WOW! What a summer! What an awesome community! And what an incredible start to the 2023-24 School Year! Lots to share...so let me first share some opening of school pictures and then get right to the information part! We've been having so much fun opening schools - I had to make TWO sets of pictures and spotlight just a few with our new Pre K students!
And here are just a couple Pre K photos as well. Welcome to our youngest RAMS!
We are so Happy to have you join our family!
OK, so now on to the information!
A REMINDER TO COMPLETE FREE/REDUCED LUNCH FORMS!
Just wanted to start off with a quick reminder to please take a moment to complete free/reduced lunch forms. I realize this seems ridiculous because LUNCH IS FREE...but hear me out for a minute! There is a reason! The reason is that other funding streams that the school operates from depend upon these forms!
Did you know that our district lost just 1% of eligibility last year and that resulted in a loss of over $200,000.00 in state subsidy towards public education in Gorham?
So this information is used to help schools in ways that far exceed the free lunch program we currently have...
So when you get a minute, complete the form that was sent home with students in opening packets OR go ahead and just complete it online - even if you don't think you will qualify! It is 100% confidential! Link is below...THANK YOU IN ADVANCE!
Online Application Link:
SUPERINTENDENT'S GOALS FOR THE COMING 2023-24 SCHOOL YEAR
Each year I work with the Gorham School Committee to develop 5-6 goals for the year. These goals are based upon our Strategic Plan and many conversations with the Gorham School Committee that help me to identify the top priorities for work in the coming year.
Since these goals drive the work that I do, and since these goals then trickle down to become focus points for the whole district, I wanted to take some time to share them with you. They aren't anything horribly fancy, but they are definitely important and I think help provide to you a sense of what to expect for the coming year.
You can
CLICK HERE to view the full set of goals with narrative, action steps, timelines and measurements.
WILL NEED YOUR HELP - GORHAM CODE OF CONDUCT REFRESH
As you can see, one of the goals listed above that is part of our district's strategic plan is to revitalize the
Gorham Code of Conduct (goal #1 above). Now I want to be clear and up front that we have no intentions of "scrapping" the current code of conduct in favor of some new flashy language. Please know that is not the case. Our current code of conduct has been with us and a core part of our work here in Gorham for almost 20 years now! Can you believe it? Twenty years! Our schools use this code (often referred to by students and staff as "the code") each and every day. It is a powerful document and one we do not wish to lose or diminish in any way.
The goal of this work is to look at the code through a fresh set of eyes and to see if there are ways that we can make sure that this document lives on for another 20 years in our schools! Can we/should we update the language to reflect 2023 conditions in our schools and in our community? Can we/should we update what our code looks like in today's contexts? Can we/should we better define what each standard means? These are all questions we hope to answer through this process and we are going to need everyone's input to make sure that our code remains strong.
If anyone was around back when the code of conduct was first created, you know that it was created through a year long process that involved the entire community. This process was led by our Superintendent of Schools and our School Committee. A key person that led this work 20 years ago was a person you might all know, Jon Smith From Great Falls Construction. THANK YOU Jon, and let's keep thanking him because Jon has agreed to chair this new committee to work on refreshing our code! I will be meeting with Jon and our facilitator coming up next week to put the finishing touches on the plan for how we are going to do this work. Once this is complete we will be reaching out to involve community members in various ways, so please stay tuned...and if you see Jon, be sure to THANK him for being willing to help lead this important work once again for our schools!
WHAT TO EXPECT FOR COMMUNICATIONS FROM THE GORHAM SCHOOLS
With our schools being back in session, I wanted to take a moment to review with families overall expectations regarding communications. Whether you have been with us for many years or whether this is your first year, there is a lot of communication that is required to run a school system. So an overview never hurts! I thought I'd share a bit about what you should expect for communications coming from the schools and also what we can expect for communications coming from you.
We have an incredible school system here in Gorham and a large portion of what makes us such a strong school system is our strong partnerships with our families. We care about this partnership and a core part of that partnership is excellent communication!
