The Grosse Pointe Public School System is opening the doors of its school buildings to visitors from 12 to 2 p.m. Sunday, Nov. 7. The district open house is held in conjunction with the Grosse Pointe Board of Realtors, with numerous houses on the market also showcased.
Invite your friends and neighbors to take advantage of the opportunity to find out about the district’s many offerings. Meet the principals and teachers, with representatives from each grade level or department on hand to share curriculum resources and discuss best practices.
This is also a great opportunity for students who are transitioning to a new building next year to visit their future schools.
Enjoy student-led tours featuring leaders from Link Crew, WEB (Where Everyone Belongs), the National Honor Society, the National Junior Honor Society, and Leader in Me Lighthouse Teams.
Learn about electives such as world language, visual and performing arts, life skills/foods, TV production, drama, and innovation and design.
Discover extracurricular and enrichment opportunities, including sports, clubs and student service organizations.
For parents with young children, meet with Sara Meier, director of preschool services, at Barnes Early Childhood Center. Sara will be available to give tours, share information about the district’s preschool program, and answer questions. Learn about our Young Fives program, an alternative for eligible children whose parents feel they are not yet ready for a traditional kindergarten experience.
Lisa Dougherty, special education supervisor, also will be on hand at Barnes to answer parents’ questions about the evaluation process and the continuum of support available to students who qualify for special education services.
Classrooms will be open for visitors to see construction upgrades and special activities in action, like STEAM activities in the Makerspace on the third floor at Maire Elementary. Walk the hallways to see student artwork. Check out Richard Elementary’s new playground. Listen to string quartet performances at Grosse Pointe South and Brownell and Pierce Middle Schools. Watch Brownell’s drama club rehearse for their upcoming performance of “The Addams Family” in the multipurpose room.
Also open to the public as part of the district’s centennial are history exhibits at Grosse Pointe South. Visitors are welcome to visit the historic Cleminson Hall and tour the history hallway in the Boll Athletic Center, which features a timeline of when each school building was occupied.
“Every school will be open with a variety of fun events at each site,” said community relations specialist Rebecca Fannon. “This event is also a wonderful opportunity to see the investment of your bond dollars in each school to keep our students safe, warm, dry and connected. Ask students and staff questions — about the depth of our course offerings, our recent state and district championship sports teams, the amazing fine and performing arts, the hundreds of clubs and extracurricular offerings, and so much more.”
Look for balloons and signage to mark the preferred entrance at each school.
Meet the Pascoes
Vickie and Dennis Pascoe met while working as counselors at Camp O’Fun. Both were still in college, Dennis attending Wayne State University while Vickie studied voice performance at the University of Michigan.
Dennis had a girlfriend at the time.
“Vickie wouldn’t talk to me,” he said.
The next summer, he no longer had the girlfriend. Vicki had just returned from studying music abroad in Italy. They started talking, hit it off and “were pretty inseparable from then on,” Dennis said.
“It worked out,” Vickie agreed.
They likely crossed path earlier, as they overlapped one year at Brownell Middle School while Dennis was in eighth grade and Vickie was in sixth. She grew up in the Woods and attended Monteith, Brownell and Grosse Pointe North. Dennis lived in the City of Grosse Pointe and attended Richard, Brownell and Grosse Pointe South.
They married in 2006, a year after Vickie graduated. Her first job was in Warren Woods, where she taught for two years before she was hired to teach music at Defer Elementary. This is her 15th year in the district.
“I’ve been almost everywhere,” Vickie said. “I started at Defer for three years as my main building. I loved it there. I transferred to Monteith and I’ve been mostly at Monteith for 12 years.”
Vickie took over the music program at Monteith from her own mother, Paula DeCarlo, who retired after 31 years in the district, 27 at Monteith. Just as Vickie taught her two sons, Cole, 10, and Henry, 12, while they attended Monteith, Vickie had her own mother as her music teacher.
“Since I was born, Monteith has been like family to me and has always been our home,” she said.
Dennis, who played football at South, began coaching at South while still an undergraduate at Wayne. He remained with the team until 2005, when he got a teaching job at De La Salle Collegiate High School. After that he was hired to teach at North. When he got laid off, he worked downtown until he was called back to the district in 2010. He remained at South until 2018.
“When Joe Drouin took over as the head football coach at North, I went back there to coach,” Dennis said, adding he missed being with former colleagues like Kate Murray and Geoffrey Young, who had been teachers when he got his first teaching job there.
Another advantage of the move was his sons eventually would attend North, as the family lives in Grosse Pointe Woods.
“When Vickie got to teach the boys at Monteith, I was like, ‘Wait, this isn’t fair. I want to see my sons every day too.’ I went over to North and I’ve loved every minute of it.”
In addition to serving as the assistant head football coach at North, Dennis coaches JV baseball. While his sons may not end up in his English and social studies classrooms, they will likely end up with their dad as their coach at North. He has already coached them in Red Barons football and Woods-Shores Little League.
“They’ve had me coaching them since they were in T-ball,” Dennis said. “They’re used to it. I always ask them every year if they want me to coach them or not. I always get their feedback.”
Vickie ensures the boys are well rounded; Henry, a sixth grader, sings in the choir at Brownell and Cole, a fifth grader, is learning the trombone.
