SUNDAY JUNE 12 1:45pm- Please be advised we are experiencing flooding in our Middle-High School building today. Crews are on site to assess cause and extent. We will provide more updates as we have them.
I want to thank the parents, staff, and community members who have participated in meetings over the last three weeks to discuss school safety at South Seneca. Speaking personally, these conversations add important perspective about how the community sees our work, and about how we need to think about the path forward in an overall environment that feels less safe than it used to.
We’ve spoken at length together about security in the buildings, about our partnerships with law enforcement, and especially about how we work day in and day out with students. We’ll need to keep talking—as a community—about the kinds of changes we want to make. The decision to seek a second School Resource Officer from the Seneca County Sheriff’s Office has already been made, and we’ll work through the summer to pursue approval from the county to deploy a second deputy. We’ll continue to upgrade and enhance building security systems, and reinforce our processes to manage those systems. We’ll be returning to our regular use of emergency drills and employee trainings to make sure everyone in our schools is practiced in those situations that call for holds-in-place, lock-ins, or lock-downs.
We’ve heard a strong message that more frequent public notices about what’s happening in our buildings would be helpful for the community to be reassured that all is well, and would remove the anxiety of having to speculate.
Finally, on the subject of our code of conduct in the buildings, we clearly have work to do to better communicate the way our systems work; how we follow up on resolutions; how we pair consequences for certain infractions (“know how the rules work”) with ongoing interventions to prevent it happening again; and also, how we sometimes turn a code of conduct investigation over to law enforcement if a situation is actually a criminal offense.
As we anticipate the summer months and the preparations for September, we hope to create even more opportunities for the community to participate in the planning. We’ve opened our end-of-year Thought Exchange survey, leading into strategic planning for the whole district in July and August. The hope is that these discussions will continue, and changes will happen that we all agree will take us to a safer, happier, and more effective place.
Thank you again,
Steve
The elementary building held their Field Days today! Although the event had to moved inside, everything was still a ton of fun. The kids showed great sportsmanship! The Teenaged Mutant Ninja Turtles theme was a HUGE hit. Thank you to everyone who helped make the day great!
The South Seneca Board of Education will hold its regular meeting on Wednesday, June 8 at 7pm in the Elementary Auditorium, Interlaken.
Hi everyone,
Just a reminder that our Varsity Sports Awards event is Monday evening (June 6th) at 6pm. It will be on soccer/football field, weather permitting (inside if raining). If you have any questions, please email Mr. Crane at tcrane@southseneca.org. Thank you.
Dear Members of the South Seneca School Community,
We began the 2021-22 school year with a series of Thought Exchanges, and as we enter the last month of the academic calendar, we want to end with the same.
This summer, we are launching a strategic planning process that takes into account what is working, what we’d like to improve on and how everyone in our school community feels about the work. We need your input so that we can make the best plans for our district’s future.
Please tell us what you think we are doing well and what can we improve on. We would also like to know what you think we should be considering for the future. Our plans will be based on your feedback. Please share your thoughts by visiting here: https://tejoin.com/scroll/531225562
You can add thoughts, see what other community members are thinking and rate each other’s feedback. All of this is done anonymously, and we encourage you to check back often to keep the conversation going. The exchange will be open until July 1st.
Thank you for your participation!
Join us next week — there are two different opportunities to discuss school safety at South Seneca:
Take two minutes out of your day and fill out this survey for Ford Memorial Library:
https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSeMfl7o8H4V74DOL8s30hQ2CjB7lxX1lENzxZYa3jFhKf-iiA/viewform
May 31 1:45pm-- Electricity has been fully restored at our Middle-High School now, and tonight's Undergraduate Awards ceremony will go on as planned.
The 5th graders had a fantastic time watching the Syracuse Mets take on the Rochester Red Wings. Thank you to all of the parent volunteers who helped make the trip a success.
Put it on your calendars! #FalconsForever
Go get yours ASAP!
May 31, 9AM UPDATE
Our electrical issue has been diagnosed as a failure to a power line serving the MSHS, and NYSEG will be out to service it this afternoon. With the extreme heat today and the reduced power, the Middle-High School students will be dismissed today at 11:15.
PM BOCES students will still report this afternoon to TST, and after school activities on campus will be cancelled. WE WILL MAKE A DECISION ABOUT UNDERGRAD AWARDS THIS AFTERNOON, AND ANNOUNCE THEN. Thank you for understanding.
