The Principal's Office

Email: jhutchinson@nasd.k12.pa.us
Website: https://www.nasd.k12.pa.us/enms
Location: 330 Roland Drive, East Norriton, PA, USA
Phone: 610-275-6520
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/pages/category/Middle-School/East-Norriton-Middle-School-121770504834624/
Twitter: @EastNorritonMS

August

21st First teacher day

23rd Family Water Ice night 5-6:30pm

24th 5th grade orientation 9-10:30am

28th First student day

September

1st Schools and offices closed today

4th Labor Day no school

19th Picture Day

22nd Early Dismissal

25th Yom Kippur No school

Attached is the school district's annual family privacy policy. Please take a few moments to review.

The Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act (FERPA), a Federal law, requires that the Norristown Area School District, with certain exceptions, obtain your written consent prior to the disclosure of personally identifiable information from your child’s education records. However, the Norristown Area School District may disclose appropriately designated “directory information” without written consent, unless you have advised the District to the contrary in accordance with District procedures. Please review this attachment to understand "directory information."

Here are some helpful tips from the Cleveland Clinic related to ways to begin to transition your student back to a school sleep schedule.

It is really important our students receive 8-10 hours of sleep per night, and starting to transition them back this week could go a long way to getting them ready for school on August 28th.

Back to School Sleep Tips

Our website is full of information, and is a good place to check out on a regular basis. Our food service will be updating menus in the coming week. The link below directly links you to the Food Services website which contains menus and other helpful information.

Lunch is free for all students. Students will swipe their student IDs to receive lunch. IDs will not arrive until after fall pictures. In the meantime, students will type in their ID numbers on the register keypad.

If students bring drinks for lunch we want to discourage energy drinks such as Monster, Celsius, Prime and other drinks that are very high in caffeine. We do allow outside drinks during lunches only. Students may carry water bottles with them to classes. We are also in the process of installing a refillable water bottle station. This should be installed in September.

*note the new menus have not been published yet

Food Services of the Norristown Area School District.

We have two counselors at ENMS. These individuals should be one of your first points of contact if you need guidance related to any issue or problem your student may be facing during the school year. We can usually resolve issues quickly when parents contact their child's counselor. If you need to speak to your child's counselor their contact information is found below.

5th and 6th grade School Counselor: Ms. Gena Bussell gbussell@nasd.k12.pa.us

7th and 8th grade School Counselor: Ms. Sarah Raimondi sraimondi@nasd.k12.pa.us

We will hold our annual 5th grade orientation on Thursday August 24th from 9-10:30am.

Parents will need to transport their students to this event. Unfortunately, we are not able to provide transportation as a district.

Students will not need any supplies with them for this event. They can simply come to school at 9am and enjoy a brief introduction to 5th grade.

Parents should follow the arrival and dismissal process found in the article below. Please pay special attention to our arrival and dismissal process. We are extremely efficient and once we get everyone used to our new process I promise you it will be quick and efficient. We do this during orientation to introduce this process to our 5th grade families.

Students will meet their teacher as they exit their cars. They will receive tours of the school as well as use of lockers, and other basic information so they will be ready for the first day of school.

Parents must drop their student off and return at the end of this orientation event.

Below is the map of our car rider arrival and dismissal process.

You may enter the school from either Township Line road (the front of the school) or off Stoney Creek drive (the back of the school). Please take turns turning into the car rider line.

The car rider line is in yellow in the picture below. Notice it snakes along the side and back of the school and brings all cars to the pick up and drop off spot. Please stay in line and follow the cars in front of you. It is a very smooth and quick process during the school year.

During the start of the year it will be a little slower as we train our new families. I promise as we get everyone following the process you will be in and out in minutes.

All cars exit following the red line and all cars MUST EXIT ON TOWNSHIP LINE ROAD. The neighbors off Stoney Creek become upset when we have large numbers of cars exiting in that direction. Therefore everyone has to exit on Township Line road by following the red line between the hours of 7:45-8:00 and 3:00-3:15. We want to be a good neighbor so please help us out by following the exit procedure. We have a East Norriton Township police officer at the red light and it will remain green for long periods of time to get everyone out efficiently.

We will have extra people in the car rider line at the start of the year helping direct traffic.

The biggest issue we face is people trying to park in parking spots waiting to pick up their children. We cannot allow students to leave the curb and get into cars in parking spots. We have a lot of cars moving and we cannot have students crossing into traffic as we loop cars along the property. So everyone must be in the car rider line. If you park in a parking spot we will have to ask you you to move.

Just trust the process and follow our staff directing traffic and we will get you in and out very quickly.

We will be hosting our annual Family Water Ice Night from 5-6:30pm on Wednesday August 23rd.

Stop by and say hello and meet teachers and your new classmates. We will hand our paper schedules at this event. However, you can view your classes online beginning using Infinite Campus beginning August 21st.

We have transitioned to a new student information system, Infinite Campus. We usually refer to this as "IC." Many of you already received a special email from our IT department with the instructions on how to set up your account.

During the summer we had different times where students might have been able to see their schedule. You may have noticed it changed several times. We were doing a lot of training on this system and the official new schedules will not be released until August 21st. Any schedules you may have viewed prior to August 21st are not the actual schedule. We are 99% completed and now we are working on some small adjustments. Please do not contact the school or a counselor asking for schedule information. They will be officially released on August 21st.

This new system replaces Home Access/eSchool. You will love this new product and I have used this program for many years in previous districts. It is a wonderful program for teachers, students and families.

The fall sports season is right around the corner. Physicals will be offered at ENMS during the first weeks of school. However, we recommend parents try to complete their sports physical on their own prior to the start of school. If you are unable to do so students will have the ability to receive a physical at school during the first week or two of school. We have not confirmed the date yet.

