Newsroom

A.W. Beattie’s four-person Carpentry and Building Construction team earned the national championship in the National Association of Home Builder's Residential Construction Management Competition. The team was made up of four juniors: Northgate’s Ryan Geeting, Pine-Richland’s Graydon Sherron, and North Allegheny’s Shane O’Neal and Marc Sostmann.

Each team began with a blueprint provided to them, and students had to be the construction managers for a hypothetical residential project. Ryan and Graydon took the lead on organizing permits and material orders, and Shane and Marc took on the responsibility of managing labor and construction scheduling.

They are the first A.W. Beattie team to take home first place nationally in the competition after the Career Center’s previous three teams placed fourth in 2017, 2018, and 2019.

Click here for the full article.

Registration for the Pre-K Counts program for the 2021-22 school year is now open. Preference will be given to children who will enter Kindergarten in the 2022-23 school year who are not currently enrolled in or selected for another Pre-K program.

The Pre-K Counts classroom is located at Bellevue Elementary School. There is no cost to parents/guardians for the program. Breakfast and lunch are provided. Space for this program is extremely limited. Students must have a completed application to be considered for this program.

Registration packets are available in the main office of either of our elementary schools. 

Click here to learn more.

We are pleased to announce that Spark Designs is open for business. You’ll want to check out this student-run business that is part of our new Innovation and Design program at the high school. Spark Designs has some great products for sale and all proceeds will be used to support and expand the Innovation and Design program. Items can be picked up at any of our school buildings, just leave a note at checkout indicating which location works best for you.

A big congratulations to our Middle School Engineering and Design students who participated in the "Schools That Can" Design Challenge. The challenge brings together middle school students, their teachers, corporate executives and community leaders from different cities to engage in a real-world design experience: transforming urban public school buildings into smart, green and efficient structures. The virtual event allowed six schools located in New Jersey, Pennsylvania, and New York to go head-to-head on innovative design concepts.

"Best Overall," "Best Design" and "Best Presentation" awards were given, and our Middle School won "Best Overall" which is the highest award. Under the guidance of Mr. Jason Clarkson, three students, Caleb Gratner, Raymond Wauthier, and Angelo Valeriano, prepared a 4-minute presentation that offers plans for reducing greenhouse gas emissions, including updating the school's heating system, replacing standard lights with energy-efficient LED lighting, and placing solar canopies in parking lots and rooftops. The presentations were judged by a six-member panel of expert judges. We are so proud of our students, and their hard work and commitment to this project.

This project asked kids to learn how to approach real-world problems the way design professionals do, develop their problem-solving toolkit, including the intentional application of creativity, collaboration, communication, and critical thinking, both in and out of academic situations, and cultivate STEM skills, particularly the use of design thinking, coding, and/or 3D design. Students engaged in design cycles of ideating, creative prototyping, testing, and continuous improvement using workplace-relevant tools.

Click here to read the full press release from Schools that Can.

We've partnered with several local school districts to bring a series of informative sessions to our families. The four-session series will cover a variety of special education topics that will provide resources and tools that support our students and families.

Session 1: Mental Health: Signs and Interventions
Wednesday, March 24, 2021 | 5-6:15 pm

Session 2: The Special Education Process for Parents
Monday, April 12, 2021 | 5-6:15 pm

Session 3: Autism and Intellectual Disabilities
Wednesday, April 21, 2021 | 6-7:15 pm

Session 4: Behaviors and Discipline in Special Education
Tuesday, April 27, 2021 | 6-7:15 pm

Click here to register.

The Northgate Middle and High Schools are partnering with a resident artist, Bernie Wilkie, from the Pittsburgh Center for Arts and Media to work with our students and school community on designing two large wall murals for the building.

The first mural will be in the main entrance and will reflect the diversity and cultural history that exists in our school district and community. The second mural will be in the cafeteria and will reflect school pride and our Positive Behavioral Interventions and Supports programming.

We are encouraging everyone who wants to participate to sign up by emailing nicole.smith@northgatesd.net. No artistic ability required. 

