The Weekly Roar
Notes from Nick Novak: Saturday September 23, 2017
FYI
Here's some important info for the week ahead:
1) We will email folks who missed Friday's activities with info about how to make it up. Thanks.
2) As Greg Bulger shared, we'll be airing the "Canvas Connection" video on Monday morning since there were technical difficulties on Wednesday. Thanks for understanding.
3) The first School Improvement Team (SIT) meeting of the year will be after school on Monday in the student services seminar room. Come join us as we explore the school improvement plan and discuss AP, SAT, graduation rate, and other things that will make our school great.
4) Another Lionstime on Wednesday. Be sure to encourage students to sign up to make up quizzes get help on an assignment, or come together for student study groups.
5) The club fair will take place on Friday during lunch shifts in the atrium. This is a great way for your club to do some recruiting. Please encourage students to attend.
6) Have you finished all your Safe Schools modules?
Staff Birthdays
Happy Birthday to the following staff members celebrating this week:
9/25 Jean Audain
9/25 Veronica Renna
9/28 Phyllis Osofsky
Cell Phone Management: A Different Kind of Crisis
As we discussed on Friday, student cell phone use during an actual emergency can present a variety of problems and impact our ability to effectively respond to the situation. We'll be addressing this more throughout the year, but for now know that:
- Cell phones have been used for calling in bomb threats to schools and, in many communities, cell calls cannot be traced by public safety officials.
- Student use of cell phones could potentially detonate a real bomb if one is actually on campus.
- Cell phone use by students can hamper rumor control and, in doing so, disrupt and delay effective public safety personnel response.
- Cell phone use by students can impede public safety response by accelerating parental response to the scene of an emergency during times when officials may be attempting to evacuate students to another site.
- Cell phone systems typically overload during a real major crisis (as they did during the Columbine tragedy, WTC attacks, etc.), and usage by a large number of students at once could add to the overload and knock out cell phone systems quicker than may normally occur.
Emergency Planning Follow-Up
Staff Spotlight
Due to the short week and my absence from school, staff spotlights will return in the next issue.
Mission
In partnership with families and the community, it is the mission of Howard High School to cultivate an environment of collaboration, empowerment, and engagement that exhibits world-class support for staff and inspires students to thrive in a dynamic world.
Email: nnovak@hcpss.org
Website: http://hohs.hcpss.org/
Phone: 410-313-2867
Twitter: @PrincipalNovak