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P.A.A.R.I. Receives $930,000 Grant from South Shore Health

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FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

Wednesday, May 15, 2019

Media Contact: John Guilfoil
Phone: 617-993-0003
Email: [email protected]

P.A.A.R.I. Receives $930,000 Grant from South Shore Health

Funding will Support Access to Behavioral Health Services in Plymouth County

PLYMOUTH — Police Assisted Addiction and Recovery Initiative (P.A.A.R.I.) Executive Director Allie Hunter is pleased to announce that P.A.A.R.I. has been awarded a $930,000 Integrative Behavioral Health grant by South Shore Health.

South Shore Health awarded $2.4 million to nonprofit groups this spring to support behavioral healthcare in Plymouth and Norfolk counties. P.A.A.R.I. was one of two nonprofit groups selected to receive a five-year grant for $930,000 this cycle.

The grant will support a new partnership between P.A.A.R.I. and Plymouth County Outreach (PCO), a collaborative of 28 police departments throughout the region. Over the next five years, P.A.A.R.I. will work with PCO to implement a “hub model” throughout the county to expand the behavioral health services available to the community, and coordinate outreach visits for individuals identified as being at acutely elevated risk due to substance use and/or mental health issues.

“This first-of-its-kind grant program through South Shore Health reflects our organization’s deep commitment to promoting good health within the community and by removing barriers to accessing behavioral healthcare for the most vulnerable among us,” said Gene E. Green, president and CEO of South Shore Health. “Congratulations to P.A.A.R.I. for being named a grantee. We are excited to see the impact this initiative will have in our communities.”

“P.A.A.R.I. has had many successful partnerships with PCO, and we are thrilled to embark on this latest initiative to support our local law enforcement partners to address behavioral health needs in Plymouth County,” Hunter said. “We are incredibly thankful that South Shore Health has chosen to support our plan to improve access to behavioral health services on the South Shore.”

“Behavioral health issues are a huge concern, and not just in Plymouth county– these issues are affecting communities everywhere,” said Plymouth Police Chief Michael Botieri, a member of the P.A.A.R.I. Law Enforcement Council. “We’re fortunate that this grant has been awarded to support behavioral health programming locally to help those who are struggling.”

The “hub model” aims to assist those struggling before they reach a crisis point, and to connect the community to a variety of much needed behavioral health services.

“We’ve seen great success with the hub model in communities like Chelsea, Lawrence and Boston, and are looking forward to putting in place a system that will connect those in need to additional services and support,” Hunter said. “This grant will allow us to address a wide umbrella of behavioral health issues in addition to substance use, including mental health concerns.”

“This is monumental as it will allow for PCO to spearhead an innovative Public Health 3.0 initiative –a first in the U.S.,” said Dr. Nate Horwitz-Willis, director of public health for the town of Plymouth. “This grant will help us address complex substance use challenges seen across our law enforcement, healthcare, and public health communities. We collaboratively look forward to addressing these challenges with best practices and scholarly evidence from all three fields that use primary, secondary, and tertiary equitable prevention approaches with a dynamic team of experts and leaders.”

“The time has come where we need to closer examine the crossover between drug addiction and mental health,” said Scituate Police Chief Michael Stewart. “We are all concerned with the rise in mental health cases.”

The grant will fund the hiring of a full time P.A.A.R.I. hub coordinator who will be based in Plymouth County for the next five years, and will oversee the program.

“Plymouth County Outreach is so fortunate and appreciative to partner with P.A.A.R.I. on expanding our county collaboration, bringing an Integrated Behavioral Health approach to our existing model,” said East Bridgewater Police Chief Scott Allen, a member of the P.A.A.R.I. Law Enforcement Council. “We can’t address substance use and mental health disorders in separate silos.”

About P.A.A.R.I.

The Police Assisted Addiction & Recovery Initiative (P.A.A.R.I.) is a nonprofit organization with a mission to help law enforcement agencies nationwide create non-arrest pathways to treatment and recovery. Founded alongside the groundbreaking Gloucester Police Department Angel Initiative in June 2015, P.A.A.R.I. has been a driving force behind this rapidly expanding community policing movement. We provide technical assistance, coaching, grants, and other capacity-building resources to more than 465 police departments in 33 states.