How WE Share Information With You:
As a school system, we have "regular" communication systems we use to get information out to families. Those are:
- Superintendent's Blog Post (shared every other Friday with a few exceptions due to Holidays or breaks)
- Social Media Sites (district has FB, Twitter and Instagram, each school has at least one as well, sometimes more than one).
- Weekly Updates (K-5 uses Thursday folders, GMS posts daily announcements online, GHS sends out weekly email).
- School Messenger (this is used for general communications via email and/or text across the district and by each school. This system is also for emergency communications with phone, email, and text...more on that shortly).
- Individual emails and phone calls (if we need to touch base with you as a family, we know how to get you ☺! We will call if it is important, and if it is something that can wait we may email you as well).
- Regular mail (there are still some times when we may drop you a letter in the mail too, but that is less often in today's digital world. This is mostly used in special education).
- Student messenger (this is really just used PK-5, but parents at this age level should be sure to check those backpacks when students come home! That is often a method through which classroom teachers share information with you!
As a school system, we may also have times when we need to communicate with families in an emergency type of situation. First, it is important for you to know that if there is an emergency we will absolutely communicate with you about it in a timely manner. It is important to know this because if you ever hear rumors about something happening, and you haven't heard from the school directly it is probably good form to be a little suspicious and perhaps reach out with questions before assuming something is going on.
In a true emergency situation involving a single student, or small number of students we will communicate directly via phone and/or text with the families impacted. If we can't get ahold of the primary caregiver, we will move on down the list of emergency contacts until we can get in touch with someone you have listed. So please make sure to pay attention to those emergency contact forms when you fill them out to make sure they are accurate! Examples of these smaller emergencies would include a fall on the playground that may have resulted in injury or perhaps a student with an allergic reaction, or even a bus/van that has gone off the road. Bottom line - please know if there is an emergency involving your child you will know about it, because we will reach out to you (or someone on your emergency contact list) directly.
In a true emergency situation involving a larger number of students we will also communicate directly via our school messenger system using email and text if it is precautionary in measure. Or we might also communicate via email, text, and phone if it is a significant large scale emergency. An example of a precautionary measure might be that we place a school in lockout because a questionable person was spotted outside of a school or perhaps we have received a threat to a school and are working to determine its validity but we want families to know about it. Again, in those precautionary situations, we'll use just email and text. If a significant large scale emergency occurs, we would also use the phone in addition to the email and text.
The only circumstance where all three (phone, email, and text) are used to communicate that is not an immediate emergency is to call snow days. You can review snow day protocols by
CLICKING HERE, but generally speaking, a phone call, email and text will be sent by 5:30 in the morning for a full day cancellation or a late start. If we are looking to perhaps release students early due to inclement weather you will be notified via phone, email and text typically by 10:00 a.m.
How You Share Information With Us:
Your first and primary contact for all things related to your child is your school's office. We have folks manning the phones every school day who are happy to take your call, answer your questions, and provide you with the information you need as a parent/guardian. If you have an urgent need, this is the best place to start and our talented staff can direct you from there. You can find school phone numbers on our website linked above.
We also encourage families to reach out directly to your child's teachers if you have questions about what students are learning, how your student is performing or if you wish to share information related to your child's learning with them. Email is a convenient method for communication as is a phone call. Just keep in mind that teachers are with students all day long so they may not get a chance to respond during the day. Our goal is to try and respond to communications within 24 hours. This is a goal. There may be times when responses could take longer depending upon what teachers are juggling at any given time.
If you have any concerns or complaints, we do strongly encourage families to share these concerns or complaints at the lowest possible levels first and to then move up from there if needed. We know from years and years of experience that it is at these lowest levels that the best solutions to any problems are found. For example, if you have a concern regarding your child's math class we would encourage you to share that concern with your child's math teacher first to see what can be done at that level to alleviate your concern. If you have communicated with the math teacher and do not feel as though your concerns were addressed, you would then bring your concern to the assistant principal. Similarly if you have communicated your concerns with the assistant principal and still feel as though your concerns were not addressed, you would then bring your concern to the building principal, then to me as Superintendent and on to the School Committee if needed. Very rarely do concerns not get satisfactorily addressed at the lowest levels, but as a parent/guardian it is important to know that you have all these other people to go to if needed! We are here to support you. Bottom line, we all want the same thing - success for your child(ren) - and with that common goal and partnership we can work through most things TOGETHER to that ultimate end.
