Yorkville School District planning district, community-wide fall spirit week for October

YORKVILLE – Yorkville School District 115 officials are planning a spirit week for next month intended to unify the district and community during a time when students are not able to come together as they have in the past.

Kristine Liptrot, communications director for the district, said during the Monday, Sept. 14 Board of Education committee of the whole meeting that the planning for the spirit week, which is scheduled from Oct. 5 through Oct. 8, began over the summer. She said the initiative is joined by parent-teacher organizations, booster clubs, district families, district administration, alumni, the Yorkville Area Chamber of Commerce and local businesses.

“So this is a truly community wide celebration that we are putting together,” Liptrot said.

Liptrot said the spirit week is set to include PTO and student council spirit wear sales, students developing virtual backgrounds for Zoom meetings and potential community outreach with awareness campaigns for different causes. She said PTO and booster club member also felt it was important to include a restaurant week along with the spirit week, like encouraging people to visit different businesses through scavenger hunts and student council members decorating business windows.

“They have expressed how much the local community and the restaurants have given to them over the years – whether it be fundraisers, restaurant nights, rewards for classrooms – that they really felt it was important to give back to our local businesses,” Liptrot said.

Liptrot said the spirit week is still in planning phases. She told school board members there will be more information to come.

“But we’re very excited with how it’s working out and all of the people who want to get involved and who are excited about this going forward,” Liptrot said.

Liptrot said the events involving restaurant visits wouldn’t be encouraging people to actually go into the restaurant, necessarily. Since some local businesses typically do fundraising nights for school PTOs, she said, the restaurant week tie-in is meant to promote a list of businesses who have always supported the district and to ask the community to support them in return – whether that's through a drive-thru or going into the business.

Liptrot said the business scavenger hunt, for example, would include businesses who want to be promoted to provide district a few clues about their business. She said the thought was for each of those businesses to have a fox in their windows so people can go to the business, take a photo of the fox in the window and submit those photos.

“We’re not promoting large groups of people inside any specific building,” Liptrot said.

District 115 Superintendent Tim Shimp said he believes this district- and community-wide week-long event is the first of its kind the district has held.

"Knowing that the traditional homecoming is going to be nonexistent in October or this fall like it typically is, I think [it's important], trying to do something still to connect the community and to get all aspects of our community involved in a week of spirit," Shimp said.