Julie Davis
jdavis@cherryroad.com
What began as a classroom assignment in middle school has turned into a practical upgrade to Palmyra Junior/Senior High School.
Junior Kenlee Nider wrote a persuasive essay in seventh grade about why the school needed a student store. She expanded the essay into a speech presentation and shared a copy of the speech with the staff at Riverstone Bank.
Meagann Schweitzer, Riverstone retail banking manager at the Syracuse, Talmage, and Eagle branches, said the management of the bank began talking about the store after receiving a copy of Nider’s speech. Bank representatives reached out to the school board and things began to happen.
Last month, Riverstone Bank presented District OR-1 with $10,928 to help offset the expenses of construction and setup of the Panther School Store.
The store, which is expected to open when school resumes in the fall, will also offer practical job skills opportunities for students in the district’s Aspire Academy.
Aspire students will screen-print T-shirts for sale in the store, and other students in the district, particularly those in the agriculture and career and technical education classes, will be given the opportunity to create items for sale during their class time.
Special education teacher Jennifer Ferretti said that she and other special education teachers in the district heard about other districts using their student stores as a training site at a recent conference on transitions that the staff members attended.
“I asked ‘why not us?’ after hearing about other districts doing it,” she said.
The Aspire Academy serves special education students who are between the ages of 18 and 21 and who are transitioning out of school and into adulthood.
The academy’s goal is to help students develop skills that will allow them to be employed after high school and live at home or independently.
Skills taught at the academy include personal safety and hygiene, money management, healthy lifestyle habits, socially appropriate behavior, and job skills.
Possible work experience for the students includes custodial work, food prep, inventory and retail merchandising, animal caretaking, horticulture, laundry services, and assisted living work.
District OR-1 Superintendent Michael Hart said he believes there is a partnership between the school, the business community, and the patrons of the district and that the Panther Student Store will help strengthen that partnership.
“We create great graduates,” he said, “and we want them to come back” and be part of the Palmyra community after graduation.