WANT TO VOLUNTEER? WE WOULD LOVE TO HAVE YOU! HERE'S HOW...
First of all, I want to take a moment to thank all of our families and community members for taking the time to volunteer to assist our schools! Your time means so much to our staff and students! We LOVE our volunteers! Here's the good news...there are lots of different ways to volunteer in our schools! Folks can sign up to volunteer to work directly with students under the supervision of the classroom teacher, or folks can volunteer to help teachers with classroom preparations or bulletin boards, or volunteers can chaperone field experiences, or a host of other possibilities! We can work with folks that want to volunteer daily or 2-3 times a week, or with those that just want to volunteer once in a while for specific things.
Interested? Well here's how to go about getting signed up...
First, go to our website at
www.gorhamschools.org and then click on "Human Resources". Once there you should see a tab that says "Volunteer Program". Click on that and it will bring you to our volunteer home page. Once there, just follow the prompts. The forms and everything are all linked. If you have questions, Kelly Reed is the coordinator and her email address is listed right there on that page as well. Generally speaking, once you fill out the form you will need to complete a quick training. Once that is done you will be placed on the approved volunteer list for that school. Teachers can then see your name and contact information and your area of interest in volunteering and reach out to you directly to set up opportunities. Its really that simple, so if you are interested and have a little time to spend - please feel free to sign up! Our schools are far better places because of our volunteers!
NEW CURRICULUM GUIDES READY TO VIEW!
As a means to help parents better understand what our curriculum is (and just as importantly sometimes, what it isn't) for all of our students across grades Pre K - 12, we have added a new section to our website that allows us to post what we call "curriculum guides". These guides are shared by grade level at the Pre K - 5 level and then by content area at the grades 6-12 levels. In the guides you will find useful information about our instructional philosophy, the specific standards and learning performance indicators used as the basis of our curriculum. In addition you can see core learning curriculum information, an overview of the units of study, information on assessments, and resources to help parents reinforce learning at home.
Please check out this incredible resource
BY CLICKING HERE and feel free to reach out with questions!
HEAT WAVES, STORM DAYS, REMOTE LEARNING DAYS, AND MORE!
Well if this past week has shown us nothing more, it has reminded us that the possibility always exists that we may have to consider changes to our school scheduled days based on whatever Maine's weather and other things may have in store for us! We wound up sticking it through this tough week with the heat (Thank you to all of our staff, students, and families for your parts in making that happen by the way), but at times we did strongly consider the possibilities of things like early release days or fully remote learning days. So I thought it might be a good idea to remind everyone of what tools we have at our disposal to deal with these types of unplanned schedule changes and what you can expect as parents/guardians in the event that we have to make some of these adjustments as we go throughout the year.
At this point, we have the following "tools" in our toolbox to address these kinds of issues:
- Late start days
- Early dismissal days
- School Cancelations (traditional)
- Remote Learning days
For each of these we would use the same procedures we use for "storm days" that are
OUTLINED HERE. For typical school cancelations we would notify parents by 5:30 a.m. in the morning using our school messenger system's phone message, email and text notifications. For a late start day we would use the same timing and notifications. For an early release or dismissal day we would typically notify families by 10:00 a.m. and dismissals would follow the same time lines as outlined for storm days.
Remote learning days could be called by individual schools based upon conditions in those schools, or we can also call a fully remote learning day for the whole district. If a remote learning day is being called for something OTHER THAN a snow day (get to that in a minute) we would try to give families as much forward notice as possible and at the very least let families know the night before a remote learning day is called.