Students must have an updated physical on a PIAA form to be eligible for participation. Also, all students and a parent/guardian must complete the online forms on BigTeams prior to tryouts.

See the new middle school athletics website for more information!

Fall athletes on NASD teams will receive individual lockers to use in the boys and girls' locker rooms during the fall sports season. These lockers can be used to store their sports equipment until practice is held after school.

Students are encouraged to purchase their own locks for the large lockers in the locker rooms. However, we will have some locks available for students to borrow until the season ends.

All fall athletes that make the team will be given a locker to use during the fall season. The same will apply to students for the winter and spring sports seasons.

Bus information was emailed to families on or August 21, 2023. Please check your email.

Additionally, we will be conducting PBIS bus safety lessons beginning on the second day of school. We will review seating arrangements on the busses. 5th grade students sit in the first few rows, following by 6th, 7th and 8th grade sits in the last few rows of the bus. This is the expectation on all bus runs.

Students who receive bus referrals from the drivers will be given a warning the first time, followed with a parent phone call. Additional referrals will result in office detentions, bus suspensions, and out of school suspension. If a student is suspended from the bus the parent is responsible for providing transportation during the time of suspension from the bus.

Please take a few minutes to remind your student of this expectation and the consequences of receiving a bus referral for unsafe behavior.

If you want to track the location of your child's bus you can use the First View Buss App on your smartphone. The passcode for East Norriton is 7VZ9. The link to the free First View app is available in the Apple Store and Google Play Store. Download it, add your student and enter the school code.

Our school nurse will be returning to school a few days before our teachers return.

If you need to speak to her the best way to reach her is via email at lzangara@nasd.k12.pa.us.

She can discuss any issues with medication and how medication can be given at school provided we have the correct documentation.

Please see the graphic below to make sure your student has the required immunizations for the fall of 2023. Students without immunizations in 7th grade are excluded from beginning school.

Any questions please contact our school nurse.

Below is the bell schedule for the 2023-2024 school year.

Additionally, one unique aspect of ENMS is that we change our class order each quarter. For example, this means your student might have math first and second period during marking period 1. However, during marking period 2 their math class may change to periods 8-9. We feel that offering classes at different times of the year allows for students to learn different subjects at different times. If they are not a morning person, then they do not always have the same class during the morning all year. This also applies to lunch periods. Students will have lunch during each of the four lunch times during the year. This helps because 10:30 is an early lunch time, so understand they will only have that lunch one marking period of the year.

Another unique feature of ENMS is that we offer WINN (What I Need Now) each morning. Students may be pulled into different groups, work on their IXL, or receive enrichment during WINN time. We run WINN pretty much every day of the school year, with some exceptions.

More information on the scheduling rotation, WINN lunch times will be given to your student during the first days of school.

All students must have their cellphones turned off and placed in their lockers. Below are the consequences for cellphone violations.

1st-3rd offenses: Teachers will ask the students to turn their phone off and place it in their locker, or ask the student to give it to the teacher. It will be returned to the student at the end of the school day.

4th offense: Students will give their cell phone to a teacher and the teachers will give it to the main office. The parent or guardian must report to the school to pick up the device. Cell phones are placed in a locked safe in the main office until parents arrive. A one-hour office detention will be assigned for each violation.

Chronic cellphone offenses: It is the policy of ENMS that students who chronically violate the cellphone policy despite warnings, parents picking up the phone etc. will not be permitted to bring their cell phone to school. This is not negotiable and even if a parent disagrees with this policy it is still our policy and it will be enforced regardless of parental agreement. I am asking parents to please discuss these rules with your student.

All classrooms and office have telephones inside them. If there is an emergency we have plenty of phones to handle any emergency situation.

ENMS does not have a dress code for our students. Many of our students choose to wear hooded sweatshirts. The only rule we have around hoodies is that students must have their hoods off. We need to see students faces and when students wear hoodies, combined with masks it makes it extremely difficult to recognize a student from a distance. Therefore, students who choose to wear hoodies must leave their hoods pulled down.

If we run into situations where students do not remove their hood they will receive consequences ranging from a simple discussion all the way to a suspension for chronic offenders. This is usually not an issue for us, but I like to remind parents at the start of the year of this policy.

Lastly, students also cannot wear "slides." All students must have shoes that have a back on them. Croc style shoes are fine as long as students wear the strap along the back of them. The biggest issue with slides is the tripping hazard they pose on stairs. Therefore, students cannot wear slides to school. Again, this is not a big issue here at school, but I like to remind parents of those two simple rules around our dress policy.

Here are the first and last days for the 2023-2024 school year. Below is a pdf file of the calendar for next year. Plan those trips now :-)

First Day for Students - Monday, August 28, 2023
Last Day for Students - Thursday, June 6, 2024

Here is a link for you to complete a note when your student is absent. Please fill this out the morning of the absence, or within three days of their absence.

You can also send in a paper note with your student the day they return to school.

2023-2024 Student Excuse and Early Release Form

Safe2Say Something is a youth violence prevention program run by the Pennsylvania Office of Attorney General. The program teaches youth and adults how to recognize warning signs and signals, especially within social media, from individuals who may be a threat to themselves or others and to “say something” BEFORE it is too late. With Safe2Say Something, it’s easy and confidential to report safety concerns to help prevent violence and tragedies.

Here’s how it works:

• Submit an anonymous tip report through the Safe2SaySomething system
• Crisis center reviews, assesses and processes all submissions
• Crisis center sends all submissions to school administration and/or law enforcement for intervention
• If needed, crisis center may contact tipster anonymously through the app