Please RSVP by Monday October 5th in order for our kitchen to plan accordingly.
LAKE REGION YOUTH BASKETBALL is hosting sign ups:
When: Saturday, October 17th from 2pm-5pm
Where: in front of the Orleans school
Who: children in grades K-6th from:
Brownington
Barton
Glover
Orleans
Albany
Irasburg
Westmore
Sign up forms will be sent home with district students this week. Please DO NOT return forms to your students' school.
For any and all questions please email lakeregionyouthbasketball@gmail.com
Want to help? We are looking for volunteers to run tables or assist with setup and cleanup. It is a great way to join the fun and lend a helping hand. See the link below for more details.
https://forms.gle/Ck91uMDy5hiDLZEM6
the person showing unsafe behavior
students and staff impacted by the unsafe behavior
the school building and related property
Threat assessment is not an adversarial process; many threats are a cry for help. Having a team approach with a clear process allows for the safety of everyone involved. The process is designed to address, evaluate, and manage threatening behavior and troubling situations that may impact school safety. OCSU’s guide is based on best practices created by the U.S. Secret Service & U.S. Department of Education, and the need to follow these best practices are mandated by the Senate and House.
To learn more about behavioral threat assessment in OCSU, please visit this website. To report a potential incident please do one of the following:
Contact your school principal or the superintendent of schools (1-802-525-1204)
Email the team at: crisis@ocsu.org
Use our dedicated crisis form
Dear OCSU Families,
As we continue our Strong Start September, I want to share two important aspects of keeping our school communities safe: emergency preparedness and weather-related decisions. Each of our schools follows Vermont Agency of Education requirements and maintains an Emergency Operations Plan specific to its building and community. These plans address medical emergencies, severe weather, building security, evacuation, sheltering in place, and family reunification. We review our plans annually with local emergency responders and practice age-appropriate safety procedures with students and staff. Families will receive advance notification of scheduled safety drills. Our goal is to ensure that every student feels safe, supported, and ready to learn.
With the colder months approaching, I also want to share how we make decisions about school closings, delayed openings, and early dismissals. As you know, weather in the Northeast Kingdom can vary significantly from one town to another! To make weather related decisions, I typically begin at about 3:45 am to closely monitor forecasts and warnings for each one of our communities, looking at predicted conditions mile by mile and hour by hour. I also work closely with our transportation coordinator at Butler’s Bus Service, who gathers firsthand information from town road crews and bus drivers. After multiple check-ins with our transportation coordinator, conversations with neighboring superintendents, and continued monitoring of conditions, I make the final decision. While we cannot predict every change in the weather, the safety of our students, staff, and drivers is always my highest priority. Please reach out and let me know if you have any suggestions about how I might improve the process of making these decisions.
I know that changes to the school day can create challenges for families, and I sincerely apologize for that inconvenience. Whenever possible, morning decisions will be communicated by 5:45 a.m. through local news outlets, social media, and our automated notification system, which sends voice calls, text messages, and emails. Please ensure your child’s school has your current contact information and that you have a backup plan for unexpected changes. We are fortunate to have a dedicated team at Butler’s Bus Service who care deeply about safely transporting our students. Occasionally, staffing or other challenges may require routes to be combined, schedules to change, or a route to be canceled. Having a plan for alternative transportation, childcare, or early pickup will help your family navigate these situations.
Finally, I want to express my sincere gratitude to all of our OCSU families. Keeping our schools safe and our students ready to learn takes all of us working together. Whether you are updating your contact information, preparing a backup plan, reinforcing safety expectations with your child, or showing patience when plans change, your partnership matters so very much. Thank you for the trust you place in us each day and for the many ways you support our schools. We are grateful to be part of your children’s lives and look forward to a wonderful school year together!
Warmly,
Jackie Ramsay-Tolman
Your OCSU Superintendent
We love seeing their curiosity, creativity, and big smiles come to life in the classroom.
There are open school board seats. If you reside in Orleans or Westmore and are interested in joining the local school board, please reach out to Lisa Worden for more information.
🏀 Physical Education focused on updating rubrics for our student grading system, SmartScore.
🎨 Art Education worked on curriculum mapping.
🎶 Music Education focused on classroom management and curriculum mapping for our middle schools.
