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Good afternoon, RJ Grey Families:
I hope you are doing well and adjusting to the routines that come with a new school year. We continue to enjoy working with your kids every day. They bring great energy and a general level of respect for their peers, teachers, and school. We are off to a good start!
I am sure most of you are aware of another tragic incident of school violence yesterday in Georgia. I read briefly about the incident on my phone while at school yesterday and felt an immediate sense of sorrow. Last night, while flipping through channels when my kids were in bed, I stopped briefly on a news network where the reporter was interviewing students at the school. I could only watch for about a minute before I turned the channel. My whole life is connected to schools. I have been in schools for 180 days or more every year for about the last 38 years. My wife works as a teacher and my three kids attend school every day, just like yours. Continuing to see occasions of terrible violence in schools is shocking and shakes me every time. I chose to watch a rerun of the 80's classic The Golden Girls for a few minutes to change my mood. It worked.
On Friday and again on Tuesday, I led grade-level student assemblies on all things "safety" at RJ Grey. I talked with students about fire drills, showed them maps of our school, and talked through the ALICE protocol for how we would respond if we were ever faced with a school intruder intending to do harm in our building. Students then had a chance to return to homeroom to talk in smaller groups about the specifics of locking down in a classroom, evacuation routes, and other important procedures. We will have several drills this year to help practice our safety routines. Our first fire drill will be tomorrow. We'll have 4 fire drills this year. We'll also have two ALICE drills this year - the first will take place next week.
In addition to locked doors, emergency plans, and technical responses, our overall approach to providing a safe school environment is that we are the safest when we know our students well and we have open lines of communication. When we spend time building relationships with kids through classes, Advisory, clubs, sports, and in other ways, we hope that students build trust to communicate with us when they know something is unsafe or dangerous. Having open communication between our students and their teachers and between our students and you is paramount. If you are ever privy to information that is important for us to know, especially if it relates to school safety, I implore you to be in touch with me or a member of our admin team.
Cartwheel Webinar
We continue to work with Cartwheel Care to provide mental health support to students. Cartwheel will offer sessions for caregivers throughout the year. The first is coming up on Tuesday, September 10:
Topic: The Relationship Between ADHD and Learning Disorders
Date: September 10, 2024
Time: 7:00 PM ET
Location: Zoom
Registration: LINK
Fifty percent of youth with ADHD also have a coexisting disorder or diagnosis, such as anxiety, depression, or learning disorders, such as dyslexia. What are the impacts on students who have both ADHD and learning disorders? What can we as parents, caregivers, and school staff do to support kids who may have coexisting symptoms?
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Parent Square
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I am very aware that with the start of the school year, you are receiving lots of messages. I see them from my own kids' schools, too. If you haven't already done so, please take a look at your settings in Parent Square. You can refine how and when you receive messages from RJ Grey. You may want to turn off the text feature if you have the app notifications, as an example. Start here if you'd like to learn more about Parent Square and update your settings. If you have any questions, please let me know!
SBIRT - 7th grade families only
In March of 2016, the state legislature enacted H4056, commonly called the “STEP Act.” This legislation is in direct response to the opioid crisis and is an effort to provide tighter controls on addictive drugs and additional education about substance abuse. As part of the educational component, this legislation requires all public school districts to utilize a screening tool approved by the Massachusetts Department of Public Health (MDPH), and to conduct the screening annually to all students in two different grade levels. At Acton-Boxborough, students in 7th and 9th grade will participate in the screening.
Our 7th grade Health program currently includes a brief unit that introduces topics related to substance use and abuse, and discusses issues related to the use and consumption of nicotine, alcohol and marijuana. Our plan is to include the screening tool during the final lesson of the unit, and involve our counselors and nurses in the delivery of the lesson and completion of the screening tool. Students will be asked to complete a written version of the screening tool which includes a series of questions about exposure and use of specific substances. For your review, I am including a copy of the screening questions with this letter. The screening form will be reviewed by the counselor and nurse, and students may be invited for a follow-up conversation if they indicate an interest in meeting or if their responses meet a set of criteria that the District has established. Please know that parents/guardians of any student who participates in a follow-up meeting for any reason will be contacted by the nurse or counselor. As for when this might take place for your child, students are scheduled to be enrolled in Health class (as part of the Physical Education program) at different points in the year. Some are currently in Health, others may not attend until later in the Spring.
Families will have the right to opt their child out of participating in the screening portion of the SBIRT lesson. If you wish to opt your child out of the screening portion, please email Assistant Principal Elizabeth Broadwater ([email protected]) and submit that request. Regardless of when your child is scheduled for Health class, opt-out requests need to be submitted by September 26, 2024.
Take care,
Jim
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