IN South Fayette Winter 2018 | Page 59

South Fayette High School Students Win another Governor’s STEM Competition The South Fayette High School STEM Team is the 2018 PA Governor’s STEM Competition champion! The team of sophomores, Suraj Bokil, Pranav Dantu, Swathi Senthil, Parv Shrivastava, and junior Prateek Jukalkar, beat out the nearly 200 other teams across the Commonwealth with their invention to end distracted driving, an integrated app and mobile device cradle named KYHU, Keep Your Head Up. KYHU incentivizes drivers to keep their phones out of their hands by rewarding them with lower insurance premiums for keeping their phone docked. KYHU allows drivers “Training the Trainer” In August 2018, the South Fayette nutritional leaders, Aimee Dernosek, Judy Howcroft, and Judy Kirkpatrick attended the SNAPa (School Nutrition Association of PA) annual conference in downtown Pittsburgh at the Convention Center. The convention gave the ladies the opportunity to learn the most updated school meal guidelines, attend training seminars and to network with colleagues. Howcroft received the “Regional Leadership Award” for her leadership role at the South Fayette Middle School Cafeteria and was nominated by Food Service Director Tricia Wood, for all of her efforts and the outstanding job she does on a day-to-day basis. “Howcroft has been employed by the District for 20 years and always displays a positive attitude. She takes pride in her role as the middle school leader and is always present for the students when they come through the food court. She also serves on our District’s Safety Committee,” Wood said. In the past several years, Kirkpatrick of the South Fayette Intermediate School has won the “Outstanding Employee of the Year” and “Regional Leadership Awards” and Dernosek, high school leader, was a two time winner. “Our leaders do a phenomenal job with their lunch programs, and their to utilize GPS mapping and a simple push-to-play/stop music player to minimize interaction with the device. The SF STEM Team, advised by SFHS English teacher, James Hausman III, was recognized by Superintendent Dr. Lockette and the School Board of Directors at the August 21 school board meeting. leadership training and level of commitment is beyond words,” says Wood. “We provide about 3,200 meals each day and honor approximately 280 special diet requests from diabetic, gluten free, PKU, and peanut allergy students. We have approximately 38 staff dedicated to the nutritional needs of our district and specialized teams to assist in handling the meal preps,” says Wood. The Regional Award is presented to a leader for displaying interest in continuing education in the Child Nutrition Programs, involvement of teamwork with staff, teachers, administrators, students, and the community. We are pleased that our leader, Howcroft, was honored with this award. Congratulations to her and all of our South Fayette Kitchen Leaders on a job well done. SOUTH FAYETTE ❘ WINTER 2018 57