SCHOOL POLICE OFFICER HIRED AND OTHER
SAFE SCHOOL INITIATIVES AT NORWIN
A
cting upon a recommendation made by High School
students this spring, the Norwin School District has hired
a school police officer and is moving ahead with several
other school safety initiatives.
In October, the Norwin Board of Education approved Officer
Jeffrey Pritts as a School Police Officer through the 2020-2021
school year. Officer Pritts was most recently a School Police
Officer with the Mount Pleasant Area School District for four
years; before that, he served 26 years as a municipal police
officer for the City of Greensburg.
Officer Pritts will be based at Norwin High School, but will
provide school police services for all seven schools in the
Norwin School District. He has told school officials that his
initial goals will be developing a rapport with students and
working cohesively with the North Huntingdon Township
Police Department. Officer Pritts will be available to speak in
classes, will serve on the District-Wide Safe Schools Committee,
and will be an integral part of the School District Emergency
Plan. Once duly approved by the Westmoreland County
Court of Common Pleas, Officer Pritts will be authorized to
carry a firearm and will have full authority as provided by the
School Code, including the authority to make arrests and issue
citations.
Late last school year, Superintendent Dr. William Kerr met
with nine Norwin High School students to discuss school
safety measures that resulted in several recommendations
for future improvements. Their top recommendation was to
have a school resource officer or school police officer. In May,
the Board of Education directed
the Administration to begin the
process, and the recruitment,
screening, and interviewing phase
took place during the summer.
Local and state police assisted
Norwin School District by serving
on a panel of interviewers.
“Our highest priority is safe and
secure schools for an environment
that is positive and conducive to
teaching and learning,” Dr. Kerr
said.
Other school safety improvements
include:
• Nine welded frame advisory signs have been installed
around the Norwin campus and outlying elementary
schools advising the public of minimum expectations for
safe and respectful use of District facilities.
• Students are being more involved in emergency drills.
Posters explaining safe schools emergency drills have been
hung in each classroom.
• A student-teacher school safety advisory committee has
been created at Norwin High School. Meetings are held
monthly with High School Administration for students to
share safe school concerns. Several student-generated
ideas brought up this fall are in the process of being
implemented.
Hahntown Elementary School Student
Wins Award of Merit at the National PTA Reflections program
L
andon Gribar, a second-grade student at
Hahntown Elementary, won an Award of
Merit at the national PTA Reflections program
for 2017-2018.
During his first grade year at Hahntown
Elementary with Mrs. Megan Fulton as his
homeroom teacher, Landon created an animated
film exploring the Reflections theme “Within
Reach.” His film, titled Never Give Up, Up, Up!, was
inspired by his recent first experience picking
apples at an apple orchard. Landon created his
own drawings to represent his apple picking
experience. He used image editing software to
make slight changes to 130 images to create the
animation. He used movie editing software to finalize his film.
Landon’s film production helped him advance through the
competitions at the school, district, region, and state levels. At
the state competition, he won first place for film production,
advancing to nationals. Landon’s film will be on display at the
National PTA Student Arts Showcase on January 22, 2019 in
Washington, DC. Currently, Landon, age 7, is a second-grader
at Hahntown Elementary with Mrs. Shannon Glenn as his
homeroom teacher.
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NORWIN
Norwin students Tyler Davis and Nicholas Cormas
also won first place at the state level Reflections contest
and had their work submitted to the national competition,
with both of them being sponsored by Hillcrest PTA.
Each year, dozens of Norwin students in kindergarten
through Grade 8 create and submit original works of
art through the PTA Reflections Program. For more
information regarding the National PTA Reflections
Program, please see: https://www.pta.org/home/
programs/reflections.
Pennsylvania PTA Reflections 2017-2018 Results
Congratulations to these Norwin students who excelled at
the state level of the PTA Reflections contest.
PHOTOGRAPHY
Abrielle Brown- Norwin Middle School PTA (4th place)
FILM PRODUCTION
Landon Gribar- Hahntown PTA (1st place)
DANCE CHOREOGRAPHY
Dylan Joseph Reynolds- Stewartsville PTA (4th place)
MUSIC COMPOSITION
William Little- Stewartsville PTA (4th place, Primary level)
Tyler Davis- Hillcrest PTA (1st place, Intermediate level)
Nicholas Jeremiah Cormas-Hillcrest PTA (1st place,
Middle level)
Courtesy: Norwin Council of PTAs