In regards to remote learning days vs. traditional snow days, our philosphy is that we would use the five scheduled snow days we build into our school calendar each year first as traditional snow days, and not ask students to be online learning during those days. Once those five days are used, however, if we have to call school for inclement weather purposes we would move to utilization of a remote learning day so that we do not have to extend the school year into the summer. This allows us to be clear about our last day of school each year and make sure we don't have to move things like graduation due to a large number of snow days.
If we do have to move to remote learning for whatever reason (inclement weather or other), we would follow the same protocols we have regarding learning expectations for our students. Those are outlined below by grade level. We will of course share this information again if we have to use remote learning as a tool moving forward. I just want folks to know what to expect early on...as I'm sure you are like me and hate "surprises"! ☺
*. GHS Remote Learning Overview
*. GMS Remote Learning Overview
*. K-5 Remote Learning Overview
*. School Nutrition Expectations for Remote Learning Days
GORHAM SCHOOLS NAMED ONE OF THE BEST PLACES TO WORK IN MAINE, 2023
As part of our Strategic Plan, the Gorham School Committee has been focused on doing more to recruit new, and retain our already existing, excellent employees. One of the tools that we are using to do this is by participating in the Best Places to Work In Maine process. This process does require some money, but this expense is what pays for a comprehensive perceptions survey to be delivered to staff. This survey allows us to harness from their perspectives the things that are working well in our system and the areas where challenges may exist. The survey also has reports and recommendations for moving forward.
We entered into this process this year thinking that we would be very happy to just get the survey results. Well, after a comprehensive study of our policies, handbooks, and this survey we found out that we were designated as one of the actual best places to work in Maine. We are among 26 large employers designated by this process along side of incredible businesses like Bangor Savings Bank, Hussey Seating, and many more. As far as I can tell we are the first public school to receive such a designation.
This designation will now help us to recruit new high quality staff to join our teams. This in conjunction with the report will also allow us to work on retaining our already existing incredible staff. All around a great honor and a great investment in our school's future! We will find out in mid October how we faired against those 26 others when they announce the actual BEST place to work in Maine at that time. We are honored to just be on the list - but who knows what will happen then! Will keep you informed! While we wait - can I just say how proud I am to be a Gorham Ram! GO RAMS!
GHS STUDENTS LEARNING OUTDOORS & WITH LITTLE PARTNERS!
Just wanted to share this great video of some of our GHS students learning about math incorporating outdoor experiences and mentorships with our younger learners. This was filmed last spring, but the work continues! Check it out as a great example of what learning in our schools looks like!
https://vimeo.com/861451594/a81d557051
REMINDER FOOD TRUCKS STILL AT LITTLE FALLS THROUGH THE END OF SEPTEMBER!
I hope you've had the chance to check out this fun food truck experience right here in our back yard! If you haven't - there's still time! Check out the flyer for details!
THANK YOU TOWN OF GORHAM!
With the recent heat wave, I just wanted to take a moment to THANK our municipal partners! It was warm this past week in our schools without cooling systems (understatement I know). It was particularly warm for our GHS students who had classes on the 2nd floor of the building. When Principal Jandreau and I were brainstorming how to help improve learning conditions for our students during this time, our partners in the Town of Gorham stepped up immediately! Students went to the Municipal building for classes in the council chambers, they used conference room spaces at the municipal building, and they used classroom spaces. Then on top of that Baxter Library stepped up to assist as well by opening up some of their spaces to our students to go and cool down. This really meant a lot to our schools and especially to our students and families and it just points out what an incredible community we have here in Gorham! THANK YOU!
WELCOME BACK VIDEO
I know some of you may have already seen this video on our social media links, but I thought it was an awesome welcome back video that is worth sharing again. In closing this first blog, I just want people to know how very happy we all are to have our students back in our schools and to have our schools vibrant again with laughter, fun, and learning! We've certainly got a lot to accomplish this year - but we are up for the challenge and look forward to working TOGETHER as a full community to continue to support our students and to ensure that ALL students are "Prepared and Inspired" for their future success as they graduate from our schools!
Video Link:
https://vimeo.com/855587859/e084f13746
See you for my next blog scheduled for Sept. 22! GO RAMS!
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