Superintendent Briefing
December, 2018
Positive Team Create Positive Cultures
Behind every great team is a strong culture; great leadership; and passionate, committed people.
Team culture is the written and unwritten rules that say how a team communicates, connects, thinks, works, and acts.
To create your culture, you must identify what you stand for and what you want to be known for.
Identify what you stand for:
What do you want to be known for?
When you know what you want to be, you can create your culture to become it.
The North Platte Public School District is working collectively to become a great school district. It is a district that collaborates to create and improve an effective integrated district-wide system to ensure adults have the capacity to support students and learning in collaboration with family, businesses, and community members.
Greatness occurs when we work collectively as a team. We build positive relationships based on mutual respect, trust, loyalty, honesty, and integrity. We work hard continuously to accomplish our purpose of preparing students to be productive responsible citizens in a schools that are safe, caring and supportive – every day – every year matters. Great things happen when a team makes culture their top priority.
We are creating a positive culture that energizes each other, fosters connected relationships and great teamwork, empowers and enables our team to learn and grow, provides an opportunity for us to do your best.
North Platte School District/School Improvement – The Nebraska Framework
A school improvement process is a systematic on-going process involving planning, implementation, and evaluation and renewal of school improvement activities to meet local and statewide goals and priorities. All accredited schools in Nebraska must have a school improvement process in effect according to Rule 10-009.01. The process includes a periodic review by visiting educators who provide consultation to the local school/community in continued accomplishment of plans and a goals. In accordance with Rule 10-009.01B each school must have an external team visit at least once each five years.
The North Platte School District will be hosting the External Team on April 29, 30, 31, 2019. All North Platte Schools will be visited on Monday, April 30, 2019. Principals and school CIP team members will be preparing for the visits.
NPHS Students Sharing their Greatness
On Monday, November 19, 2018, eight students from NPHS sang the National Anthem at Memorial Stadium for the Class D1 State Football Championships. They were selected by audition from a pool of 200 applicants.
Singers included: Maggie Lashley, Brandi Fisher, Chloe Hoaglund, Kiera Rhodes, Elliott Purdy, Thomas Bartling, Jack Carlson, and Joel Bradley
Thank you to Leah Purdy and the NPHS students for sharing your greatness!-- Dr. Ron Hanson, Superintendent.
Kara & Traci
Congratulations!
Scott Odle from Steven Rhoades Insurance Agency, Kara, and Traci
NPPSD Staff Member of the Month
Kara Hahn is the counselor at Jefferson Elementary. Mrs. Hahn works tirelessly with teachers, students, district staff and community members to ensure we are meeting the needs of all our stakeholders. She has a can do attitude, embodies the qualities of true teamwork and has a servant heart in all that she does.
Mrs. Hahn goes above and beyond to build relationships and make personal connections. For example, she is in charge of our Student Council and had twenty-three students sign up to participate. She helped them with speeches, posters and preparing for the election. Afterward she took time to write each student a personal note to welcome them into Student Council.
Mrs. Hahn consistently takes the initiative to help others. When teachers needed to upload several documents for many of their students, she willingly offered to do it for them. Mrs. Hahn is constantly looking for new ways to grow leaders and students of character at Jefferson. Through her commitment to teaching guidance lessons, focus on the six pillars of character and Red Ribbon Week it is clearly evident she is preparing our students to be responsible and caring each and every day.
Mrs. Hahn truly demonstrates GREATNESS in all that she does! --Traci Costlow, Principal, Jefferson Elementary.
North Platte Schools Foundation
The North Platte Schools Foundation has awarded checks to Eisenhower, McDonald, Buffalo, Lake, Osgood, Washington for proceeds from their change wars.
We have awarded ‘I was caught being kind’ shirts to kiddos who were caught doing acts of kindness in their schools.
The annual BBQ was a success boasting 21 teams and raising just over $25,000 with sponsorship included. Part of those sponsorships are matched to the schools fundraising totals. So each school is awarded approximately 70% of their change wars earnings, 1/2 the match is put into our REACH Grants fund and the other 1/2 is donated back to the school. --- Jodi Howard, NPPS Foundation Director.
HOW TO MAKE FRONT PAGE NEWS IN YOUR RURAL TOWN
Dear Carrie,
Thank you very much for submitting your session proposal to the 2019 National AfterSchool Association Convention. We are delighted to include your session, HOW TO MAKE FRONT PAGE NEWS IN YOUR RURAL TOWN, at NAA19!
Title: HOW TO MAKE FRONT PAGE NEWS IN YOUR RURAL TOWN
Description: Our rural Nebraska after school program has amassed over three dozen front page news articles. We’ll explain in detail how to create a simple, targeted strategy to get and keep your local media attention. From direct outreach to writing a press release, we’ll provide you with a thorough understanding of the process by helping you to anticipate the media’s needs and create a smooth working relationship that will benefit your afterschool program in a number of ways. Since we began a concentrated effort in building local media relationships it has brought us new students, new staff, new programming partners, as well as new donors. it has also been a highly effective tool for reaching out to our local and state government with great success.
Presenters: Carrie Lienemann, NPPS KIDS Klub Afterschool Program; Melanie OBrien, NPPS KIDS Klub Afterschool Program
Congratulation Carrie and Melanie! Keep up the great work. -- Dr. Ron Hanson, Superintendent.
NPPSD Safety Committee
The safety committee meets monthly to discuss safety and security around the district.
If you have a building safety/security request that should be considered, please send it to the chair and the committee will discuss at the next monthly meeting.
Staff members that serve on the committee:
Stuart Simpson, Chair
Tami Eshleman, Education Representative
Brian Tegtmeier, Technology Representative
Jeremiah Johnson, SRO, Law Enforcement
Brandy Buscher, Student Services
Lori Coburn, Custodial Director, Building surveillance
Dan Sims, Maintenance, Buildings
NPPSD Sodexo Team Experience Award
August – The NPHS Taste 4 Start-Up Group
September – The McDonald Elementary School Sodexo Duo of Jamie Roeder and Heather Axtell
October – Thalia “She’s Got Your Back!” Aton – Adams Middle School
November - Sodexo held a Mid-Semester, refresher training for all Sodexo Team Members on Standard Response Protocol, PBIS and “Delivering Outstanding Customer Service.
Sodexo kicked off it’s Fine Dining Experience for all 5th Grade Students in the District, with Jefferson Elementary on Monday, November 19, with a Fine Dining Etiquette Classroom Training, and the actual Fine Dining Experience in the CMR on Tuesday, November 20. -- Larry Young, Director of Nutrition Services
Technology Department Update
This month the Tech Department had to make time to clear out the storage of outdated technology with the help of American Recycling and Scott Jones at ESU16. A Big Thanks to Meryl McArthur and Kelly Anderson , Sam Fornander, Brook Chromy and Treva Uppal for making this happen.
Proximity Card Readers were added to the copiers and printers at the elementary schools. We have had many good comments from teachers on how this has made their lives easier. We are putting in an order of proximity card readers for the secondary schools and hope to have these installed soon. Brian Tegtmeier, Director of Technology.
Thank you!
As a thank you to all teachers. . . you never when you are going to make a difference. Just know that you do, maybe not today or tomorrow but they will remember those who believed in them. -- Dr. Tami Eshleman, Associate Superintendent.