Message from Geoff Bruno Ed.D

Coming to you from the central offices located in the back of our Marion Stoddart Middle School is the first edition of the GDRSD Weekly Update! Starting Monday, January 20th, all our families and staff will be receiving an email with this newsletter embedded at the beginning of every week with updates from across the district, important messages from our schools and central office, upcoming events & links from across our GSRSD, and highlights of the amazing things our students and staff are doing in our schools and communities. We will also be posting and archiving all editions of this newsletter on the website, attached to the Superintendent's page for anyone in the community to access.

School Committee Budget Forum & Information on Chapter 70 Funding: January 22

During this upcoming week's School Committee meeting, we will be presenting slides outlining the basics of Chapter 70 funding and how both towns raise the funds necessary to operate our school district. The School Committee is also hosting an open forum to hear from the community regarding the budget challenges we are facing and the impact of personnel cuts over the past two fiscal years: FY25 and FY24. The Budget Forum and Chapter 70 slides will start at 7:45pm. Click on this link to access the FY26 Budget slides presented at our last SC meeting on January 8.

Nora Gagnon: Superintendent for the Day

Nora Gagnon, a 6th grade student at GDRMS, designed the winning logo for the Middle School PTO. Her "prize" was the opportunity to be GDRSD Superintendent for a day. On January 15, Nora kicked off our weekly District Leadership Team Meeting in the morning, checked in on 3rd and 4th grade classrooms at Florence Roche Elementary School (including her sister's 3rd grade class), connected with our 7th and 8th grade students in foreign language classrooms - Latin & Spanish - and helped our central office team put together classroom materials. Nora also shared some ideas, championing the "pizza snow day" and putting forth a thought to rename the Middle School North building. Great job, Nora!

Staff Spotlight!

At our December School Committee meeting, Chair Lacey McCabe shared slides of our GDRSD staff nominated for the staff spotlight, a new monthly recognition from our School Committee encouraging members of our community to nominate staff who have had a meaningful impact on our community. The slides for staff nominated in November and December are running on the Groton Channel: click on this link to view!

Congratulations GDRHS DECA Team!

Last week, 83 members of the GDRHS DECA (Distributive Education Clubs of America) team competed in the District V competition at UMASS Lowell. Students either prepared a presentation for judging or participated in individual or team role play events. The 2-day event was attended by 10 School districts and over 1,100 students in the Pulichino Tong Business Center on the north campus. Our team made a very strong showing with 16 students qualifying for the state competition in February. First year member Sophia West and the senior team of Ryan Ghamsari and Shrinand Sriprasad took first place in their respective categories. Other members who received a second through fifth place finish to qualify are Jack Hickey, Jason Zambuto, Colin Duffy, Sahasra Sreepathi, Joseph DeAngelis, Brody Tyler, Saanvi Gowda, Trent Snow, Matthew Valenta, Arthur Johnson, Mike Reilly, Jackson Connolly and Aiden Connor. Congratulations to all who competed and represented the GDRHS team. Good luck at States!

Upcoming Events and Important Dates:

January 22nd-January 24th - High School Finals

Wednesday, January 22nd - Open Forum/Chapter 70 Info Night - 7:45pm in the PAC

Thursday, January 23rd - Florence Roche Grade 4 Concert - 7:00pm in the PAC

Saturday, February 1st - Preschool Registration opens for the 2025-2026 School Year. For more information, please click here. Please see the district website for the registration link on 2/1/2025