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Greetings Everyone,
I hope things are going well for you and you are looking forward to the weekend. Please remember that school will not be in session on Monday, May 27, in observance of Memorial Day. It has been a busy few weeks with lots of events going on as well as a school board meeting on Wednesday night. Here are a few updates for you:
Thank you Taxpayers
Thank you again for your support during the budget process. We are very pleased that our proposed 2024-2025 school budget passed with 82% yes votes and our proposed capital project passed with 88% yes votes.. Your support is greatly appreciated.
Congratulations to returning board members Glenn LaPolt and Jason Clark, and to newly elected board members Olivia Treubig and Justin Seweryn.
Please consider offering an activity for our new continuing education program
The school board has endorsed the plan put forward by the district wellness committee to have a continuing education program, open to adults and students, next school year. We are currently looking for individuals who are interested in sharing their knowledge and talents, or in supervising activities. Anyone can make a proposal by going to this google form, propose a continuing education program. Presenters will need to specify the name of their program, a description of the program, the type of facilities they will need, the cost (if any) to the participants, age requirements for participants, and maximum number of participants. If you have questions about anything related to this program before or after you submit a proposal, please contact me. We hope to have all proposals submitted and considered by June 30th so that we can create a course catalog for the public and students by August 1st and then start offerings by September.
New PPS Director Approved at the School Board Meeting
I am happy to announce that at Wednesday night’s school board meeting the board appointed Mellisa Thomas as our next Director of Pupil Personnel Services. Ms. Thomas was selected from a very strong pool of candidates and she will succeed retiring PPS Director Kathleen Coughlin.
Ms. Thomas currently serves as the Assistant Principal at the Wappingers Junior High School. Before that she served as an Assistant Director of Special Education for the Wappingers Central School District and as a Supervisor of Special Education at the Beacon City School District. Ms. Thomas also has significant teaching experience as she worked as a Special Education Social Studies Teacher for seven years at the Dutchess County BOCES Alternative High School in Poughkeepsie.
Our District is fortunate to have Ms. Thomas joining us. She will be a great addition to our team. Her first official day will be July 1, 2024.
Congratulations to our Art and Music Departments
I am hopeful that you got to see some of the outstanding art shows and musical performances that have been going on lately at our schools. Our art and music programs are truly impressive. You can see samples of their work on facebook and instagram, but if these social media platforms are not your thing, you can check out a few videos here:
High School Select Contemporary Band
Please make plans to attend the upcoming Lenape Art Show on June 13 from 6 pm to 8 pm and the Middle School Arts Festival which will take place on June 4th from 6-7:30 pm.
Superintendent visits Finland
In April I had the opportunity to join a group of area educators on an educational visit to schools in Finland. While there, we visited several Finnish Schools from all levels and we met with educational officials from the country with the goal of learning about why Finnish students tend to be very successful on standardized exams.
My immediate take away from my visit is that the Finnish education system is not better than the American education system or the work that we do here at NPCSD. However, there are definitely things we can learn from this and other countries.
At some point soon I will be sharing my educational takeaways from my experience with the school board and the community. However, I have already shared some of my cultural experiences and observations with the community via facebook and instagram. If you are interested in seeing short videos on the differences between America and Finland, you can check them out here.
Nature and Wildlife in Finland
Searching for Sports in Finland
I make no claims that these videos are particularly educational, but perhaps you and your children will find them interesting. More videos about education in Finland will be coming as soon as I find time to make them.
Visit from our Sister City in Japan
Our friends from Niimi Japan recently visited New Paltz Middle School and High School where they met with students and administrators, and toured the buildings. They even saw the Niimi friendship tree, which is thriving in the courtyard. Representatives included the mayor, the superintendent of schools, and professors from Niimi University.
While they were here, the Superintendent of the Niimi schools enthusiastically invited us to bring some of our students to visit their school in Japan. Apparently, we have brought students to Niimi on two different occasions during the 25 year relationship between our schools. Students from Niimi have visited us five times.
At the board meeting on Wednesday, I asked the board if they would be supportive of us pursuing the idea of bringing a small number of students on a trip to Niimi. The board was enthusiastic about the idea, so we will begin looking into the possibility.
Student Attendance
As you may know, one of our district goals for this year was to improve student attendance. I am pleased that we have made significant progress toward this goal. I want to thank parents and students for taking the 20 day policy seriously and for doing your best to have students in school as often as possible and for providing accurate documentation when they are not in school.
