What a week! A recent full moon, time changes, snow storms, snow days, power outages, early releases and P/T conferences. And through it all, we keep focused on our student's learning here in the Gorham Schools! Check out these photos from the past two weeks to see what I mean!
Plenty to share this week, so will get right to it!
FY 24 GORHAM SCHOOL BUDGET DEVELOPMENT PROCESS UPDATE
As I said I would, I'm going to devote a section of my blog post each time to budget updates so that folks can follow along as we go and/or so that folks can go back and reference this information if wanting to learn more later on as we work our way through the process.At this point, the Gorham School Committee has been presented with the initial draft proposed FY 24 budget (Feb. 8, 2023) and they have had two full workshop meetings on the proposed budget (3/7 and 3/14). You can view all information presented thus far by going to our website linked below:
Website Link:
https://www.gorhamschools.org/apps/pages/index.jsp?uREC_ID=456522&type=d&pREC_ID=1150991
To this point in the process the first meeting was spent providing a significant amount of background information to the School Committee. The second meeting was spent talking about big picture ideas and philosophies to make sure the remaining work is grounded in what we believe to be in the best interest of students. Our second meeting was cut a little short due to power outages but we got a lot accomplished for sure.
Our next SC budget workshop meeting will be Tuesday, March 21 at 7:00 p.m. and will be held at the Municipal Building in the second floor conference room. We will also record this meeting and share it with the public as soon as is possible after the meeting is done. At this meeting, the intention is to work with the SC to set a mil rate impact target, share the results of the most recent Thought Exchange and then to dive deeply into potential cost reduction measures. That cost reduction conversation will likely continue strongly into the March 28 and April 4 scheduled budget workshop meetings as well. All of which leads up to the School Committee's vote on a proposed budget scheduled for April 12, 2023 at their regular meeting beginning at 7:00 p.m.
If you want to learn more about the process thus far, please check out that link above. There is A LOT of great information there! Still have budget development questions? Please reach out to me at heather.perry@gorhamschools.org. and ask away. I'm happy to answer direct questions and far prefer addressing those than the social media "rumor mill" that can sometimes go a little astray. Thanks!
RESOURCES TO HELP PARENTS TALK TO CHILDREN ABOUT MENTAL HEALTH
March in Maine is a really long month, challenging even the most optimistic of sorts (such as me) to remain optimistic! Its that time of year when you know spring is almost here, but it just isn't yet...and the long winter days just seem to get longer!
Recently the Gorham Schools has been working to bring in a nationally known speaker and performer to work with our students, staff, and families on the topic of Mental Health. Things are looking good to get this person into our schools in October of 2023 as part of Mental Health Awareness Month, but as with any good training or professional development - it's not just about the individual. It is about the resources and materials shared with students, staff and families leading up to the event and after the event that contextualizes the learning in a way that ensures it is not just a "one and done" thing. If there is something we all know about the topic of mental health, especially after the Pandemic, there is NOTHING that is "one and done" when it comes to working to meet the increasing mental health needs of our children.
One organization that we are working with on this important topic is the Cook Center for Human Connection. This is a nationally known and recognized foundation whose mission is to bring together the best organizations, programs and products to prevent suicide, provide mental health support, and enhance human connections essential for people to thrive. One of their focus areas is on providing specific resources for families. This leads me to the information and resources I wanted to share with all of you today via my blog today.
As part of the FREE resources this organization offers, they provide a specific cadre of resources for PARENTS via their website parentguidance.org. ParentGuidance.org is an online service by licensed therapists that provides trusted and
specialized courses, professional support and a safe community for parents to learn how to
support their children and get answers to mental health questions. The courses are all online and asynchronous so that they can be viewed at any time. I will be adding a direct link to these resources from the front page of our district website.
I would encourage families to click on the links above and do your own research before perhaps sitting down and viewing some of the courses offered. As is always the case, these resources may work well for some, and not so well for others. My only hope in sharing these with you is that at least some of you find value in these resources. If there is one thing I do know it is that the mental health needs of our children is paramount to us all. If you do participate in any of the courses, I'd love to hear your feedback!
In addition to this new national resource, I also wanted to make sure families were aware of another resource on the topic of mental health, more specifically on suicide prevention and this resource is much closer to home!
Community Action 4 Mental Health is a new local nonprofit with very local roots. One of the leading team members and board president is our very own Kristin Tugman, PhD who lives right here in Gorham. Their mission is dedicated to raising awareness, reducing stigma, and improving access to mental health care. They are just getting up and fully running so I am sure they would love to have folks reach out with questions. You can view their website by CLICKING HERE. 
Finally, I wanted to remind folks of some great resources provided through the Maine Department of Education. These resources were created by the MDOE during the pandemic, but they have been kept up to date and remain a great place for parents to go and search by grade level or content for resources you can use with your children to talk about a wide range of topics from helping children to deal with issues of confidence to issues of body image to issues of suicide prevention and lots more. If you haven't already logged in as a parent to check out these free resources - I would encourage you to do so! It only takes a minute to set up an account! Here's the link: https://sel4me.maine.gov/loggedout#sign_in
WEEK OF THE YOUNG CHILD IS COMING
APRIL 1 - APRIL 7!
