College Night Zoom Recording, Police Activity, Other info
prin...@sethigh.org
Dear Students, Parents, and Guardians,
- College Night
- Occasional Police Presence
- PSAT Reminder (bring approved calculator if you can)
- Mental Health Parent Training
College Night
For those of you who could not make the College Night event live, the recording of the event can be found here. Zoom dropped their recording quality down to standard def, so sorry about the video quality. You should be able to hear everything just fine.
Let me know if you have any questions. I might batch them together and answer them all at another College Night. Happy to do as many of these as you like if you find the information useful.
Occasional Police Presence
In case you are ever alarmed by police presence on campus, please know that the majority of the time this is for the protection of an individual from self-harm. The police are the primary responders to a whole range of incidents, including cases where someone is emotionally distressed. I know that we would all prefer to see medical professionals in white lab coats respond to these kinds of personal crises, but a police PERT (Psychiatric Emergency Response Team) team is the emergency team that is best equipped to shepherd a patient through the system to get them immediate care. We appreciate the respect for privacy that all of our students have shown this year.
Please know that if there is ever a threat to the students, we are very good at being transparent with the students and families. If you do not hear anything from us, you can assume that there is no threat to anyone else on campus, and that the police are there for a personal matter. Students, I should take this opportunity to ask you to please inform us immediately if you are concerned about yourself or a friend. If you cannot get an immediate response from us in the middle of the night, please call 911 immediately. I can't count the number of times that "making a big deal" about something has saved a life. Don't ever be scared to call 911.
Finally, also know that sometimes the police just come for a visit. We like those visits the best! A former staff member (and parent and board member), Coach Brown, became Officer Brown, and he visits us occasionally.
PSAT Reminder (bring approved calculator if you can)
We have all of our 9th and 10th graders take the PSAT so that they can get practice doing high-stakes testing. Some of our 11th graders who wish to be in the running for the National Merit Scholarship will also take the test. 11th graders, if you are interested in taking the PSAT, please let Ms. Heath know so that we can make sure that we have enough tests. 11th and 12th graders would normally take the SAT instead, but we do not have enough students to be a testing site, so if you are interested in taking the SAT you would sign up for that yourself at CollegeBoard and choose a testing site.
On the day of testing (10/25), your child will need to bring an approved calculator, water bottle and a small snack. Calculators will not be provided.
It is not critical that our younger students have a calculator since the PSAT is just a practice test, but if you plan to take the SAT later you will need one of these approved calculators anyway, so you might as well get it now.
Mental Health Parent Training
Please see the following flyers for upcoming free training opportunities for parents (provided by the San Diego County Office of Education):
- https://drive.google.com/file/d/1dYJ3XAQUT8MNqGAg9spuez_HYXhzPWDQ/view?usp=sharing
- https://drive.google.com/file/d/1I6uD-dUo4kw4_w0vllE3Rbzb3OKrwlWW/view?usp=sharing
Thanks everyone!
Dr. McCurdy
