The Goshen Gazette
January 2020
From the Principal - Mr. Graves
Happy New Year!
I trust you and your family had an enjoyable winter break and holiday season. A New Year is a good time to set new goals, make new resolutions and work hard to achieve them. May this New Year be a year full of new dreams and hopes, new achievements, and new success for all of you. Wishing you a wonderful New Year.
From the beginning of the school year we have taken various actions to ensure the safety of our students here at Goshen Lane Elementary School. You have been very supportive of those actions, and for that we say "Thank you!"
In a continuing effort to ensure student safety, the Gahanna-Jefferson Public Schools is implementing a Visitor Management System (VMS) which we at Goshen have been piloting, on a limited scale, since December and will attempt to fully implement this month. The office staff is in the process of becoming proficient with this new system. When you visit the school please, be patient with us as we learn the system. For more information about the VMS, please see the below letter from Superintendent Steve Barrett and myself.
January, 2020
Dear Goshen Lane Elementary Families,
Gahanna-Jefferson Public Schools is pleased to announce that we will begin using the Raptor Visitor Management System at Goshen Lane Elementary starting in December 2019. The safety of our students is our highest priority and this new system strengthens the district’s school safety protocols. Part of keeping students and faculty safe is knowing who is in our buildings at all times, and the Raptor system will allow us to do that better. This new system will allow us to track visitors, contractors, and volunteers (coming soon) in our schools, providing us with a safer environment for our students and staff.
Upon entering Goshen Lane Elementary, visitors will be asked to present an ID, which may be scanned or manually entered into the system. If a parent or guardian is undocumented or for any reason does not have a US government-issued ID, the school staff can use another form of identification and manually enter the person’s name into the Raptor system.
The Raptor system will check to ensure that registered sexual offenders are not entering our buildings. The Raptor system only checks the visitor's name and date of birth for comparison with a national database of registered sex offenders. No other data from the ID is gathered or recorded. The system is not connected to any other database such as the Department of Motor Vehicles, and information is not shared with any outside agency. Once entry is approved, Raptor will issue a badge that identifies the visitor, the date, and the purpose of his/her visit. A visitor’s badge will not be necessary for those who visit our schools simply to drop off an item in the office or pick up paperwork.
Safety is a top priority in the Gahanna-Jefferson Public Schools. This is a best practice procedure for safety and security in schools across the nation. The Raptor system is based on the Board of Education-approved recommendations of a safety audit conducted in 2018/19. Therefore, all visitors to the school must be entered into the system and obtain a visitor badge.
Thank you, in advance, for your understanding and support of enhancing school safety protocols in our district. If you have any questions regarding the Raptor Visitor Management System, please contact Mr. Graves at gravesd@gjps.org or by phone at 614-478-5580
Sincerely,
Steve Barrett, Superintendent
Dan Graves, Principal
COSI at Goshen? That Depends on You.
Eager Engineers at Goshen Lane
Upcoming in January
January 10 - Progress Report Cards Sent Home
January 14 - PTA Dine Out - Zoup Easton
January 14 - PTA Meeting
January 20 - Martin Luther King Day - No School
January 27 - 100th Day of School