February already! Wow...this year is flying by. Unfortunately according to Phil the groundhog, looks like we have another 6 weeks of winter in our future...but something tells me our students don't mind the thought of more winter fun in the snow. Ah, the days of youth when snow was ALWAYS a good thing! Not sure we can say that now as adults and that is likely OUR LOSS !
As per usual, I want to start this blog post off by sharing some images showing our students and our staff in their "elements" having fun while learning across our schools! Check it out!
Now on to the information and updates...
AN UPDATE ON OUR DIVERSITY, EQUITY, AND INCLUSION WORK AS A DISTRICT
A few months ago in my Dec. 3 blog post, I provided a quick update on the work of our Anti-Racism and Equity Committee. In this blog I wanted to provide an update to that post that I hope continues to demonstrate our district's commitment to this important work now and well into the future.
As a quick reminder, the Dec. 3 blog post included a link to a summary document outlining work accomplished thus far, which at that time went through September, 2021. You can review that document by CLICKING HERE. Since then, we have continued this important work in the following ways:
*. School Based D.E.I. leadership teams (or what we call our Intercultural Leadership Cohorts or ILC's) continue to meet at least monthly with leadership and facilitation provided by Maine Intercultural Communications Consultants. The major purpose of these school based groups is to build capacity and understanding for staff around issues of D.E.I. such that these staff members can then serve as respective resources in their schools and assist in driving the daily learning, understandings, and aligned activities of the school around this topic. Basically their job is to work to integrate these important conversations into the very fabric of each school's culture. No small task indeed, but great progress is being made!
* Phase II curriculum audit work continues in the area of social studies across grades K-12. This work digs more deeply into the content area of social studies in order to determine what strengths exist in our current curriculum and what areas may need to be strengthened in our curriculum using the lens of D.E.I. Most recently, we have engaged the consulting services of Lawrence Alexander to assist our curriculum committees in this important work. Our goal is to have a specific list of recommendations brought to the Teaching & Learning Committee for approval and hopeful implementation to begin in the Fall of 2022.
*. Just before the Holiday break significant work was done to purchase additional diverse children's literature across grades K-5 to be added to our school's libraries and classrooms for use by classroom teachers and our students. These books were selected by teachers to ensure we could strengthen the diverse themes and stories in our libraries. Emphasis was placed on ensuring the characters in these stories better reflected the diversity and experiences of our student populations across our schools.
*. We are working to expand our diversity hiring practices. We will be working with Lawerence Alexander to provide specific training to members of our district leadership teams on diverse hiring practices in March. We also hope to post an updated equity statement for our website, and place additional materials on our district website to highlight our commitment to diverse hiring practices, diverse recruitment and retention practices. Additionally, we are seeking to post positions in ways that encourage more diverse applicants moving forward. These are small steps that we hope will lead to bigger outcomes to strengthen our overall D.E.I. work.
*. We have recently engaged the services of Lawrence Alexander to assist us in the development of a specific training for students and staff across grades 6-12 on the topic of Micro-aggressions later this spring.
*. Our Anti-Racism and Equity Committee continue to meet on a regular basis to help steer this work and generate ideas for how best to move forward. You can follow this group's meetings by CLICKING HERE.
Please know this is NOT an all inclusive list of the things going on in our schools focused on the topic of Diversity, Equity and Inclusion. These are just highlights of the ongoing work of our district to meet the vision outlined in our district's policy, which states:
Please stay tuned...more great work is yet to come!
JOINT FACILITIES STUDY: GORHAM SCHOOLS & MUNICIPAL BUILDINGS
CLICK HERE to view the slide presentation.
Next steps in this important work are for the Joint facilities committees of the Town and the School Department to meet and begin to "dig in" to develop a prioritized list of capital projects over the next 10-15 years that we will work together to try and tackle. As always, if you have questions, just reach out and ask! heather.perry@gorhamschools.org
UPCOMING PUBLIC FORUMS
The Gorham Schools will be hosting a series of THREE open community forums to assist us in informing the development of our next 3-5 year Strategic Plan. You can view our old Strategic Plan by CLICKING HERE. This plan was created to move our district forward in meeting our Mission/Vision back in 2018 and is up for renewal. WE NEED YOUR VOICE to make sure we are moving our schools forward to best serve our children and our community as a whole.
Two of the three public forums will be virtual and one will be in person for folks that prefer that more personal touch. Each forum will last 1 hour and is open to all parents/guardians and Gorham community members. Dates and zoom links are below...WOULD LOVE TO SEE YOU THERE!
- Monday Feb. 7 at 6:30 p.m. (VIA ZOOM)
Join Zoom Meeting
https://networkmaine.zoom.us/j/87940389839?pwd=ZE00ZERFTHRFeThoT0RPSkZZUFNnUT09
Meeting ID: 879 4038 9839
Passcode: 085975
- Tuesday, Feb. 8 at 6:30 p.m. (VIA ZOOM)
Join Zoom Meeting
https://networkmaine.zoom.us/j/88623185288?pwd=ald5WjRUb1E4bTV3VUNSclYvVTBSUT09
Meeting ID: 886 2318 5288
Passcode: 340960
- Thursday, Feb. 10 at 6:30 p.m. (IN PERSON)
Location: Gorham High School, back of MPAC.