As we approach the end of the school year, building administrators will be having final attendance discussions with parents and students in the cases where the 20 day limit has been exceeded. At these discussions, extenuating circumstances for absences will be discussed. In some cases, ways to make up missed time will also be discussed. Thank you in advance for your participation in these conversations. Progress toward this goal is very important.
Changes to Morning Arrival Procedures and Student Lateness
As you might be aware, we have updated some of our morning procedures in the buildings, especially in the MS and HS. These changes are partially due to a general tightening of security, but in the MS and HS it is also part of an effort to address chronic lateness.
I would like to thank all of the parents and students who have helped us out with the changes. We apologize for any inconvenience this may have caused, and I hope you agree that these changes have been valuable.
Changes have been most apparent in the MS and HS where buses are coming a bit earlier and new attention is being paid to having students come on time. We have made progress, but unfortunately, we still have lots of high school students who are not coming to school in time to get to their first period classes by 8:00 am. Detentions have been handed out to those with frequent lateness, but many still come late.
In order to further address this problem, I want to personally ask the high school parents (of course this applies to all district parents) to help us out. We really need you to support our efforts to get all of our students to class on time so that all classes can start promptly at 8:00 am and so that school safety is improved by having the doors unsecured for shorter periods of time.
Parents, please talk with your children about the importance of being on time. We realize that this is a change for some students, but it is important that we get them following the right habits now so that we can hit the ground running in the fall with students consistently arriving on time.
If your child is having trouble getting to school on time, please encourage them to take the bus. I know this is not a popular option for those students who drive to school, but I guarantee that the bus will get them safely to school on time and save a few dollars on gas.
Thank you in advance for your help with this. It is important and we can’t do it without parent support.
Student ID Cards
In a recent safety update, I told you that all students in MS and HS will be provided with ID cards that they must be prepared to show to any faculty or staff members who ask to see them while entering the school or while on school premises. Similarly, parents of Duzine or Lenape students will also be provided with student ID cards that they will need to be able to produce when picking up their child. In both cases, photos of the ID card will be considered to be adequate proof as long as they are clear photos.
I want to let you know that this plan has not changed, but it has been postponed. It does take some time to get all of these ID cards printed out. We have decided that we can’t realistically get cards for all students before the end of the year and we fear they would lose them over the summer.
Therefore, we will be working on creating all of these cards during this summer so that we can hand them out to students and parents in September.
Parking Updates
As with the student ID cards, we are now working on getting employee parking permits for the cars of all of our employees. High School students who drive to school are already required to have permits on their cars and they are not allowed to park on campus without them.
As part of our increased focus on safety, parking on campus will be different next year as any cars without a permit will be subject to towing and/or loss of driving privileges. This means we will have to have clearly defined parking spots for visitors to our school.
Parents and High School students, please make sure you have your permits on your car this year as it will be an important practice for next year.
Progress Toward Improved Safety
It is important that parents, students, faculty and staff know that our focus on safety has not decreased since we put out our safety practices in place a few weeks ago. In addition to the changes I mentioned above, we continue to work on many other items.
Recently, we upgraded all of the walkie talkies in the buildings to improve communication in an emergency. We have placed sensors on all exterior doors that will notify the appropriate people if a door is propped open. These alarms are very new and are not actually turned on yet. We plan to make them go live in the high school next week and work out the kinks before we go on to the other buildings. Work is being done to identify the best locations for new security cameras and to get them put in place. District employees have been provided or are being provided with codes that will allow them to initiate a building wide lock-down if a threat is perceived in the building. Employees will also have a code that will allow them to make a call on the school wide intercom system in the case of an emergency.
The District Safety committee continues to meet monthly as they look at ways to improve security and to provide additional training on security for all employees. They also continue to review and update all building level safety plans.
The school board has discussed the possibility of having security personnel in the buildings in the future. They are currently looking at information about how security is provided in other districts. More conversation will occur on this topic.
This is just a quick glimpse of what we are doing to improve safety. There is much more work to be done. For a more complete list of the safety practices we are working on, please check out this previous community update. Safety Practices.
The end of the year is coming quickly - June 7 emergency give back day
I won’t attempt to highlight all of the exciting end of the year activities we have coming up that will culminate in graduation on June 26th at 7 pm. The best way to learn about these activities is to check out our webpage page, facebook page, and instagram account. However, I do want to make sure you have one date circled on your calendar. June 7th will be our final emergency give back day. There will be no school for students on June 7th unless some unforeseen circumstances occur between now and then that require an emergency school closure.
Thank you for reading this update. As always, if you have questions or concerns you may reach out to me or to your building Principal for more information.
Enjoy your weekend,
Stephen Gratto - Superintendent
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