A Letter from Dr. Ben Derges, Superintendent

Welcome to the inaugural issue of Viking Voyage. This magazine exists for a simple reason: the stories happening inside Tri-Valley schools belong to the entire community — not just to the families with children in our buildings. Whether you’re a parent, a grandparent, a business owner, a longtime resident, or someone who moved here because you’d heard this was a special place, these stories are yours too. If you’re a property owner in this district, you’re invested in what we do. You deserve to see the return.

So what does that return look like?

It looks like a third grader engineering a compound machine to rescue a tiger from a zoo pit — and discovering, at eight years old, that her first design won’t survive contact with reality. It looks like a junior who noticed her school didn’t have a healthcare club, so she built one from scratch and watched fifty classmates show up. It looks like a retired police officer who chose to stay embedded in our hallways because his heart is here, and a husband-and-wife PE team whose freshman mentoring program has been quietly shaping school culture for nearly two decades.

It looks like a fifth grader dissecting owl pellets with bare hands because his football hands wouldn’t fit the gloves. A fourth grader with a novel unfolding in her head that she’s never told anyone about. A cross-country runner whose team missed state by a single point and talked about the team before himself. A junior who walked into an agriculture class because she didn’t want to take art — and became Section 9 FFA President. And a junior whose bajillion friends span every lunch table in the building, who rips off purple wigs in rehearsal for M&M’s, and who reminds us all that belonging isn’t something you wait for — it’s something you build by showing up as yourself.

It looks like a Class of 2005 graduate who came back to hand the first twenty copies of a book he’s been working on for twenty years to the students in the building where his fifth-grade teacher first encouraged him to explore.

And it looks like a village of 189 people getting ready to host its 155th annual Labor Day celebration — because showing up for each other is what communities like ours do.

This is Tri-Valley. These are your schools. These are your neighbors’ kids, your neighbors’ teachers, your neighbors’ stories.

We’re building something here — not just facilities and programs, but a community that believes its best days are still ahead. I hope this magazine helps you see what we see every day.

Welcome to Viking Voyage. We’re glad you’re here.