We currently work with more than 120 law enforcement agencies in Massachusetts alone. P.A.A.R.I. and our law enforcement partners are working towards a collective vision where non-arrest diversion programs become a standard policing practice across the country, thereby reducing overdose deaths, expanding access to treatment, improving public safety, reducing crime, diverting people away from the criminal justice system, and increasing trust between law enforcement and their communities. Our programs and partners have saved thousands of lives, changed police culture, and reshaped the national conversation about the opioid epidemic. Learn more at www.paariusa.org.

 

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Medway Public Schools Develop Plans to Support Social-Emotional Learning

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Medway Public Schools
Armand Pires, Superintendent
45 Holliston St.
Medway, MA 02053

 

For Immediate Release

Thursday, May 2, 2019

Media Contact: Benjamin Paulin
Phone: 781-428-3299
Email: [email protected]

Medway Public Schools Develop Plans to Support Social-Emotional Learning

MEDWAY –Superintendent Armand Pires is pleased to share that educators at Medway Middle and High Schools are developing plans to better support social-emotional learning in all subject areas starting this fall.

The district has partnered on the project with Teachers21, a nonprofit, and William James College, who have developed a partnership to offer social emotional consulting services to schools.

Volunteer groups of teachers and administrators at both schools met with a consultant from Teachers 21 for the first time early this April, and will meet with the consultants again before the end of the school year and during the 2019-20 school year.

During these meetings, educators are developing methods to incorporate into daily classroom life the five “core competencies” for social-emotional learning outlined by CASEL, an educational organization that offers resources to teachers looking to reinforce social emotional learning in their schools. These competencies include self-awareness, self-management, responsible decision making, relationship skills and social awareness.

Starting this fall, the schools will introduce teaching practices, procedures and routines to support the development of these skills. For example, a teacher might reinforce social awareness by asking students to reflect on their collaboration with others during a group project.

“Our goal is to come out of this planning with universal practices and structures the whole school can adopt to support social-emotional learning,” said Director of Wellness Ryan Sherman. “Making it routine to practice skills like self-awareness and self-management in the classroom will help students hone these competencies and become stronger learners.”

The district has also worked to support social-emotional learning at the elementary level. Medway elementary schools implemented Responsive Classroom learning this fall, an evidence-based approach to supporting the development of social-emotional skills. This approach empowers students through engagement and positive interactions with one another, their teachers and school staff throughout the day.

 

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King Philip High School Students Take 1st Place at Providence College Computer Programming Contest

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King Philip Regional School District
Paul Zinni, Superintendent
18 King Street
Norfolk, MA 02056

For Immediate Release

Monday, March 18, 2019

Media Contact: Benjamin Paulin
Phone: 781-428-3299
Email: [email protected]

King Philip High School Students Take 1st Place at Providence College Computer Programming Contest

Left to right: King Philip Regional High School students Tyler Dowd, Warren Steinbrecher, Matthew Stetter, and Ethan Ball came in 1st place at a March 12 Computer Programming Contest at Providence College. (Courtesy Photo King Philip Regional School District)

WRENTHAM — Superintendent Paul Zinni is pleased to share that a team of King Philip High School students came in first place at the 33rd Annual Providence College Computer Programming Contest last week.

Two separate sessions of the contest were held on Monday, March 11 and Tuesday, March 12. Four King Philip High School AP Computer Science students,  junior Matthew Stetter and seniors Tyler Dowd, Warren Steinbrecher, and Ethan Ball, competed as a team in the Tuesday, March 12 session of the competition against 11 other groups.

Each team of students was given a packet of problems to solve that touched on a variety of subjects, ranging from geometry and sequences to computer science. All solutions that the teams came up with were required to be in the format of a computer program that would compute the answer based on an input. Students had their choice of submitting solutions into two programming languages: C++ or Java.

To help prepare for the competition, students from each team were given a packet of problems from contests from prior years.

After winning first place in the contest, each student was awarded a $5,000 annual scholarship, should they choose to attend Providence College.

“They went into the competition with the understanding that the other teams could have much more experience than them,” said Matt Gorr, a King Philip Regional High School computer science and physics teacher who attended the contest with the students. “None of us had any expectations of winning. This victory totally belongs to this exceptional group of students. It took problem solving skills, reasoning, attention to detail, and creativity to solve these problems, and they have all individually demonstrated those skills for me time and time again in class. I am very proud of them.”

