Iroquois, SD

The Seniors at Iroquois school are anxiously awaiting their graduation day. that day will soon become a reality. On Sunday, May 11th at 2:00 pm in the school’s south gym, 16 Seniors will receive their diplomas. 13 Eighth graders will also receive their grade school diploma’s.
The commencement speech will be given this year by Stuart Rounds and Christopher Schortzmann, two honor students.
We hope everyone can join us in congratulating the graduating class of 2008.
Good luck Seniors in your future years. Don’t forget us!!!

(the following was an editorial in the local Huron paper)
The Iroquois School Board is committed to creating a strong future for our school and for our students. In the past few years, we have added several new courses to the curriculum such as ag classes, health education, technical and career education classes, and a wide variety of online classes. Along with the additional courses, the district has also added cross country and oral interpretation, and next year, competitive cheer will create even more opportunities for our students.
Our middle school students recently competed in a regional music contest and did very well and, at the end of the month, they will compete in an instrumental contest. We have worked to fulfill the needs of the students and incorporate activities that they are interested in.
Many of our students have graduated and gone on to do very well in college and in the professions they have chosen. We are proud of our students accomplishments and will continue to help them achieve their goals.
We encourage you to come and visit during the open house on Sun., May 4th from 2-6 pm or come to the all-school music concert on Mon., May 5th at 7 pm to listen to our students and tour the school extravagtanza.
At both of these events we will be showcasing the classes, students and teachers who are all helping create the strong future we envision for our school. We want to thank the students, teachers, parents and community members who continue to support our school and work toward a bright future. We all need to come together and be part of the action at the Iroquois school.
Greg Blue, Board President
Jerrod Fast, Terry Schoenfelder, Greg Bich, Greg Schortzmann

How will your community make decisions about seeking further resources to support its plans?
Organization leadership will be encouraged to seek financial assistance for community projects through the use of available grants. Also by attending regional conferences sponsored by Horizons, leaders can learn about additional resources thay may not now know are available. Also thorough discussion by ALL leaders of ALL organizations will make it easier for the whole town to be on “the same page” concerning community projects and steps being taken to complete these projects.

Is a system in place to seek, receive, monitor and report on new resources to support community work?
One system being enacted currently is that all organizations, including Community Club/Horizons, Fire Department, Iroquois Housing, City of Iroquois, school system and anyone else interested, will hold twice a year joint meetings. This joint meeting will enable all to seek, receive, monitor and report to all other organizations where they have found help and all organizations will know the progress of others. This blog site is an excellent resource in itself. On it other towns report on their successes and where they found resources. An example of giving help to other towns is the success of Iroquois Housing. This group has been fielding questions from across the state asking how it is that a tiny town like ours can build and occupy 15 new homes in the past few years. Leaders have also participated in discussion groups and conferences relaying how we’ve done it. Also a close working relationship with the county commission is an excellent way to keep avenues of discussion open.

I don’t ever recall having an opportunity to photograph a rainbow in March, but on March 19th I captured this photo at Iroquois Lake. There is still ice on the lake, so I wasn’t blessed with a reflection on the water.

The Iroquois Horizons/Community Club is hosting an open house at the school on Sunday, May 4th from 2-5 pm. We want to showcase our beautiful school and make the public aware that we are accepting open enrollments. One of our bus drivers is offering to meet the public at DJ ’s Gas Station in East Huron to bus the public over for this open house. We will offer refreshments at the school.
One of the highlights of the tour will be the projects that each classroom will be displaying during the extravaganza that will be held the next day.
Hope you can come and see our beautiful school.

Iroquois Elementary fourth grade students recently completed a Kindness Project involving the elementary staff.  Some of the things students did to help other staff included reading a book aloud to students, helping fill Wednesday envelopes, assisting with a kindergarten science experiment, helping students with math questions, and cleaning.  Students are writing a How to be a Kind Person book in writing workshop. This project will be discussed in their books.

Iroquois Elementary kicked off the school year with a celebration for those students who participated in the summer reading challenge. We had all kinds of water activities for the kids including a dunk tank that was probably the hit of the celebration!

As the school year progressed, the teachers got the children interested in the new Prairie Bud and Prairie Pasque books by taking turns giving a little summary of their book and then drawing a student’s name out of a basket for a cool door prize that had something to do with the book that was just introduced.

We celebrated the 100^th day of school by exercising our bodies with 100 exercises and then we went on to read 100 books. The students had fun reporting each book they read until we tallied 100 books and then some.

Our latest elementary literacy activity was celebrating Dr. Seuss’s birthday. The teachers got to pick out their favorite book and dress up like a character from their book. The students were divided into groups and rotated among the teachers to hear a new story every 10 minutes. When we were finished, Mrs. Geyer-Fuhrman introduced our snack of “blue goo” and “pink ink” by reading an excerpt from a Dr. Seuss favorite called One Fish, Two Fish, Red Fish, Blue Fish.

As the elementary begins to wrap things up for the school year and begin planning for this summer’s reading challenge, we are planning a fundraiser for the Elementary Literacy Fund. Each classroom is going to come up with a theme and put together a literacy basket which may include anything from books to fun things you might enjoy this summer or while reading. These baskets will be displayed on awards night, Tuesday, April 29^th and at the spring concert on Monday, May 5^th. Raffle tickets will be sold at these times for a chance to win the basket of your choice. The drawing will be held on the last day of school. We invite everyone to come and browse our literacy baskets and purchase a chance to win!

I think by merging our community club/Horizons group as one we can have a stronger community leadership system.
we learned a lot from our study circle sessions that we can use in the future.
we also plan to have biannual meetings with every organization in town to update each other on what is happening within their group and how we can help each other.
I really do believe that these have all made us a stronger, closer community.

        The Iroquois community held a fundraiser Saturday with co-ed sporting events in the gym.  The money raised will go toward the purchase on an electronic sign that will be placed in town along Highway 14.         

High school students played co-ed volleyball and basketball games.  Cheerleaders in grades 5 through 12 performed between games.  Boys and girls in grades 4 through 6 also played co-ed basketball. 

Concessions were sold.  The IPAT (Iroquois Peer Assistance Team) also sold ice cream sundaes.        

The event raised approximately $1,800. 

-April 4-   The high school drama club presents this year’s all school play, “A Wing and a Prayer,” Friday evening.  The comedy dinner theater begins at 6:00 p.m. with a meal.  The play cast will help serve the meal while in costume.  This year’s meal consists of spaghetti with garlic bread, cake, and drinks.  Advanced tickets for the dinner theater or for the play only, may be purchased from any of the play cast or you may call the school (546-2426).  The play begins at 7:00 p.m.