It is my pleasure to present the December edition of the Lower Moreland Township School District Superintendent’s Newsletter. I hope this letter finds you and your family healthy and well.

For our students, staff and families, 2020 has been a year full of challenges. While everyone has been thrown a curveball and has needed to appropriately react and make accommodations for both virtual and in-person instructional opportunities, make sacrifices in order to selflessly provide for others in need, and, ultimately, “get comfortable with being uncomfortable”, it cannot be stated too often of how proud I am of the efforts of ALL of our stakeholders. Inspiration and hope for students will always be at the forefront of the district’s decision-making process.

The Eastern Center for Arts and Technology (ECAT) responds to the needs of our high school students by merging business and industry environments where students can make career decisions, acquire competitive skills, and prepare for success in postsecondary education. Please take a look at what’s happening at ECAT.

Lastly, please join me in welcoming Mrs. Kaitlyn McMullan to Lower Moreland Township School District. Mrs. McMullan was recently appointed as Assistant Principal at Pine Road Elementary School. Mrs. McMullan brings 13 years of elementary experience to Lower Moreland having served in multiple grade-level classroom teaching positions and most recently as an administrative intern in the Central Bucks School District. Mrs. McMullan will be starting in her new role at Pine Road Elementary School later this month.

I wish everyone health, happiness and success during the holiday season.

Scott Davidheiser, Ed.D.

Superintendent

During the month of October each year, the PA Department of Education asks each school

district to submit their October 1 st enrollment data for reporting purposes. For the 2020/21 October 1st enrollment submission, Lower Moreland Township School District reported its’ enrollment as 2,410 total students, with 1,010 students at Pine Road Elementary, 592 students at Murray Avenue School, and 808 students at Lower Moreland High School. This represented a 0.75% increase (18 total students) from the 2019/20 October 1st submission. Please note that the District had approximately 20 students withdraw to attend a cyber-charter school. We fully believe that once the pandemic has subsided, these students will return to the District and will increase the enrollment even further. The School District develops its own enrollment projections from those numbers and that information can be found by clicking on this link: https://www.lmtsd.org/Page/13509.

As the two new housing developments start to complete each unit, the District is closely

monitoring enrollments from each development. To help guide the District, an enrollment projection was developed from an outside firm, FutureThink, after proposals were sought from various firms. This projection can also be found at https://www.lmtsd.org/Page/13509. Over the past year, the School Board and the Administration have moved forward with a plan to build a new high school in front of the existing high school and demolish the Murray Avenue School. The existing high school will become the middle school and the 5th graders will now attend the new 5th -8th grade middle school. By changing the grade alignment within the middle school, the crowding at Pine Road Elementary School will be alleviated. The District just held an Act 34 public forum to discuss the new high school. A copy of the presentation can be found at https://www.lmtsd.org/domain/74. If there are any questions, please contact Dr. Scott Davidheiser, Superintendent of Schools at (215) 938-0272.

The District facilitates the renewal of curriculum in all content areas on a six year cycle and as a part of the revision process, stakeholders are asked for their opinions and observations related to programming. Last spring, the English/Language Arts and Health and Physical Education Departments distributed surveys in order to get input from parents and guardians. This distribution was overshadowed by the forced closure of school buildings. In an effort to gather additional responses, the links to these surveys can be found below. If you completed a survey in the spring, please do not respond a second time, as your response has already been recorded. Thank you, in advance, for your input.

English/Language Arts Survey

Health and Physical Education Survey

The Technology Department supports information technology systems and instructional technology programs and practices in the district. Each month, we highlight how our students and teachers have been engaged in 21st Century learning activities focused on the 4Cs: Critical Thinking, Creativity, Collaboration, and Communication with support from instructional coaches Karleigh Sugden and Dana Rapoport.

Critical Thinking:

Ms. Hunn’s 4th graders used Google Meet breakout rooms to do an experiment in small groups giving them a chance to engage their critical thinking skills with a partner. They started their energy unit in science by making predictions on how to make a lightbulb light up with a lightbulb, two wires, and a battery. After making their own predictions, students were paired up in breakout rooms such that in-person students could manipulate the materials while virtual students gave directions to test out predictions. Students problem-solved and used critical thinking skills about their predictions to see how energy was transferred. The class returned from breakout rooms to share what worked, what did not work, and to reflect on the small group work.

Creativity:

The 4th and 5th graders in Ms. Eisenman’s class had fun being creative by composing music to bring a poem to life using Chrome Music Lab. This is a favorite site for making original music. Students used their choice of apps in Chrome Music Lab to compose music for each line of the poem. Then they shared their creations by recording their screen and sound by using Flipgrid and Screencastify. Check out a student creation here.

Collaboration:

Students in Mr. Mayson’s 10th grade American Studies class used Google Slides to participate in a virtual Four Corners Progressive Era quote activity. Students chose one quote that they liked or agreed with the most and virtually moved to that corner of the room indicated by their name in a text box. Students collaborated by sharing why they chose that quote. What corner would you visit?

Communication:

In Mr. Weisblatt’s Chorus classes, students utilized Jamboard to communicate to each other how they relate to various themes and real-world issues presented in the musical repertoire sung in class. Students also engaged with Google Drawings to create visual representations of the lyrics from the repertoire sung in class in order to communicate how they interpreted the thematic meaning of the lyrics and musical motifs in each song.

Information Systems:

The Parent/Guardian Support Portal is now active. This allows parents/guardians to submit support tickets through an easy to use website interface. Using this portal allows the technology team to gather the necessary information to resolve issues faster for families. This is accessible at parenthelp.lmtsd.org.

In order to assist families with obtaining much needed, and often hard to find, resources for mental and behavioral health needs outside of the school environment, the Office of Student Services and Special Education maintains a list of local resources that can be shared with parents upon request. The list is shared with our School Counselors, School Psychologists, and building Principals and is ever-changing. It is updated as the resources in our community change, as new resources become available, and as our office is made aware of them. If you feel your child is in need of outside resources and don’t know where to turn you can contact his/her School Counselor who can provide you with contact information for an appropriate resource based upon your child’s needs.