Dear Lincoln Public Schools Families,
Happy Friday! We have finished our first days back with students, and I want to express my appreciation for all of the work of our building-based staff to make those first days run as smoothly as possible. I had the chance to visit the schools throughout the week, and I was very happy to see lots of smiling faces. I hope that the start of school has been a good one for your child and family, and that your child is bringing home stories of engaging activities and positive connections.
I will be sending out bi-weekly notes to families again this year, and I will use these notes as an opportunity to share district-wide information, and to occasionally share my thoughts on important topics. As we head into the Labor Day weekend, I wanted to highlight a couple areas: the implementation of the new ParentSquare communication platform, and our annual emergency operations planning.
New ParentSquare communication platform
In my experience, a key factor in supporting students is making sure that there is effective, ongoing communication between schools and families. To help improve our communication – and to make it easier to keep communications in one, centralized place – we have adopted a new platform called ParentSquare, which is also synched with our district and school websites.
Emergency operations
Keeping students and staff safe is one of our most important responsibilities. Every year we engage in emergency operations planning with local police and fire personnel, and – because Hanscom Base operations involve overlapping military emergency response protocols – we also work closely with Base personnel to ensure coordination around emergency operations for the Hanscom School.
On Thursday we had a guided emergency drill at the Lincoln School, and we will be conducting a similar drill in the near future at the Hanscom School. These guided drills provide a low-stakes environment for staff and students to review how to respond to different situations and how to safely exit the buildings. Later in the year we will also conduct several unannounced drills.
I am a big believer in planning and practice – working proactively with safety personnel, training staff, and practicing for emergency situations so that, God forbid a true emergency were to happen, we have learned behaviors to fall back on to maximize student and staff safety. We are also careful in the way we conduct these drills so that the drills themselves don’t create stressors for our students. The goal is to empower our staff, students, and families to be and feel safe, while recognizing that we live in a world where emergencies can happen.
That is it for this week’s message. Thank you, and have a wonderful long weekend!
Parry Graham
Superintendent