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Rockland Public Schools Participate in “Hour of Code”

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Rockland Public Schools
Superintendent Dr. Alan Cron
34 MacKinlay Way,
Rockland, MA 02370

For Immediate Release

Monday, Dec. 12, 2018

Contact: John Guilfoil
Phone: 617-993-0003

Rockland Public Schools Participate in “Hour of Code”

ROCKLAND — Superintendent Alan Cron is pleased to announced that the Rockland Public Schools will once again participate in this year’s Hour of Code, celebrating computer science and technology.

The Hour of Code is a worldwide event that has been held annually in December during “Computer Science Education Week” since 2013 and Rockland Public Schools has participated every year since inception. The 2018 Computer Science Education Week was December 3-9, and Rockland has been celebrating with a variety of projects at all of its schools.

“It is so important to nurture the interest of our students in computer science and programming,” said Rockland STEAM Coach Lisa Ryan. “As students persevere through coding challenges, it nurtures critical thinking, logic and creativity that will help them now and in the future.”

Rockland’s Hour of Code Events:

Elementary Schools

Schools: Esten Elementary School, Jefferson Elementary School, Memorial Park Elementary School. STEAM Teachers: Mrs. Rachel Mack and Mrs. Deb Hogan

  • Kindergarten and Grade 1: Introduction to coding with hopscotch coding using laminated coding tiles on the floor; students lay out the coding order which includes arrow tiles and motion tiles like clap, stomp and pat knees; their partner performs the code.
  • Grade 2: Students will expand on sequencing, use loops for repeated patterns of code, and write code to draw a picture on the screen to match the one they have drawn on paper using activities from code.org.
  • Grade 3: Learn the fundamentals of game-based design to create a Star Wars game with events and commands; students can choose a main character, characters to chase, sounds to play, point values to win the game, and new characters to “spawn” using code.org.
  • Grade 4: Use a sandbox coding environment to create an animated Google Doodle with events and commands; students create loops to make their images rotate, bounce, change colors and size, say words and make sounds using MIT’s Scratch.

Rogers Middle School

Technology Teacher: Mrs. Debbie Orth

  • Grades 5-8: Students used Code.org’s new Dance Party theme using events and commands; students chose from a variety of dancers, moves, dances, background effects and more to create unique dance parties.

Rockland High School

Teacher for all classes: Mrs. Angela Armstrong

  • Computer Science: Created a game using Code.org App lab
  • AP Biology : Use Google’s Create a Logo activity to make a logo that relates to a current course topic (MIT’s Scratch)
  • AP Computer Science Principles: Programmed the NAO robot

“The Hour of Code is designed to demystify code and show that computer science is not rocket science—anybody can learn the basics,” said Hadi Partovi, founder and CEO of Code.org. “Over 100 million students worldwide have tried an Hour of Code. The demand for relevant 21st-century computer science education crosses all borders and knows no boundaries.”

About Hour of Code:

The Hour of Code is about more than celebrating computer science and coding. It’s about inspiring students to try something that’s challenging. Engaging in computational thinking helps nurture critical thinking, logic and creativity. The iterative and problem-solving methods are related to growth mindset and reinforces skills that will make students successful in other curricula areas and in life. It’s also an excellent career choice for our students.

  • Nationally, 58 percent of new STEM jobs are in computer science while only 8 percent of STEM graduates are in computer science
  • Massachusetts currently has over 19,000 open computing jobs.
  • The average salary for a computing occupation in Massachusetts is $103,278, which is significantly higher than the average salary in the state: $62,110.

About Code.org:

Code.org is a 501c3 public non-profit dedicated to expanding participation in computer science and increasing participation by women and underrepresented students of color. Its vision is that every student in every school has the opportunity to learn computer programming. After launching in 2013, Code.org organized the Hour of Code campaign – which has introduced over 100 million students to computer science to date – and partnered with 70 public school districts nationwide to expand computer science programs. Code.org is supported by philanthropic donations from corporations, foundations and generous individuals, including Microsoft, Facebook, Infosys Foundation USA, Amazon, and others. For more information, please visit: code.org.

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