August 24, 2015
Dear Parents/Guardians,
It is with great anticipation and excitement that I welcome
you back for another great school year here within the Gorham Schools! The first day of school for students in
grades K, 6, and 9 will be Monday, August 31, 2015. The first day of school for all other
students will be on Tuesday, September 1, 2015.
Bus routes have been published in the Gorham Times. If for some reason you missed that posting,
you can find it by going to this link: http://www.gorhamtimes.com/pdfs/2015_pdf/08_13_15_web.pdf
and then just scroll down to page 8. I
would like to request patience and understanding for the first few weeks of
school as we iron out the details of our routes for another new year. If you have any questions regarding routes,
please contact Judy at the Transportation Office (893-2547).
All of our schools are excited to welcome you and your
children to another great year. As always,
there are lots of wonderful things happening at our schools! I would encourage you to check out each
school’s website to look for information regarding upcoming events in each
school. You can find each school’s
website by going to www.gorhamschools.org
and then clicking on the appropriate school’s tab. Speaking of our website reminds
me to share with you some exciting news!
The Gorham Schools will be working to overhaul our website to make it
more user-friendly and more easily kept up-to-date by our individual schools so
that parents are able to access more timely information more easily. Of course, this work has just begun and will
take some time, so once again, I ask your patience as we work to make a new and
upgraded website a reality over the coming year.
Once again, all of our schools have been busy planning some
initiatives that we hope will enhance your child’s educational experiences
within our schools. There are a lot of
exciting things going on, none more important than our continued work on
creating a Proficiency-Based Learning (PBL) System. Our focus for this year’s PBL work at each
grade level will be:
- K-5 will be piloting with
our teachers the tracking of student progress in ELA and Math performance
indicators using a new standards-based reporting software system called
JumpRope. Final student grades will
still be reported to parent/guardians using the traditional reporting
systems, but how teachers arrive at those final reported grades will be
tracked differently in ELA and Math.
Be sure to ask your child’s teacher about this as we move through
the school year if you have questions!
- K-5 will also be working
on writing performance indicators aligned to our K-12 Graduation Standards
for the content areas of Science and Social Studies. Additionally, teachers of PE, Art, and Music
will revise assessments as necessary to align to their already drafted
performance indicators.
- Work at the middle school
will focus on finalizing performance indicators in all content areas and
developing scoring criteria for each.
Additionally, we will be asking a very small group of teachers and
parents to pilot the use of JumpRope during the second semester. The specific team and content areas are
yet to be determined, but once they are we will be working closely with
parents to make sure those involved in the pilot know what it is all about.
- At GMS and GHS, work will
be conducted to review our systems of interventions and propose
adjustments and possible expansions of programs that might be necessary to
support students that are not demonstrating proficiency.
- Additionally, our middle
and high school staff will begin work to figure out how to emphasize the
importance of “skills for life” and to separate these skills from academic
proficiency in our reporting processes while still maintaining that level
of importance in our work.
- The high school will be
focused on improving assessment literacy among teachers and working
together to create summative assessments and rubrics aligned to
performance indicators for all core courses offered at GHS in all content
areas.
Additionally, a major focus area for the coming year will be
to work on community engagement with our PBL work to improve both an awareness
of what the work entails and why it is so important for our children, and
promote continued support for the work at all levels. Increased communication with parents will be
the focus, so please look for information in newsletters, discussions during
parent meetings, and opportunities to participate in committee work or public
forums, all aimed at bringing our critical partners – our parents – into the
conversation about PBL, especially what it will look like and mean for our
students both in the short term and in the long term.
Also on the theme of community engagement, I wanted to
remind all parents/guardians of our excellent volunteer program here in the
Gorham School System. The Gorham Schools
are well known for our robust volunteer programs where parents and community
members are encouraged to actively participate in the educational processes of
our schools in various ways. Each year
we welcome new volunteers into our classrooms and work to align the specific
skills of our volunteers with the needs of our students. In order to continue to keep this program
vibrant and strong, WE NEED YOU! In
order to make sure our students are safe, and that we are working to help meet
the needs of all children through our volunteer programs, we need you to
register. This registration process is
required for both short and longer-term commitments. All of our forms can be
found on the district website (www.gorhamschools.org). When parents/community members click on the
link it will take you to the Gorham Schools Volunteer Program website where the
process is outlined and the individual forms can be accessed. You may also
inquire at your school’s Principals’ office for more information.
In closing, I wanted to take a moment to inform you of an
upcoming referendum question that you will be seeing in November regarding our
schools seeking to bond with the town for an approximate $1.2 million capital
renovations request that would help to fund the following critical needs within
the Gorham Schools:
- GHS partial roof
replacement and restoration;
- Village School partial roof
replacement and restoration;
- Assorted mechanical system
equipment replacement; and
- Interior locks and access
control work at GHS and GMS to improve safety and security.
As the November referendum draws closer, more detailed
information will be going out to the public to help inform you of the specific reasons
this request.
In closing, I would just like to say how excited I am to be
starting off my first school year here in Gorham as your Superintendent of
Schools. The focus of my first several
months will be on listening and learning about the Gorham Community and its
great school system, including its relative strengths and needs, and then using
that information to help inform my leadership goals for the coming year and
beyond. My goal is to conduct at least
120 personal interviews with the various school administrators and staff,
parents, community members, and students by the end of September. So far, I have conducted 101 different
interviews and have met so many caring, compassionate, energetic, and
enthusiastic people that it is clear to me why the community of Gorham has the
positive reputation across this state that it does! I am already beaming with pride at being a
Gorham Ram and am ready to roll up my sleeves to continue the great work!
Thank you,
Heather J. Perry,
Superintendent of Schools
