Pelham Memorial High School will have a co-ed wrestling team this year, which will merge with squads from Eastchester and Tuckahoe, following the approval of the Board of Education at its August 26 meeting, its last business meeting prior to the launch of the 2025-26 school year.
In other highlights from the meeting, board president Jackie De Angelis pointed out that Pelham Memorial High School had moved up a few notches in U.S. News and World Report’s latest rankings of New York state’s high schools, jumping from 81st last year to 52nd for the current school year.
“The score for Pelham Memorial High School was 97.62 out of 100,” said De Angelis. “This puts us in the top 4% of the schools… And it shows we’re competitive, because those schools above us, most of them are specialized STEM schools or selective public high schools that you need to test into. And so congratulations to Pelham Memorial High School.”
During the meeting, District Superintendent Dr. Cheryl Champ discussed the annual contract with Student Assistance Services, which provides mental health support and substance abuse services to students in the high school and middle school. Due to budget constraints, Champ said the district would have to reduce its funding for the program. However, Ellen Morehouse, a longtime director at SAS, has been working to develop a series of grants to bring mental health clinics to both the Pelham Memorial High and the middle school, Champ said. These grants would provide active students of either school with access to an on-site mental health clinic and a full-time student assistance counselor, who could also function as a private mental health provider.
Champ also discussed the strategy that the district would be following this year, which is based on management guru Stephen Covey’s theory of “Big Rocks.” According to this theory, managers faced with fitting all their tasks into one bucket should prioritize between the big rocks and the pebbles and sand.
“If you start and put the sand in…first, put your pebbles in, put the rocks on top, [they’re] not necessarily going to fit in in,” Champ said. “But when you start in the other order, by putting the big rocks in first, then the pebbles in the sand, it all fits and at the end of the day, there’s sometimes even more space. So our goal this year is to focus on the three big rocks.”
For the coming year, Champ said, the district’s “three big rocks” would be a focus on Multi-Tiered Support Systems, improved use of instructional technology, especially Artificial Intelligence, and an embrace of the New York Inspires initiative.
“Our theme for this year is systems of support for all students,” said Champ.