Both boys adjusted well to middle school, Vickie says, although the transition year for Henry “was so strange with all the COVID, it was hard to tell. But our son Cole has just loved it. I think it helps because his brother is there so he knew what to expect. He is really enjoying it.”
Both Vickie and Dennis feel lucky to work in the district.
“This is our dream job,” Vickie said. “We feel really fortunate that we both work in the district and get to work together.”
Alumni Through the Decades
Our 100th anniversary series on GPPSS alumni continues.
Charles Paul
Grosse Pointe South High School
Class of 2013
After a rigorous audition process beginning in May of 2021, Charles Paul became the newest member of the Cleveland Orchestra. The last time a bass player was hired by the Cleveland Orchestra was 10 years ago.
Charles had played an instrument of some kind since he was 8, beginning with wind instruments when he attended elementary school in New York City. When he was 10, his family moved to Grosse Pointe after his father was offered the position as the president and artistic director of Detroit Music Hall, where he remains today.
Charles began playing tuba and trombone at Pierce Middle School.
“I got really interested in playing electric bass when I was 11,” he said. “My dad plays guitar, so I wanted to jam with him. I was learning rock tunes in my parents’ basement for most of middle school.”
He also got into jazz and played with the Pierce jazz band. When he started high school, he wanted to join South’s jazz band, but there were already bass players, both seniors. The band director at the time, Dan White, suggested he learn the upright bass, putting him in touch with James Gross. Charles enrolled in the orchestra class his freshman year and “pretty instantly fell in love with it,” he said. “From then on it was all bass all the time.”
Charles took advantage of any and all opportunities to play bass through most of his high school career, including joining the jazz band and playing with the Blue Devil pep band. He recalls wheeling his bass on a cart to the bleachers, then carrying it up the stands and duct taping the cord so no one would trip on it. He also played with the pit band for choir productions.
“I did basically everything that I could,” he said. “I really just wanted to play bass all the time and do it with as many people as possible.”
Charles went on to study classical music at the Shepherd School of Music at Rice University in Houston, Texas. He attended for six years, earning both a B.A. and M.A. in music.
In June of 2019, after he graduated, he auditioned for the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra and was hired for the next season in September. He ended up beginning in February 2020 — right before the pandemic. He spent the next year and a half playing with fellow musicians and recording in the Joseph Meyerhoff Symphony Hall in Baltimore.
“While we very much missed our patrons and making music normally, it meant everything to me to make music with my friends,” he said.
When the opportunity came up in May of 2021 to audition for the Cleveland Orchestra, “I figured, why not?” Charles said. “It had been a couple of years since I auditioned. I had no idea what would happen; none of us do.”
He auditioned and was offered the position. He was “over the moon,” he said.
“You wake up in the morning one way, and you go to bed and your life is different.”
Charles remains grateful for the early influence of his former teacher at South.
“James Gross is one of the biggest reasons that I am playing music professionally today,” he said. “There can be no doubt. I’ve met all kinds of musicians and teachers over the last decade and in my travels as a professional musician, and I have really not yet been able to match the level of positivity and enthusiasm that James Gross brings to teaching music to students.
“I spoke with other teachers who met my desire to become a professional musician with some doubt,” he added. “Understandably, it’s a very hard career and very hard to be successful, but James Gross never doubted me for a second. I cannot say enough about how special of a teacher he is and how rare it is to see somebody who, no matter where a student comes from or what their attitude is or who they are, he approaches them with open arms and an open door. It is completely and totally inspiring.”
South boys’ soccer team wins regional championship
Grosse Pointe South boys’ soccer coach Francesco Cilano is proud of his players, who took on Edsel Ford on Oct. 21 in the Division 1, District 7 championship, winning 2-1.
“They wrote a beautiful piece of history for school and for our community that will always be remembered,” he said. “We are so grateful to have earned the chance to represent our community in the state semifinals as one of the Final Four teams in the MHSAA Division 1 Tournament. Although we wanted to win it all, we are so proud of our team for the great successes they had and how they represented our community in doing so.”
Coach Cilano and assistant varsity coach Max Canevari thank the parents, families, fans and community for their tremendous support, with a special shout-out to South Principal Moussa Hamka and Athletic Director and Assistant Principal Brandon Wheeler, along with everyone who helped behind the scenes.
“Finally, thank you to all of our seniors,” Cilano said. “The time we have spent together has been special. This would not have been possible without your work and leadership. It was an amazing journey we were all able to be a part of.”
More athletic successes for the record books
Creepy and kooky
Brownell presents The Addams Family Nov. 10-12
Fifty-five fifth through eighth grade students will take the stage next week at Brownell Middle School’s multipurpose room to bring the creepy, kooky Addams family to life.
“The Addams Family” musical is under the musical direction of Carolyn Gross. Tamera Duffield is the producer and Susan Dempsey is the director.
Performances are 7 p.m. on Wednesday, Nov. 10, Thursday, Nov. 11, and Friday, Nov. 12. Tickets, available on Brownell’s website, are $5 per student or child and $10 per adult.
School Pointes is a publication of the Grosse Pointe Public School System. To submit story ideas or Pointes of Pride, email info@gpschools.org.