We love seeing our Allied Arts team use their time to learn, collaborate, and continue finding ways to support our students! ❤️
Dear OCSU Families and Community,
Every day across Orleans Central, our students walk into classrooms where our amazing teachers help them learn, grow, think, question, problem-solve, and discover what they are capable of. There is so much that goes into making those moments successful, and this week I wanted to share a little about the work happening across OCSU to support strong teaching and learning in every classroom.
Student learning is at the heart of why we are here. Every student, no matter which OCSU school or classroom they are in, must have access to the essential learning they need, and it is our responsibility to make sure they learn. Our teachers know their students and bring their own strengths, expertise, and professional judgment to this work every day. Across OCSU, we are becoming clearer and more consistent about what students must learn, how we will know when they’ve learned, and what we will do when they need more time, additional support, or greater challenge. Our responsibility doesn’t end with teaching the content; it includes paying attention to whether students are learning and responding when they need something different.
That is why we have intentionally provided additional time this year for teachers to work and learn together. They are identifying the most essential learning for students, looking together at evidence of student progress, sharing instructional practices, and planning how best to respond to their students. This time allows teachers to strengthen instruction and respond more effectively to each student’s learning needs. It also gives our teachers the opportunity to learn from one another and ensures they have the clarity, time, and support to do this important work well.
We have much to be proud of in our schools, and we also know there is important work ahead of us. We want more of our students to demonstrate proficiency in literacy, mathematics, and all of the content areas (including unified arts!). This year, we have specific OCSU learning goals connected directly to our strategic plan and student achievement. While assessment results are one way we understand how our students are doing, this work is about much more than test scores. It is about making sure our students develop the knowledge, skills, confidence, and opportunities they will need throughout their lives. Accomplishing this takes all of us, with teachers providing strong instruction, students engaging in their learning, and families continuing to support and encourage learning at home.
The work we are doing is grounded in some of the strongest research and best practices we have about how schools improve student learning, and this is truly shared work. Our principals are working side by side with district leadership, and our teachers are doing the important work of bringing these practices to life with students every day. From Pre-K through grade 12, we are building greater consistency and connection across our schools so that district leaders, principals, and teachers are all moving in the same direction, with student learning at the center.
Our vision at Orleans Central is that all our students will have pathways that lead them to success throughout their lives. That is a big promise, and fulfilling it happens through the work we do together every day. This work happens in our classrooms, in our schools, and in partnership with our students, families and communities.
Thank you for your continued partnership and for the trust you place in us and our schools!
Yours in education,
Jackie Ramsay-Tolman
Your OCSU Superintendent
🗓 Date: Wednesday, September 23rd
Please RSVP by September 21st
We can't wait to see you there!
Very Important: November 3 Election – Orleans Central Board Seats
With the State Board’s approval of our Articles of Agreement, we are moving forward with the November 3 vote on the formation of the Orleans Central Unified Union School District.
In addition to voting on the formation of the new district, voters will elect the initial members of the new Orleans Central Board. If the formation vote is successful, those individuals will serve as the initial board.
The approved Articles establish a 14-member board, with two seats allocated to each of our seven communities (Albany, Barton, Brownington, Glover, Irasburg, Westmore, Village of Orleans). Candidates must be registered voters and residents of the community associated with the seat they are seeking. Because this is a modified at-large model, candidates run for a seat associated with their community, but voters throughout the proposed district vote on the candidates.
Anyone wishing to be a candidate must file the required nominating petition and written consent with Kristin Atwood, Barton Town Clerk no later than 5:00 p.m. on Monday, September 28. You may email the documents to bartontownoffice@gmail.com or you may drop off at the Barton town clerks office. Petitions need at least 30 signatures and they can be from anyone in the District, not just your town.
To have your name printed on the November 3 ballot, the completed petition and written consent must be filed with Barton town clerk by 5:00 p.m. on Monday, September 28.
We can accommodate write-in candidates but they must be qualified for that office.
The necessary candidate forms are linked here for your convenience. If you wish to be a candidate, you will need to print and complete the forms, obtain the required 30 signatures, identify the specific term you are seeking, and file the completed materials with the Barton town clerk by the deadline.
