District 203 celebrates students, asks for input

It's hard to believe the school year began more than a month ago. In this short time, we have a lot to share with our community.

National Merit

Thirty-two Naperville Unit District 203 students have been announced as finalists for the National Merit Scholarship Program.

Naperville Central High School had 10 seniors named as Semifinalists, and Naperville North had 22. The students now have the opportunity to continue in the competition for 7,600 National Merit Scholarships worth about $33 million that will be offered next spring.

The 10 students from Naperville Central are: Sara Campbell, Dylan Hale, Trevor Hale, Rick Li, Eric Lo, David Schneck, Christina Vasquez, Emily Whirledge, William Zhang and Annie Zhou.

The 22 seniors from Naperville North are: Jamal Ahmed, Jane Boettcher, Jonathan Gao, Artur Genser, Byron Gore, Michael Green, Dillon Hammond, Rachel He, Meghna Israni, Nicole Kolbasov, Kelvin Li, Chen Ling, Frances McCormick, Jakob Myers, Christopher Ng, Stacey Ni, Michael Rotter, Nikhilesh Sivapatham, Olivia Tsao, Jesse Wang, Lillian Yuan and Vivian Yuan. Congratulations!

School Day Survey

Naperville 203 needs your voice. We are launching a survey to learn what our community thinks about the yearly school calendar and our school start and end times. In 10 minutes, you can help us optimize student learning and better serve our families.

Recently, Naperville Unit District 203 convened a work group to study the optimal school day. The group concluded that our younger students could benefit from additional instructional time each day, and our older students could benefit from starting school later, which is in alignment with recent recommendations from the American Academy of Pediatrics as well as the Centers for Disease Control.

The survey is open from Oct. 4-18. All Naperville 203 community members and local business owners/operators are invited to participate - whether they have children in our schools or not. If you don't receive an email, visit our website, naperville203.org, and click on the School Day Survey button in the top right corner.

Thank you for your continued support of our school district and thank you in advance for your participation in this important survey. #WeAre203

• Dan Bridges is superintendent of Naperville Unit District 203. His column runs in Neighbor monthly during the school year.