PAMKA Press Nov. - Dec. 2007
Dear MKA Families
At MKA, there are three significant committees
with Pre-K-12 oversight for all aspects of our
school: the Administrative Council, the Curriculum
Committee, and the Safety, Security and
Communications Committee. These three entities
keep us functioning as one school, develop standards
for our performance as a school and assess
MKA’s ability to meet those standards. Safety,
Security and Communications recently moved the
school to the Honeywell Alert system, which provides
the same options and protocol for emergency
communication at all three campuses. The Administrative
Council recently agreed to a common alternate
mode for faculty evaluation in what will be a
transition year for planning changes in how we do
that work. The Curriculum Committee is analyzing
the development of our students’ reading comprehension
and determining goals for measuring the
effectiveness of our program. Karen Newman,
Director of Curriculum and Professional Development,
chairs the Curriculum Committee. Rich Sunshine,
Assistant Headmaster and Chief Financial
Officer, chairs Safety, Security and Communications,
and I run the Administrative Council.
Of the three committees, Safety, Security and
Communications is the most recently constituted.
Last year, this committee initiated a security audit
for MKA by Stonegate Associates, a security consulting
firm that has provided service to many of the
public schools in Montclair. We received a positive
report for our existing procedures and policies, and
we received a number of recommendations and
approval for the changes that we were contemplating.
As a result, we have video cameras and remote
locking door systems at the main entrances of all
three campuses. The Valley Road entrance of our
Middle School has been closed and daytime visitor
traffic redirected to the Brunswick Road entrance.
We have hired off-duty police to help establish safe
traffic patterns at the end of the day at the Middle
and Upper Schools. Lock-down and sheltering-inplace
procedures will be established at all three campuses
and we will practice those procedures with our
students and employees in addition to our fire drills.
As a trip to any airport in the country will
reveal, security also generates inconvenience and
requires both the passengers and crews of airlines to
give up old travel patterns and habits. Many of you
have spent considerable time in car-lines as the pickup
and drop-off pace and routine gets established at
the beginning of the year. Thank you for your
patience and for abiding by MKA car-line “rules.”
If you find yourself running late with a building
sense of frustration, try to remember that most safety
problems are created by impatience and a decision
to act in exception to procedures and not by
unknown individuals with intent to do harm.
Another example of personal convenience or
preference giving way to safety is in regard to bringing
pets to campus. Pets need to stay in cars and
cannot be brought into school buildings. If a dog is
on a leash and brought to a game or outdoor event,
owners must keep them a safe distance from all
other spectators. Children, especially young children,
do not always know how to behave appropriately
with an animal they have not met before.
Approaching a school campus is not like going to a
shopping center, a private home or any other destination.
School zone signs are in place for a reason.
We need to slow down, look around and expect the
unexpected. Our children and those of other people
are all around us, which is why it is both a
tremendous privilege and responsibility to participate
in the life of a school community.
Warmest Regards,
Thomas W. Nammack
Headmaster
Archived letters
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