About the artist: Bernie’s work as a visual artist centers around large-scale community murals, teaching, and a body of paintings and mixed media works called Innerscapes. A desire to work with communities to bring inspiring art into shared spaces has been a driving force in his career. His vision is to continue leveraging the power of art to strengthen communities and cultivate personal and societal wellness through beauty, collaboration, and storytelling. You can find out more information about the artist by visiting his website: http://www.berniewilke.com/

Please join us for this FREE COMMUNITY LIGHT DISPLAY brought to you by the Northgate Student Council. Monetary donations and non-perishable food items will be collected. This event is designed with safety in mind, cars will drive through the secondary campus which will be lit up and decorated. Cars will enter campus via Union Ave. and exit via Glaser Ave. 

Suggested Arrival Times:
​Last Name A-F: 6-6:30 pm | Last Name G-M: 6:30-7 pm | Last Name N-T: 7-7:30 pm | Last Name U-Z: 7:30-8 pm

Click here to see the event flyer.

We are pleased to announce that the Northgate School District has received $1,000 in grant money from Sodexo’s Stop Hunger Foundation. The funds have been sent to Northgate’s non-profit partner, The Shepherd's Door located at 563 Lincoln Ave, Pittsburgh, PA 15202. We would like to thank Food Service Director Julianne Griffin for submitting the grant application and for being a wonderful advocate for Northgate students.

The Shepherd’s Door is a 501(c)3 Non-Profit Ministry focused on establishing quick, convenient access to community resources and providing adequate safe havens for children and youth. The Shepherd’s Door plays an important role in Northgate’s Backpack program which provides backpacks filled with nutritious, easy-to-prepare, non-perishable food for students who are at risk for hunger when free or reduced-price school meals are not available. Backpacks are distributed to students in easily accessible, safe environments the last day before a weekend or holiday. If a Northgate Family would like to participate in the program all they need to do is contact their school counselor to get additional information.

The Sodexo Stop Hunger Foundation provides grants to help fund local backpack food programs and on-campus food pantries where Sodexo employees regularly volunteer their time.

These programs and pantries help ensure all children can access sufficient healthy food every day so they can learn, play, and thrive. When fueled by consistent access to nutritious food, youth are more likely to get the education, health and employment necessary for a stable future. That means they’re more likely to avoid or move out of poverty and less likely to experience hunger in the future. During the 2019-20 school year, Sodexo helped fund 59 different backpack programs supported by their employees.

In December, we held several sessions of a new event for our parents and guardians who are supporting our virtual learners.

Topics that were covered included educational platforms that are being used and expectations for students during virtual learning. Additionally, we shared tips for helping your child be a successful virtual learner as well as coping strategies for stressed students and parents and a variety of virtual resources.

Please use the links below to access the resources we covered as well as a recording of the presentation for our secondary families.

• Elementary Student Resources
• Secondary Student Resources
• Support for Parents During Virtual Learning Presentation

MyDtxt allows students to receive alerts via text messages about menu specials, vote for their favorite menu items and send feedback to our dining staff. Subscribers must be 14 years or older. Msg & data rates may apply.

To celebrate the launch we are holding an Amazon gift card raffle. High School students should Text NGFood TO 82257 to register for MyDtxt anytime between January 11 and January 22 to be eligible for the raffle.

Please join us for a virtual edition of Coffee with Dr. Johns and special guest Dr. Caton. We are offering six different sessions where will be discussing ways we are supporting our students during COVID-19. We like to keep the numbers of attendees small for these informal sessions so please visit https://tinyurl.com/CoffeeWithDrJohns to reserve your spot today. If none of the sessions fit your schedule, there is an option to write in your availability and we will do our best to schedule additional dates.

We would like to sincerely thank our friends at Jim Shorkey Family Auto Group for working so hard to raise money for our District. They were able to make a generous donation of just under $9,000 to help us purchase iPads for our transition to 1-1 technology. We are lucky to have such great neighbors!

Please join us for this new event that is designed to offer practical, applicable tips and strategies for parents and guardians supporting virtual learners in grades K-6.

Topics to be covered include educational platforms used at the elementary building level and expectations for students during virtual learning. Additionally, we will share tips for helping your child be a successful virtual learner as well as coping strategies for stressed students and parents and a variety of virtual resources.

Monday, December 21 at 2:30 pm or Monday, December 21 at 6:30 pm

Because this is a virtual event there is no need to rsvp just use https://meet.google.com/drt-qdng-mgp to join the session that works best for you.

Click here to see the event flyer.