The Week of the Young Child is a national event promoting the importance of high-quality early learning sponsored by the National Association for the Education of Young Children (NAEYC). It celebrates children from Pre K to grade 3 and their unique needs as the little learning "sponges" that they are! This year the Maine Department of Education, Maine’s local NAEYC affiliate, Maine AEYC, are teaming up with local school systems such as ours to support early childhood educators across the state to join the celebration and promote the vital work they do every day in their early childhood programs and Pre-K through third grade classrooms.
The event takes place the Week of April 1st – 7th with a Kickoff on Saturday and interdisciplinary daily themes for the following week! We'd love for families to join in as well! Here are the Monday - Friday themes...
Music Monday:
Tasty Tuesday:
Work Together Wednesday:
Artsy Thursday:
Family Friday:
I can't wait to see what kinds of creative things folks come up with to do with their early learners in alignment with those themes! We hope that you will join us in celebrating the Week of the Young Child! Today more than ever we need to help our communities understand the importance and value of quality early care and learning.
To spread the word and highlight the critical role that early childhood educators play, please share photos through social media to show how you celebrate the Week of the Young Child. Be sure to use the hashtags: #WOYCMaine and #WOYC23.
5 SNOW DAYS HAVE BEEN USED - WHAT IS NEXT???
Just a reminder that our plan has been to utilize the existing 5 "traditional" snow days in our calendar and to then consider use of remote learning snow days from there so that we are not having to extend the last day of school into the summer.
Well, I didn't want it to happen, but we have used all five of our snow days at this point. I would like to think that Maine's winter is done with us, but I've lived in Maine all my life and I know it would be a mistake to think that so early yet in the month of March!
So what is next?
What is next is that we will continue to keep a close eye on the weather and as we see a potential storm approaching, we will prepare for the possibility of a remote learning snow day. If we see that possibility, we would send lunches home with students whose families ordered them earlier this year on the day before the storm. We would also make sure student learning packets were sent home and that all google classroom materials and assignments were up to date to support student's remote learning during a remote learning snow day. Teachers would be sure to make clear to students and families what the learning expectations are for their remote learning days as well so additional communication would be provided.
With any luck, we won't have to use one...but if we do we will. By doing this, we will ensure that our last student day of the school year will remain June 16 and that we will not go beyond that.
The good news is - we now know our last day of school will be June 16! Seniors can all be happy we used the maximum number of snow days allowed! Yes - seniors - I expect some sort of a gift or acknowledgement at graduation for that one! ☺
Please reach out with any questions you may have...and know that if we have another storm that requires us to cancel school...we will be learning remotely on that day!
WE ARE ALL "BETTER TOGETHER" IN THE GORHAM SCHOOLS
As we wrap up a week of Parent/Teacher Conferences, I hope that families had an opportunity to meaningfully interact with your children's teachers. This is such an incredible time of the year when we can celebrate the great success of our children and their growth as learners. Not everyone makes that growth at the same time, but growth is ALWAYS evident in every child by the time we get to spring conferences and I hope parents walked away with a sense of that growth for your children and a sense of pride in the work they have accomplished as learners.
In Gorham, we truly do believe that parents and families are our partners in education. We share a common goal of "Preparing and Inspiring" ALL our students for their future success! Do we fall short sometimes? Yes, none of us is perfect. But do we constantly strive to ensure our families and community members feel a full part of our incredible schools - AND - that our schools feel a full part of our incredible community? Oh the answer there is a resounding YES!
As some of our neighboring states move towards implementing additional laws regarding things like Parents Bill of Rights, I feel it is important for our families to know we already care tremendously about you and want you to reach out to us directly with concerns you may have. We also already have some pretty big and far reaching laws in place to protect parent's and student's rights that I'm not sure all families know and understand. I wanted to take just a moment to review TWO of those key laws: the Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act (F.E.R.P.A.) and the Protection of Pupil Rights Act (P.P.R.A). Here's a little about each:
F.E.R.P.A.:
F.E.R.P.A. stands for the Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act and it is a federal law that has governed the issue of confidentiality and privacy of information in schools since the mid 1970's. I know this isn't usually the case, but the best summary of the law I could find actually comes from the U.S. Department of Education website LINKED HERE. On this site you'll find a complete overview with links to FAQ's and other resources.
But for the "cliff notes" version...what this law does is ensure that student information in all its various forms (even in today's digital world), is kept confidential. It also ensures that parents have the right to view their student's records, to inspect them, and to request that information they feel to be inaccurate be corrected via a specific process. It requires that schools post this information and parent's FERPA rights in a visible area. In Gorham, we have this information on our website LINKED HERE. P.P.R.A.:
In the 1980's a companion law was passed known as P.P.R.A. This stands for Protection of Pupil Rights Act. Folks can find an overview of this law also created by the Department of Education by CLICKING HERE...but generally this law ensured that as software programs, testing programs, and digital surveys were becoming more widely used - that student information privacy extended into these more digital areas as well and that parents had clear rights to opt students out of participation in some of these areas.
