Welcome back updates
prin...@sethigh.org
Dear Students, Parents, and Guardians,
- Minimum Day tomorrow (Thu). Release at 1:25.
- LCAP Advisory Group (Need your help. Students, too!)
- Grant awarded to support Passion Projects for next two years!
- Earthquake Preparedness
- Spring Soiree (4/27)
- Holiday (4/28)
Minimum Day tomorrow (Thu). Release at 1:25.
This one is our typical minimum day, but it's not on the usual day because of Spring Break.
LCAP Advisory Group (Need your help. Students, too!)
The LCAP is our annual planning document and each year we have an LCAP Advisory Group made up of staff, students, and parents who help us figure out how to improve our school. The LCAP ultimately gets approved by our board in June and then serves as our roadmap for the following year. The LCAP determines the areas that we will be focusing on and the funding levels that each of these focus programs will receive.
This is one of the easiest and smallest commitments for volunteering efforts at our school, so please respond to this email if you would like to serve on this group. We need broad representation of each of our demographic groups, so even if you're instinct is to say no, please at least respond to give me an opportunity to twist your arm! Your time commitment will be at most two 1 hour zoom meetings. Some of us will be in-person so you are welcome to attend in-person if you prefer.
Grant awarded to support Passion Projects for next two years!
We just learned last night that the Girard Foundation has unanimously approved a $32,000 grant to support Passion Projects at our school for the next two years. Passion Projects are unique to our school and the Girard Foundation was excited to see how adding guaranteed money to each student's Passion Project might encourage engagement and participation. Each student will have a guaranteed $50 to apply towards Passion Project needs. If the money is not spent by a to-be-determined deadline, the unspent money will be available to students who have more need. We will still have some school money budgeted for passion projects for bigger passion project purchases (like we did this year), but we are excited to see what this guaranteed money will do. There will also be a class-wide Passion Project for the senior class over the next two years. That will have guaranteed funding of $5000 per year.
Thank you to the Girard Foundation for supporting our students!
Earthquake Preparedness
We discovered this week that our earthquake drills work! The earthquake that we felt was a very short-duration shake that was over before any of us were able to seek shelter. We took advantage of the shake and the alerts that we all got on our phones to proceed with a typical earthquake drill that uses a fire alarm to release students and staff from their duck and cover positions. It was helpful to have the evacuation time to do a check-in with the students to reinforce our training and to make sure that they remember to stay in their positions until the all-clear is given in case there are aftershocks. We waited for aftershocks for about 5 minutes before sounding the alarm and reminded everyone to stay in their positions, so there was plenty of time for that safety measure to be practiced and internalized. I'm super proud of how our whole community responded to this event with everyone working together to help those who had heightened anxiety.
In case it eases anxiety for our students and parents, our building is probably one of the safest places to be during an earthquake since it was constructed in 2009 and is protected by very recent earthquake building standards.
Spring Soiree (4/27)
This is just a reminder about the upcoming Spring Soiree on Sunday, April 27th from 12PM to 3PM. The details can be found here: https://sethighpa.org/spring_fundraiser/
Thanks everyone!
Dr. McCurdy
