annual “Hip Hop Theater” program. The 7 p.m. show Thursday, May 21, at the Bardavon, incorporates spoken word, dance and musical elements.
The show is free of charge but there is a suggested donation of $6.
During the program, which has been running for more than 15 years, the students work with visiting teaching artists as well as teachers Heidi Murphy, John Hines, Selina Barrington and Devon Esposito.
The theme of this year’s show is community and culture, which the students explored through a variety of mediums, including researching their own name, creating a piece of art representative of their name and how community resonates within themselves, and writing an accompanying essay. They also kept student journals with daily entries before and after the workshops. The literacy components, Murphy said, work in support of the state’s ELA next generation learning standards.
This year, Murphy said, the teachers also intentionally aligned the unit with one aspect of the 7 Mindsets learning platform tenet “The Time is Now” — “Let Yourself Be Vulnerable.”
“We really did a lot of pre-show work on that,” Murphy said.

In the past year, the Poughkeepsie City School District has instituted bus service for elementary students, reorganized its elementary buildings, opened innovation labs and reinforced its emphasis on field trips, post-graduate readiness and other areas through increased funding.

On Tuesday, City of Poughkeepsie residents approved a $156.91 million 2026-27 budget that will allow the district to continue its trajectory while maintaining staffing, programs and services for students of all grade levels.

Residents also approved a proposition to allow for the creation of the “2026 Capital Reserve Fund” and elected three members of the Board of Education.

“We want to thank residents for their support of this budget proposal and their faith in the direction our district is moving,” Superintendent of Schools Gregory Mott said. “We believe the programs and services we have in place are effectively supporting student success and increasing positive educational outcomes. This budget will allow us to continue building on that work.”

The budget, a $156,908,757 spending plan, was approved 461 votes to 167. Proposition 2 to establish the capital reserve fund was endorsed by voters 500 to 127.

Jamar Cummings, Stacey MacDonald and Richard Distel were each elected to the Board of Education. Cummings, an incumbent appointed by the Board members in the fall, and MacDonald will each serve full three-year terms beginning July 1 as the top two recipients of votes; Distel will serve the remaining one year on the term vacated by Kelleyanne Royce-Giron, and can run for reelection to a full term next May.

The budget proposal did not exceed the state’s tax cap. It represents a 6.28% increase over this year’s spending plan and an increase in the tax levy by 4.21%. Actual tax increase depends on New York State equalization rates. To balance the budget, the district will use $7 million in restricted fund balance and $2 million in unrestricted fund balance. The district remains with roughly $37.4 million in combined fund balance.

The “2026 Capital Reserve Fund” is a source of funding for the district to undertake general capital improvements, as-needed, outside of the specific projects formally approved by residents through resolutions. The fund has a maximum total of $20 million, to be raised through various sources that include, but are not limited to, state aid reimbursement, cost saving measures resulting in unexpended funds or fund balance, or other legally available funds of the district. The district will not level any additional taxes on residents to specifically fill this fund.

The Board of Education voted to accept the results Tuesday night. The Board’s new members are scheduled to be sworn in on July 1 at its organizational meeting.