A very simplified way of distinguishing between these two laws is to understand that basically FERPA protects information that the school district already has about a student and PPRA protects information that the district does not have, but might otherwise obtain from students that is private in nature.
Of course, both laws are far more complex than these summaries can provide - but I wanted to provide parents with this information and resource links as discussions at the federal and state level talk more and more about parental rights when it comes to their child's public education. As a starting point, it is important for parents to know what rights you already have and understand how to utilize them when and if you feel the need. I'd encourage you to click around on those links to learn more and to please reach out with questions if you have them.
In Gorham, we know what the research tells us. Students succeed when schools work to connect to the larger community and when their families are active parts of that school community. Our students are "out there" whether it be through Aspire programs like internships co-op experiences, or our "X" learning series or whether it be through community service projects by our student clubs and organizations or our littles partnering with Gorham House and others to visit seniors, or when our littles visit our public safety and municipal buildings or when our GMS alternative education program grows food in their garden to donate to the Gorham Food Pantry and ...well I hope you get my point!☺
Additionally, our families are active members of our schools via our Partners In Education (P.I.E.) groups, or through our vibrant volunteer programs. We work hard to communicate effectively with our families via weekly updates, social media, our website school based family nights and more. We seek feedback from families via Thought Exchange, other surveys, public forums, listening tours, and more. We share what students are learning in our classrooms, we share how our grading practices work, and we share our policies and procedures for how families can express any concerns they may have with our curriculum via our policies published on our website. We transparently share our governing conversations by streaming/recording School Committee meetings, posting agendas and minutes of all meetings, sharing our budget development processes, all also on our website. I've actually gotten feedback in the past that perhaps we share too much information and it is hard to keep up.
I'm not sharing this to "brag" - although I could do that all day long about the Gorham Schools as well!
I'm sharing this because I feel it is important for our families to feel a part of our schools and for our schools to feel a part of our community and I know that goal is shared by our School Committee and by our entire staff.
It is this kind of "village" that most benefits our children's learning experiences and this is something we constantly strive for in our schools. If we are somehow "missing the mark" for a large group of our families, I want to know about it and would encourage families to reach out to me directly or to reach out to your school admin. directly to let us know what realistic ideas you have that would help us to improve in these areas.
Folks on all sides of the political spectrum can argue about what new laws and regulations need to be passed and for what reasons impacting our schools. I leave that to our elected officials to eventually decide. As a public school leader, what I believe we all need right now is more community, more dialogue and positive relationship building and I want to empower all of you as Gorham families and community members to reach out to establish that important dialogue and we'll do our best to do the same!
GETTING INTO THE BUSY SPRING!
It is hard to believe that in just a few more weeks we will be entering the month of April! It won't be long and we'll be seeing that green grass, we'll blink and we'll be at the April break, and then - well then the rest of the school year will be a BLUR of all kinds of fun and exciting activities! Graduations, year end projects, internship experiences, finals, grade level transitions, athletic and theater/music productions and so much more! I mention this only to say that the best way to follow all the action is on our website! District level activities can be seen on the front page calendar...but you can also click on each school and see each school's activities on their calendars. You can also follow our district and school based social media pages for all the exciting events and activities.
So as we get geared up to hit this most exciting time of the year - be sure to follow the action there!
ASPIRE GORHAM MARCH NEWSLETTER
Aspire Gorham's March newsletter is ready to view. CLICK HERE to read about our recent Math X events, to read our most recent student spotlight and to follow all the other incredible work going on in our Aspire programs! G.A.T.Y OFFERS FREE NARCAN TRAINING IN COLLABORATION WITH PORTLAND PUBLIC HEALTH
Gorham Action Team For Youth (GATY) is hosting a FREE event in collaboration with Portland Public Health on March 21st. The event/training will focus on harm reduction, substance use resources, and then also cover Narcan administration. Those 18 and over will be given a free Narcan spray should they encounter an overdose in our communities. Interested in learning more...see the flyer details below:
GHS INTERACT CLUB HOSTING ANIMAL REFUGE DONATION DRIVE!
The GHS Interact will be hosting an ANIMAL REFUGE LEAGUE DONATION DRIVE on SATURDAY, APRIL 8th from 10:00-12:00PM at the Gorham High School gym parking lot. We are collecting the following items for the ARLGP. Please bring your furry friends with you so we can treat them to a PUP CUP!!!! See flyer below for more details!
RESCHEDULED "EAT AND LEARN EVENT" DATE ANNOUNCED!
Please see flyers below for more details, but the Eat and Learn Event has been rescheduled to Tuesday March 28 at 5:00 p.m. at GHS. Same agenda as was originally planned! Child care will be provided! Remember to RSVP on the eventbrite link provided!
Well that is enough information for this blog! My next one is scheduled for March 31st! See ya then and as always, please reach out with any comments/questions! Have a great weekend everyone!
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