Dear WED Community,

Over the past few weeks, the Woonsocket Education Department has had the opportunity to meet in focus groups to help our school district begin to shape its future direction. I would like to thank all students, parents, community partners, and district administrators who participated in the focus groups. Your feedback was greatly appreciated. Soon, we will be scheduling focus group meetings for WED faculty and staff as well as the school committee.

This work aims to develop a new 3-year strategic plan with an updated vision, mission statements, focus areas, goals, and objectives for the Woonsocket Education Department. This Strategic Plan is not about my mission, vision, or goals for the school as your Superintendent. The Strategic Plan developed through this process must encompass the areas we want to grow and improve within the Woonsocket Education Department.

At this time, we would also like to ask for additional input from the community to help update our Strategic Plan through the Strategic Planning Stakeholders Survey link that you may access below. Soon, I will be sending a Stakeholders Survey in Spanish and Portuguese. The survey will take about ten minutes or so, depending upon the number of written detail individuals contribute. Thank you in advance for taking the time to reflect upon and respond to this survey that will help shape the future of the Woonsocket Education Department.

The survey link will be open for input until February 3, 2023. The link to the survey will also be available on home page of the WED website. Please feel free to share this link with other community stakeholders who may want a voice in this process.

As you begin participating in the survey, please consider that your child/children may have attended other schools before attending schools connected to the Woonsocket Education Department. The feedback will be specific to your experience in the Woonsocket Education Department.

Thank you in advance for your participation.

Patrick McGee, Ed.D.

Superintendent

As we begin 2023, our Woonsocket High School seniors have been busy applying to colleges and universities, post secondary education, and career opportunities. Here is a lis of the colleges and universities that our Class of 2023 has been accepted to thus far:

Champlain College

Nichols Collage

Eastern University

Dean College

Johnson & Wales University

University of New Haven

Brown University (two students have been accepted)

Spelman College (#1 HBCU in Nation)

Smith College

UMass Dartmouth

Lewis University

University of Hartford

University of Maine

Rhode Island College

Seattle University

University of Rhode Island

I will be sharing more acceptances with you as they occur. Congratulations to our amazing seniors!

On Friday, January 20th, 8th grade students from Hamlet Middle School, and on Monday, January 23rd, 8th grade students from Villa Nova Middle School visited Woonsocket High School for their annual "Move-Up" Day.

Move-up Day is an opportunity for our 8th graders to spend a half-day at the high school without current WHS students and to become familiar with the building, learn about high school classes, extracurricular activities, meet high school teachers, staff, administrators, support staff, and to meet the WHS Peer Mentors. The goal is to aid in the transition of our 8th graders from middle school to high school.

I will be sharing pictures from the day in next week's Community Newsletter.

On Saturday, January 21st, Hamlet Middle School hosted a clothing closet event for the community. This event provided gently used clothing, canned goods, and toiletries for the community. Thank you to our Hamlet Middle School faculty and staff, administrators, students, and community partners for giving back to our community! Many people from the community attended and we hope to have a similar event in the near future. ABC 6 and The Valley Breeze were in attendance as well!

NeighborWorks will be providing programs for students in grades K-5 and 6-12 during February Vacation. Please click on the link below to access the flyer to learn more about the opportunities.

• Thursday, February 2nd - SELAC Virtual Meeting (6pm, Please click on the following link to access the meeting: https://meet.google.com/oev-rfcr-bsn)