Striving to maintain and steadily improve the quality education our students deserve and our community has come to expect is always energizing. LMTSD is certainly thankful to the teachers, support staff, administrators, parents, and community members who partner and deliver the educational opportunities and experiences needed for all of our students to succeed.

Helping to support the quality educational programs and delivering oversight is our Board of School Directors. During Tuesday’s reorganization meeting of our Board, two newly elected members were seated. Please welcome Mrs. Carole Natter and Mr. Eric Kazatsky to the Lower Moreland Township School District Board of School Directors as they each begin their four-year term. Also, congratulations to three re-elected members of the Board - Dr. Murray Cohen - President, Mrs. Camille Baker - Vice President, and Mr. Alan Steinberg - Treasurer. LMTSD also thanks Mr. Robert Howard and Mr. Michael Mueller for their dedicated time and service to the school district throughout their multiple terms.

During last month’s public meeting of our Board of School Directors, two important items were approved:

• LMTSD will be partnering with Lower Moreland Township Police and employing a School Resource Officer. Officer Justin Brommer will be joining the District on January 2 to assist the District in all aspects of safety and security. Ensuring the safety of all students and staff involves multiple components, including physical security, emergency management, and violence prevention efforts in the form of threat assessment processes. Officer Brommer will assist in all aspects of these areas.

• The academic school calendars for the 2020-2021, 2021-2022, 2022-2023 school years were approved. Please note that all three calendars have a school start date for students prior to Labor Day.

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 enjoy Eastern’s 2018-2019 Annual Report.

Lastly, the Lower Moreland Township Board of School Directors will be considering a motion at its next public meeting to begin design of a new comprehensive high school (grades 9-12) on and around the current field located in the southeast corner of the high school school property above the retention basin area nearest Red Lion Road. The meeting is scheduled for Tuesday, December 17 at 7:00 p.m. in the Lower Moreland Township School District Board Room located at the Pine Road Elementary Gym - 3737 Pine Road Huntingdon Valley, PA 19006.

Please click here to find information related to the year-long district-wide facilities study information, public forums, presentations, financial explanations, and other related information.

In accordance with the Pennsylvania School Code, a Certified Public Accountant (CPA) or CPA firm must annually audit the district. The district pays for this audit. The audit is an examination of the districts’ financial statements by an independent, external person(s) to ascertain whether or not the district-prepared financial statements fairly represent in material (significant) respects its financial position and operations. The auditor offers an opinion on this matter.

The audit for the 2018/19 school year was completed by the audit firm, Maillie LLP., which specializes in school district auditing. The 2018/19 audit will be presented at the December 2019 Regular Board Meeting for the Board of School Directors to review and vote upon to accept. The current audit as well as many previous audits can be found here and are located in the middle of the page.

The strategic plan charges the District with the creation of a K-12 STEM program by 2024. STEM programming will engage students in real-world, authentic opportunities that require creativity, collaboration, communication and critical thinking. Students will employ design thinking, problem solving and risk-taking through learning processes that require the exploration of multiple solutions or outcomes. The new Innovation Lab at Pine Road School is an engaging space where students are challenged to create, design and develop solutions by applying core content knowledge in new ways. Mrs. Krupa and Mrs. Zschunke partner together to enrich the student experience and encourage students to communicate, collaborate, think critically and create! Recent projects include: The Goldilocks Chair Design Challenge, Introduction to Architecture, Designing and Building Bridges, Coding with Scratch Jr., WeDo Robotics: Design and Build a Floodgate, Microbit Challenge and Designing and Building Career Artifacts.

The Technology Department supports information technology systems and instructional technology programs and practices in the district. This month, we are highlighting how our students have been engaged in 21st Century learning activities focused on the 4Cs: Critical Thinking, Creativity, Collaboration, and Communication with the support of K-12 instructional coaches Karleigh Sugden and Julie Dunphy.

Critical Thinking

• Students in Danielle Kline’s and Cody Pearson’s Spanish IV class used the virtual reality headsets with Google Expeditions to explore the life of Mexican artist and political activist Frida Kahlo. Students visited important places in her life and examined some of her most famous works. Students made connections between her life events and the imagery used in her paintings they viewed.

Creativity

• Precalculus students in Alicia Evan’s class used #MathSnaps to document their thinking on a sine or cosine function. The snap included at least four things students noticed about the graph, the rule of the function, and a brief explanation of how students understood the rule.

Collaboration

• Students in Gianna Pinardo’s Honors Geometry class used student-driven digital portfolio platform called Seesaw to upload a photo of a problem they struggled with or were excited about. Students then commented on each other’s work about something they liked or learned from the post.

Communication

• Seventh-grade students are currently reading The Giver in class. To demonstrate their understanding of new vocabulary words, each student created a video in FlipGrid to share knowledge with one another.

With December comes a very festive time of year with many reasons to celebrate. However, during these celebrations, both in and out of school, many opportunities arise for students to become distracted and lose focus on their academics. Maintaining a consistent focus on schoolwork is vital for all of our students with special needs. In order to assist students with IEPs in remaining focused on school work, and to avoid regression in skills, the Student Services Office urges all parents of students with IEPs to remain in communication with your child’s case manager. Open communication can go a long way towards providing consistency between home and school that is necessary to help students remain current in their skills. Your child’s case manager can provide skills practice activities to assist with skills retention during the extended winter break. Additionally, since many of the District’s intervention programs are web-based there is a component to each that typically can be completed at home which allows for continuity and consistency. If you have any questions, please do not hesitate to contact your child’s case manager. If you do not know who your child’s case manager is please contact the Office of Student Services at 215-938-7426.