We have staff that are worthy of the first Shout Outs of the year.
- Krissy McCoy and Lisa Cole have worked hard in setting up the Perley PreK food service for the year. Thank you for ensuring our littlest students have access to free breakfast and lunch.
- The launch of our Chromebooks went very well and our Tech Team said it would not have been possible without our MSHS Head Custodian, Lisa Spencer. Thank you Lisa for helping and supporting the initiative.
We had a student transition to a new school and Matt Osborn, Teacher, helped make sure the new school had what they needed to help our student be successful in their new environment. - Ted Schruender is appreciated for all he does for our students and for supporting his colleagues with the implementation of our new Student Information System, Aspen. Thank you for helping calm the nerves of our teachers!
- A huge shout out to Steve McDonald and Marc Fournier, our Technology Team. Not only have they managed the adoption of Aspen, the integration of all our curricula and digital platforms, they have trained staff, developed How-To Guides and helped minimize adult stress. Thank you for working tirelessly to ensure our staff has what they need so our students can thrive.
- As we know, different things are hard for different people. We have a senior who finds it extremely difficult to have pictures taken but wanting to have his senior year memorialized his family made a Facebook request for friends to help. Grace Parsons and other members of the Senior Class showed up and the picture taking event was a success! To all those who participated, thank you for your kindness!
Transportation: As always, the beginning of the school year is exciting with many things going well and with rough patches along the way for other things. For most, transportation has gone smoothly, for others it has been a bit bumpy. I appreciate everyone’s patience as we work through a few challenges as they arise. When there is an issue with a bus stop or timing of arrival/drop off it is important to know that Tracy Pigeon (Parker) works with our bus company NRT to address each situation. NRT sets the routes and bus stops. The pick up times are an estimate due to traffic, road conditions, etc. Please have your child at their bus stop 10 minutes prior to the
estimated time. Thank you for your continued cooperation.
Safety: Safety is our number one priority. We continue to work very closely with the Georgetown Police and Fire Departments. This summer we had multiple administrative meetings to discuss school safety, engaged in table top evacuation exercises and planned our drill schedule for the fall. All staff were trained on “I love U guys” procedures which includes Hold (shelter-in-place), Lock-down, and evacuation. We have shifted away from ALICE and adopted the “I love U Guys” language instead. There is very little difference in teacher and student actions in case of an emergency but “I love U guys” has a very robust and detailed reunification procedure which was lacking in ALICE. Here is the link to “I love U Guys” and a one-pager that you might find helpful. Most surrounding towns have also shifted to “I Love U Guys” and because our first responders respond to emergencies in our neighboring towns, consistency in language is important. Our Middle and High School students are receiving the I Love U Guys training this week during grade level meetings. Lastly, the fire department ran the first round of fire drills last week which reportedly went well!
Technology: The modernization of GPS is underway with Chromebooks, a new student information system, analytic dashboards, assessment platforms (Dibels & IReady) and multiple new curricula which have digital platforms. Understandably so, this can cause parents to stress and worry about unfettered access to the world wide web and social media. To help ease the worry I want to share that GPS adopted Go Guardian which helps foster a focused and safe learning environment by giving the teacher real-time visibility into students’ on-line activity. Teachers can view students’ screens remotely and alert school staff if students engage in harmful or dangerous behavior online. It also allows teachers to lock/limit websites or applications during class time. We piloted this last year with very positive feedback from teachers. GPS also utilized CISA’s resources to revamp our Google domain security policies, restricting students to educational material on their devices. One of these changes include forcing users to use Google safe search and Youtube restricted mode.
Communication: We continue to work on increasing communication within the school district and to the greater community. I am hoping our new website is helping with this. Please let your school administrators or me know if you have any suggestions for the site. I continue to meet with family and community members and am starting my school based drop in office hours this week. Whether you are a school employee, or community member, if you would like to schedule time to connect with me please reach out to Tracy Pigeon (parkert@georgetown.k12.ma.us) to make an appointment.