Freshmen Parent Orientation

Last Wednesday evening we held our first annual orientation for parents of freshmen. The Chatham PTO provided a delicious dinner and several staff members presented information on a variety of important topics. I gave an overview of iParent, the program which enables parents to have access to their children's grades and other student information. Guidance counselor, Rick Gifford, spoke about a variety of academic issues such as scheduling, the honors program and the importance of good attendance. School psychologist and SADD advisor, Bethany Valine, got the parents' attention by outlining the dangers that young people face today, including alcohol, drugs, texting while driving, sexual behavior, and the potentially predatory nature of the Internet. School nurse Pat Vreeland wrapped the evening up by providing a number of excellent tips on parenting teens.

The dinner was great, the meeting was reasonably well-attended, and the presentations were well-received. However, we learned some important things from the feedback we received from the evaluation sheets parents filled out. First of all, we need to do a better job of getting the word out about the evening. I accept the responsibility of not notifying parents sooner. I did send out a ConnectEd message the evening before the meeting, but had intended to send an invitation letter to parents as soon as school began on September 3rd. I neglected to do that and apologize for the oversight. Some parents said that while the information we presented was important and timely, the evening went on a bit too long. We felt that too, and next year we plan to offer a more interactive panel presentation fielding parent questions rather than speaking at parents. Lastly, we regret that we did not provide an opportunity for parents to introduce themselves and make connections with each other. This is critical especially for those school choice parents in attendance who might not know any other parents in the system. After all, we said many times that evening that parents need to communicate with each other to help keep their kids safe and to share parenting strategies and yet, we did not offer the opportunity to make those initial connections. We will do a much better job next year! Oh, we will also bring pens to the next session!!

Overall, we were all delighted with this first effort. And in conclusion, I need to emphasize that this evening's event was the result of the work of a SADD task force made up of school administrators, teachers, students, parents, and members of the police department that met several times last Spring to brainstorm ways to keep our kids safe. This is a critical job which we take very seriously and we are already planning next year's meeting as well as other things we can do as a team to accomplish our goals during the coming year.

As always, please let me know what you think.