Welcome Back!  We hope your students enjoyed their three day weekend as our teachers closed out the quarter and loading grades into the system.  As we enter fourth quarter there are several items that we want to share with our families.

Start of 4^th Quarter

This week is the start of the final quarter of the school year.  For many of our families it is our final quarter that your children will be in our care and we want to say thank you for the opportunity to be an influence on their lives!  We are proud of their work and wish them the best as they enter High School.

With the start of the 4^th Quarter, we will also be hosting our quarterly meetings with our building leadership team. Those meetings will take place this Friday and will focus on specific areas related to our Core Values.  These conversations with include raising the bar academically as we close out the year, ensuring that we get that last group of students involved in something inside and outside of school, and working to ensure that our students finish strong by doing their best on the State Test and MAP Assessment.  Our expectation is that 100% of our students continue to show academic growth as stated in our school mission!  More to come on State testing in the coming weeks.

In addition, this week we will be completing our SAFE Students Act requirements through the State of Ohio. We are excited to once again be focusing on the mental health of our students and we want to thank our Guidance Team and Mental Wellness Specialists for taking this on.

If you want more information regarding the SAFE Students Act and Erin’s Law you can see the information from our February 12^th Parent meeting at the link  HERE.

As we always do, we will share the specific information from our presentations after we meet with our students for their quarterly meeting this Friday!

Did You Know

On March 22^nd, we will be hosting a tour of Harrison Junior School for anyone in the community interested in seeing our awesome facility!  We are proud of our school and are excited for the opportunity to share it with the community.  For more information click Facility Tours (1).png 

In addition, did you know that we continually update our bullying policy and review and train our staff to better understand and look out for concerns in regards to bullying?  As a part of this policy, we review each “My Side of the Story” that is reported to us.  Most of these turn out to be issues related to peer conflict where both sets of students are involved in causing harm, however there are still cases where bullying still occurs.  For something to be officially labeled as bullying it must meet the following three metrics:

1. It must cause harm (physical, mental or emotional)
2. It must be repetitive, meaning it must have occurred on more than one occasion, or the behavior is perpetuated by one person to multiple students.
3. It must be a mismatch.

Each My Side of the Story is investigated, during the month of February we reviewed 43 different My Sides of the Story.  Out of these 43 cases, we confirmed the 2 met the metrics for bullying above.  However, out of the 43 cases we investigated, discipline was issued in 38 of the 43 cases.  This is why it is so important for our students to complete the My Side of the Story Form.  It allows us to really investigate and provide support for our students.  In some of the cases, we were able to pull the students together with our guidance or mental wellness staff and complete peer mediation while actively teaching coping skills.  In other cases, school discipline was important to take place because the goal of discipline is to change behavior.  Most importantly, when items are reported, it allows our team of teachers, aides, front office staff, administrators and school resource officers to work together to help monitor ongoing concerns.

Did You Know 

Did you See us On the News!

This past week, Harrison Junior School and Southwest Local School District was featured on WLWT for becoming the first School District to be designated with the Project Adam Certification.  If you remember, earlier in the year we completed a full scale simulation on what to do if there was an medical emergency.  Please take a few minutes and check out the video here:  https://www.wlwt.com/article/student-cardiac-event-southwest-school-district-heart-safe/60115472

Thank You

Once again, thank you to our families who have worked with us over the course of the school year!  We look forward to finishing strong!