Cyber-bullying

How many of your students have Facebook, Twitter, Instagram or other social media accounts?  How many of them text daily?  In this era, most of our students have plenty of access to online or electronic communication.  At times, we have issues that arise due to students posting inappropriate, mean, private or untrue information about others.  This can lead to cyber-bullying.  I encourage you to monitor your child's online social life.  I know as a parent of a high schooler, it's often difficult to do this because we want to trust them and to give them a certain amount of privacy.  Still, it is important that we maintain our role as parents and guardians and continue to stay abreast about how and with whom our kids are communicating.

A new state cyber-bullying law is in place as of December 1, 2012 (Session Law 2012-149, Senate Bill 707; Section 4).  This law protects school employees from being victims of cyber-bullying.  For example, it makes it unlawful for a student to build a fake profile or web site as a means of torture or intimidation of a school employee.  The same is true for students posting or encouraging others to post private, personal or sexual information pertaining to a school employee.

At Salisbury High School, I want all students and staff members to feel safe!  In the coming months, our school will have access to an online bullying reporting system called Sprigeo.  We will use this system to respond to reports from parents or students involving bullying or harassment. In the meantime, students should always know that if they have a problem or are being bullied, they can talk to me, another administrator, guidance counselors, teachers and any staff member.

Thanks for your continued support!  Have an Incredible Weekend and Go Hornets!

Moving Beyond Everyday Expectations

This year, in conjunction with our implementation of the Common Core State Standards, our school has established an Instructional Support Team and a Leadership Team.  Mr. Kuhn is our Instructional Support Team Lead Teacher.  He and I attended a meeting recently and returned with a plethora of information to begin the process of developing a Data Plan.  The Data Team (our Leadership Team and administrators) will focus on our EOC classes and will meet with these teachers during the first week of December.  We will dissect the data and begin the RTI or Response to Intervention process.  This is the system that we will use to provide intervention for struggling students. I am so excited about getting to this point of the year.  As we consider our data, we will begin to make instructional decisions in an effort to close our achievement gap.  This is a crucial part of our School Improvement Plan and also one of the key areas of growth as determined by our Equity and Culture Assessment.  The complete findings from the assessment will be shared during the BOE meeting on December 17th.            

One key element to closing our achievement gap is increased/improved vertical teaming.  This is includes working with our primary feeder school, Knox Middle.  We began our partnership, Moving Beyond Everyday Expectations, last week and I am definitely looking forward to doing some great work with the teachers and students of Knox.  If you or your organization is interested in working with us, we would love to have you!  We need mentors, tutors, program presenters, and meal sponsors.  If you have not already done so, please email me your ideas and anticipated start date and let’s get the ball rolling! Thank you for your continued support!  Have an Incredible Week and Go Hornets!

Happy Thanksgiving!

From our family to yours, please enjoy a happy and safe Thanksgiving holiday.  If you are in town, please come out and support our Hornets football team in the 3rd Round of conference play.  We are one game away from the State Championship!  It's a GREAT day to be a Salisbury Hornet!  Have an Incredible Week and Go Hornets!