May 31, 6:30am: Please be aware that our Middle-High School building in Ovid is operating this morning on backup electric power using the school's generator. The generator allows us to operate while we address restoration to normal service, although occupants may notice isolated areas of reduced power until service is fully restored. We will make an updated announcement later today as the issue is addressed.
The 5th grade had GREAT time releasing the trout on Tuesday. Thank you to all of the chaperones, Mr. Foster and his crew, and Ms. McCheyne for such a great trip!
Come join on Thursday, June 2.
Dear South Seneca Community,
The country is reeling yet again from another school shooting this week, and all our shock and outrage at the news of elementary students being killed at their school in Texas make us turn our attention back home. Understandably, we’ve been hearing from parents today about how we keep our own kids safe in Interlaken and Ovid, and I want to outline that for everyone here:
First, we’ve invested capital monies over the last ten years to increase security measures in the buildings themselves, including the transition to electronic access at outside doors, increased layers of entry at the main office in each building (with security cameras on those doors), an overall increase in both the number and quality of security cameras across both campuses, and specialized equipment specifically designed for situations where we might be in a lockdown or lockout status.
Of course, as many have reminded us, just because a door can be locked doesn’t help if it is not locked. We send regular reminders to everyone using our spaces that doors should never be propped open or left unlocked unless it’s purposely unlocked to admit the public for an event.
Secondly, it is true that South Seneca has never hired armed security guards at our buildings. We do, however, have a close working relationship with all area law enforcement agencies, particularly with the Seneca County Sheriff’s Office, which does incredible work in this county. South Seneca has a contract with the SCSO to supply a School Resource Officer (SRO) to the district every school day (and even during our extended day program). We’ve heard some confusion this month about “leave time” for the SRO, but it should be well understood that although Deputy McNabb is primarily assigned to us as our SRO, our contract is not with one person but with the office itself, and SCSO provides other deputies any time Deputy McNabb is deployed elsewhere. Our communication with the Sheriff’s Office is daily, and they provide dedicated attention to our buildings every school day, no matter what the circumstance. It is difficult to overstate how fortunate we are to have them as a close partner, and their office is on call to us 24 hours a day, 365 days a year.
Some have suggested that we should strive for a second dedicated deputy so that we can provide a regular presence in each of our buildings at all times, and it’s something we continue to talk about. It’s certainly true that the role of a School Resource Officer is not the same as that of a security guard, but if we continue to hear that our community would feel safer under those circumstances, we must take that into consideration.
Third, we’ve also invested in recent years in a larger full-time number of staff dedicated to student and family support, which includes an ongoing process of knowing each student well. We conduct a weekly meeting in each building to talk about things we notice about kids who are suffering, exhibiting different behaviors, going through traumatic situations at home or with others, or otherwise showing signs of needing help. Each building has two school counselors, a school social worker, and a school psychologist. We’ve used federal stimulus money to create two other positions designed specifically to provide student supports built into the school day. That’s unusual for a school our size. Even more, we enter into agreements with the county to provide ADDITIONAL counselors to South Seneca to take on caseloads. When someone in our community is suffering or showing signs of unusual behavior, we have a team of support to respond and connect that student and family to more services.
As we’ve addressed just recently (and will continue to address), we have a well established, formal process to conduct threat assessments any time these unusual behaviors create a potential safety concern. It’s a frequently shared, but still very helpful, phrase that is heard throughout our buildings that if you “see something, say something,” and we follow up every time someone makes a report.
The pandemic was enormously disruptive in so many ways, and that included a disruption to our regular routine of emergency drills over the last two years. Even so, staff and faculty remain trained for these situations, and all have protocols to follow under different emergency conditions. We’ve compensated with modified student drills and information for emergency situations the last two years, and expect to return to normal operations for those moving into 2022-23.
Never, ever, will you hear anyone say “it couldn’t happen here.” We understand how the nature of a school building can make us vulnerable to a random attack, but we do want our community to know how our ongoing safety plans—revisited multiple times a year—make us as prepared as we can be to protect our children. In the meantime, our own counselors have made themselves available to those who are wanting to talk about this week’s tragedy, and I myself am happy to reach out to people personally who want to learn more.
Thank you,
Steve
Great weather and free food, can't lose.
Who doesn't need a good car wash after pollen season?
Public Notice May 20: This week we received positive COVID test results for four (6) new student cases.