LEAD TESTING RESULTS
Maine Schools are now required to test their water for lead contamination on an annual basis regardless of where the water is sourced from. All of our schools are on town water, but as anyone knows, it isn't just about the water source with lead contamination, it can also be about pipes and fixtures. This is the intent of this new law, to ensure we are addressing all these possible areas of lead contamination in our water supply.
As a result, you will be getting a series of emails from me over the course of the next few weeks with the specific results of our lead testing across all five schools. In these notices, you will find the detailed lab test report, a summary of findings, and if specific mitigation strategies are required, an outline of what those specific mitigation strategies may be.
If you happen to miss an email, don't worry...you can ALWAYS go to our website and click on the link located right on the front page under "News & Announcements" to check out all information posted to date regarding each school's test results. You can also CLICK HERE to view.
Please know we take the safety of our water supply very seriously here in Gorham and if any concerns are detected, prompt action will be taken to mitigate and ensure our students are not exposed to lead in our water supply.
SNOW DAY PLANS REMINDER
Just a quick reminder of our overall plans for snow days this year in Gorham. We have five snow days built into our calendar. With those five days built in, we plan on the last student day of the year to be the 15th of June.
So far, including today, we have used three snow days, which gives us two more to use. We will continue to use snow days in a traditional manner until we use all five of our planned snow days. If we go over the five planned snow days, any further snow days will move from "traditional" snow days to "remote learning" snow days so that we do not extend the end of the school year beyond June 15th.
What does this mean? It means we have two more traditional snow days to use and then if we need to cancel school for inclement weather after that (which may or may not happen) we would move to remote learning days. Our hope is that this plan balances that we want our students to still experience the traditional snow day, while also making sure our summer vacations begin on time as we know many families make travel plans, etc. around our school calendar.
As always, any questions, please ask...and in the meantime - ENJOY YOUR SNOW DAY!
CONGRATULATIONS TO OUR VERY OWN STEPHANIE NICHOLS (Narr. Teacher)
Just wanted to share a quick congratulations to our very own Stephanie Nichols, teacher at Narragansett Elementary School, who was recently elected to serve as a Board member on the NATIONAL Social Studies Council! Check out the LINK HERE (scroll down just a bit)...and be sure to congratulate her if you see her around! A well deserved honor indeed! GO RAMS!
REMINDER - KINDERGARTEN ENROLLMENT INFORMATION NIGHTS ARE COMING RIGHT UP! MARK YOUR CALENDARS!
CLICK HERE for the flyer information with active links. Then mark your calendars for March 1 if you are a parent of an incoming K student for the 2022-23 school year! We can't wait to have you join the Gorham Schools Family!
AN INTERESTING ARTICLE TO SHARE
So I was talking to my Superintendent colleagues the other day across Cumberland County about staffing issues that we are currently facing. Gorham is not alone in facing these difficulties. Although in most cases we are fairing better than our neighbors - the challenge is still very much present and one that concerns me now and into the coming year's hiring cycles.
Just the other day I did a quick calculation and we have 41 teachers in our district who are eligible to retire THIS YEAR! Now, thankfully, not all of them will retire (WE LOVE OUR TEACHERS)...but the fact of the matter is that eventually they will, and we will need to fill these positions. In the past we'd often get 100-150 applications for classroom teaching positions. In the past few years, we were very happy to get 20-25 applicants. Couple the challenge of upcoming retirements with the current trend called "the Great Resignation"...and well - you can see why I was talking about staffing with my colleagues and trying to better understand what keeps folks in their positions, what helps to recruit new folks, and what prevents issues of burnout among our staff.
As I was scrolling around recent articles and blog posts on these topics, I came across this most interesting article written from the perspective of a military veteran sharing their thoughts on why employees might be leaving their positions - not just in education, but more broadly. I read the article and thought immediately to myself what a wonderful job this military veteran did in putting some real context into what may be going on in our employment lives as a result of the COVID 19 Pandemic. I certainly wrote my fair share of notes when reading this article, and I will take away some key thoughts for how this information can help our schools to continue to grow and thrive even in the fact of the ongoing Pandemic but what I also thought when I was reading this is that - many of YOU might also be interested in reading it.
Its a quick read - I promise...but worth the time. I have always so respected our military veterans, their thoughts, their opinions, and their strong character. This perspective really helped me to frame what I continue to hear from employees and employers as we all "come back from deployment"...Check it out!
IN CLOSING
As we continue to celebrate Black History Month, I thought I might share a poem from one of my all time favorite poets - Maya Angelou...
My next blog post will be on Feb. 18, right before the February break!
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