The Friday Five - August 29, 2025

Posted Date: 8/29/25 (12:00 PM)

August 29, 2025

	Welcome to a New Year! The new school year starts on Tuesday! By now you have received important communications from your building principal and your PTA. We are so grateful to our PTA and PTC partners for all they have done to prepare for this year, and for all the exciting programming ahead! If you have a child who is nervous or anxious about starting the new year, please reassure them we are anticipating their needs, are here to support them, and are ready to make the year joyful! Today's Friday Five includes a few important reminders and resources to help with the transition back to school. Happy New School Year, Scarsdale!
	Privacy, Data Protection, FERPA As we start a new year, we want to assure our families that we take data privacy and your rights extremely seriously. Our webpage dedicated to Privacy and FERPA includes the Parents' Bill of Rights for Student Data Privacy and Security, along with information about your rights under the Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act. This notification is always present on our District homepage under the Popular Links heading. The notification serves as an annual reminder to parents, guardians, and students currently in attendance, of their rights under FERPA, New York State Law, and Board Policy, along with the procedures for exercising those rights. As a reminder, parents have the right to opt out of Directory Information, ideally by July 1st in order to process school directories in a timely manner.
	School Safety Our approach to safety, security, and emergency management (SSEM) is best summarized as Prevention, Response, Improvement. We recognize the importance of creating a safe and secure environment while maintaining a warm and welcoming feel. As we start the year, please take a moment to review three important documents: the District Safety Plan, Inclement Weather Communications, and Emergency Procedures Guide for Parents. Emergency and Inclement Weather notifications are sent via ParentSquare. Please visit their Support Site for questions about the APP and how to manage your communications settings. More information about SSEM can be found on our website.
	Please be Patient! Traffic is always tricky in the first few days of the school year. Please be as patient and understanding as possible as those new to our schools (and new drivers!) learn and adjust to the pattern and flow of traffic. Our focus is on safety during arrival and dismissal, and, as always, our friends in the Scarsdale Police Department will be supporting that goal as well. Of course, if you see something unsafe happening please let your building administration know. We work hard to ensure a smooth arrival and dismissal for our students, and your input helps that process.
	Desha's Law - Cardiac Arrest Recent amendments to State law require us to embed our existing procedures for response to sudden cardiac arrest into our building level emergency response plans. The law also includes updates related to AED equipment and the inclusion of school safety training requirements in our Safety Plan. We will review these changes at our September 15 BOE meeting, and invite public comment before formally adopting them. As a reminder, a number of AEDs were donated last year by the Independent Sports Organizations (ISOs) in our community, and the District installed these outside near the primary competition fields at each of our schools. We thank our ISOs for their partnership!