Here are the forms for you to print:
local_candidate_petition.pdf
consent_candidate_local_elections.pdf
The initial terms established in our Articles are:
Albany: 1-year and 2-year
Barton: 1-year and 3-year
Brownington: 1-year and 2-year
Glover: 1-year and 3-year
Irasburg: 1-year and 2-year
Westmore: 2-year and 3-year
Village of Orleans: 2-year and 3-year
These initial staggered terms are established in Article 10 of the approved Articles of Agreement.
We will also have hard copies of the petition and consent forms available for you to pick up at COFEC between the hours of 8:00-3:30 daily
.
Please pay close attention to the filing deadline if you are interested in seeking a seat on the new board.
Consistent school attendance is key to student growth and connection. As you schedule appointments or family travel this year, please reference our 2026-2027 OCSU School Vacation calendar to help keep classroom time a priority.
Thank you for your continued support in making attendance a priority!
Dear OCSU Families,
I hope your school year is off to a great start! It’s been great to see students back in the buildings and settling into the daily routines! For the rest of this month, I will be sending out one note each week as part of my Strong Start September communications. This week, I want to talk about one of our OCSU goals for the year, which is to increase our student attendance rates. We know that every day a student is in school is another opportunity to learn, to build on previous learning, participate in what’s happening in the classroom, connect with friends and trusted adults, and get support when it’s needed. Simply put, we want our students in school as much as possible because we want them to get everything they can from their time with us.
Of course, we also know that missed days can add up quickly. Missing just two days a month can mean missing about 10% of the school year. Vermont has a new attendance law that places a greater focus on chronic absenteeism, which is defined as missing 10% or more of school days, whether excused or unexcused. We absolutely have a responsibility to follow the law, but our goal is bigger than compliance. We want to notice concerns earlier, reach out sooner, and work together with families before a few missed days become a bigger concern.
To help us with this, I want to let you know that Danielle Greenwood will be working this year as OCSU’s School-to-Home Coordinator. Danielle will work with students, families, schools, and community partners if attendance becomes a concern. She can help us understand what may be getting in the way, connect families with resources, and bring the right people together to help. We know that sometimes getting to school can be difficult, for all kinds of reasons, and families don’t need to have the problem figured out before reaching out to us. That’s where we can work together.
As we get this school year underway, I’m asking for your partnership. When your child is healthy and able to be at school, we hope you will continue to partner with us and support regular attendance.
Please keep an eye on how many days have been missed and, whenever possible, schedule appointments, trips, and other activities outside of school time. Most importantly, if getting to school is becoming difficult for any reason, please talk with us. The earlier we know, the earlier we can work together to help.
If you’d like to learn more, Attendance Works has helpful information for families about attendance and chronic absence, including their quick 10 Facts About School Attendance resource, which shows how quickly missed days can add up and why regular attendance matters.
Please don’t hesitate to reach out if you have questions about Vermont’s new attendance law or the work we are doing here in OCSU, and thank you in advance for your continued partnership as we move through our school year!
Look for another note from me next week as we continue our Strong Start September! Warmly,
Jackie Ramsay-Tolman Your OCSU Superintendent
At Irasburg Village School, our SPARK values guide how we learn, grow, and treat one another each day:
🔵 Safety — Making choices that keep ourselves and others safe
🟠 Passion — Bringing enthusiasm and giving our best effort
🟢 Achievement — Setting goals and working hard to reach them
🟣 Respect — Treating others the way we want to be treated
🟡 Kindness — Showing we care through our words and actions
This year, students and staff members will be looking for—or “spotting”—people demonstrating these values throughout our school. When someone notices a student or staff member showing SPARK, they can complete a SPARK Spotting sheet describing what they noticed and why it mattered. Both staff members and students can recognize others!
Completed sheets will be displayed on our SPARK Spotting bulletin boards so we can celebrate the wonderful choices being made throughout IVS.
During our weekly assembly, I will select a few SPARK Spotting sheets to read aloud to the school. After the assembly, every student recognized that week can bring their sheet home and share it with their family.
On Mondays, be sure to ask your child, “Were you SPARK spotted last week?” They may have been recognized by a staff member or a peer!
By noticing, naming, and celebrating these moments, we are helping our students understand that even small choices can make a big difference. Together, we SPARK success!