Superintendent Message

January 20, 2023

Hello to all!

We had our latest Key Communicators Meeting last night at Northwest High. Thank you to all of you who fought through the rain and falling trees to make it to our meeting!

We spent the evening discussing our strategic plans for the next three years for Northwest Local Schools. We feel really good about the direction of our district. We hope you do too!

So much of what we discussed was centered on student learning and student achievement. Our school system continues to grow and move in the right direction! Thank you for your constant support!

Here are our goals that we are focused on until the Spring of 2025: 

Goal 1: Communication 

Goal 2: Finance, Facilities, and Safety 

Goal 3: Academics and Curriculum Opportunities 

Goal 4: Culture, Climate, and Wellness 

Goal 5: Human Resources and Business Operations 

Goal 6: Technology and Professional Development

We will continue to give updates on these goals at our school board meetings. We will also do our best to detail the goals met through our website when appropriate. You should be able to see more information on our goals with each addition of the Northwest News.

On February 13, we will be recording our State of the Schools to be played through our website for all to see. Please be on the lookout for that soon.

Our next Key Communicators Meeting will be Wednesday, March 22 at 7:00. In that meeting our focus will be curriculum, testing, and plans for the 2023-2024 school year. All are invited!

Thank you again for your support of Northwest Local Schools! 

Shawn Braman, Ed.D  

Hello to everyone in the Northwest Community!

I was so happy to see our students dressed for Halloween last week and having fun! It appeared to me that every child was having a blast Friday and for that, we are all blessed! Most of our teachers (and principals too) were dressed up for Halloween and I think they had fun too! Everyone worked very hard to make the day a special day. Our Middle School had their time the week before and from what I understand, the day was good. The Halloween Dance after school was even better!

We saw many great things last week. A guidance counselor was dressed as a 7-foot dinosaur walking the halls of Stinson at 7:30 am. Parents were cheering and excited to see our Halloween parade just outside of the Primary and Stinson. We all got to see Mr. Hirschman dressed up as Cruella Deville and that was pretty unbelievable! Mrs. Mariani was a pretty sharp looking crayon too. Mr. Tausch and Mr. Cocklin dressed up as “serious” looking police officers- almost realistic. Some of our students got to hear our middle school band play some excellent spooky songs that still had me humming in my head at the end of the day. We also saw our high school kids going “Trick or Treat” visiting every teacher throughout the morning.

All of these things happening throughout the day make Northwest Schools a special place! Our kids are happy and excited to be at school. And because of their excitement, school work and learning become as natural as breathing. We really do have a great place!

Congrats to all of our fall teams for all of their success! A special good luck to the football team as they prepare to beat Buchtel at our place this Friday! As a former gym rat, I am more than ready for winter sports to begin. That being said, I am excited to see how far our football team can go!

Finally – this is a special shout out to the middle school students who will be traveling to Washington D.C. I hope all of the 8th graders have a great time (I am sure that they will)! I am really happy for them!

 Have a great week!

Shawn Braman, EdD

Hello to All in the Northwest Community!

This week's message is a simple one:

As hard as this is to believe, the last day of the first quarter of school is today! Grades/Report Cards for all of our students will be posted through the Home Access Center on Friday, October 21st after 5:00 p.m.

And one final message: Unfortunately, the weather is clearly changing (for the cooler). It seems to be colder and colder every day! This is a remind to all of our students to remember to start dressing warm! I hate to say this but snow will be on its way soon.

Thank you all! If you ever have any questions or concerns on anything - call me at 330.573.9024!

Have a great weekend!

Shawn Braman, Ed.D

Hello to All in the Northwest Community:

At our last School Board meeting, we discussed making improvement in the Sports Annex as there has been a need for a very long time. To follow up with our meeting, I am sending a message to all of our parents to let you know our plans for the future.

To correct this situation, I have been meeting with Stacy Frase, Jason Hathaway, Larry Tausch and Andy Cocklin to arrange for short term plans to "fix" our sports annex.  By short-term, we mean quick fixes to make improvements for our students until we arrive at plans for major improvements.

We have also been discussing our long-term goals for our annex as well. Once we have those plans mapped out, we will share those with all of you. The long-term goals will include input from many through the community.

For now, our short-term goals for the annex are as follows:

• Remove the excess clutter and "stuff" that has accumulated in the facility
• Remove the weights no longer used due to wear and tear or are no longer impactful to strength training. In addition, we discussed removing machines that have become to old from constant use. We discussed proper removal through donation if/when appropriate
• Remove broken mirrors or cracked mirrors for safety and aesthetic reasons
• Paint locker rooms, weight rooms, and wrestling room
• New light fixtures - or at least, brighter bulbs to liven up the room
• Regularly scheduled cleanliness routines developed by Head Weight Trainer and Head of Physical Fitness
• And most important: A Boy/Girl facility schedule, created, maintained and enforced by all coaches. This has been a major concern as more and more of our female athletes are interested in lifting weights. The key to this is for all of our coaches and student-athletes to closely adhere to a schedule for safety purposes
• Completed data for short-term improvements: January 5, 2023

We may be adding more to our list of short-term fixes. Right now, these goals are our first steps towards long term corrections that will benefit all of our children.

Have a great week!

Shawn Braman, Ed.D

Hello to everyone in the Northwest Community!

We have a lot of excellent things happening throughout the school district. We have been working diligently on our district wide strategic plans last year and this year too.

Recently, our school board approved an agenda item to enable the school district to purchase 113.5 acres for less than $8,000 an acre from a local farming family. This purchase will allow the school district to grow in a variety of ways. The school district will purchase the land with no direct local tax payer dollars within the community.

MacGregor Farm will be acquired through Nexus pipeline money that the school district has already received. This is important for everyone to remember: The land will be purchased with no local tax payer dollars through the general fund. This recent purchase will enable Northwest Local Schools to do many things for or students and we do this without leveraging any local funding.

This purchase has been done for student safety. The additional land will eventually provide us additional entrances and exits to the school district in case of an emergency. We constantly obsess over safety in all of our school buildings. We believe, with this purchase, Northwest Local Schools continues to move in the right direction.

Eventually, with the land purchase we would like to expand our stadium parking. When we have a large crowd for an event or game at the stadium, parking has become a major issue. Part of our strategic plans includes making improvements with parking for outdoor events at our stadium. Even beyond parking, we are hopeful the land purchase will allow us the opportunity to improve our existing facilities as well.

We are also examining the possibility for Northwest to go green through adding solar panels on school grounds. The implementation of the solar panels could provide over 75% of our energy throughout the district. Even better, this would allow Northwest School to be one of the first to go green in Stark County.

We will also expand our science curriculum with the addition of 13 acres of wetlands. Science teachers here could create classes where our students use the land and the wetlands as a hands-on learning experience.

This purchase is a great situation for our district. We have many excellent plans which will unfold over the next few years. This land will never ever be used as a new bus garage. This purchase will allow us to continue to be friendly neighbors for anyone in the surrounding area. Finally, please remember, the pipeline money will be used to cover the entire cost of the land acquisition.

We are blessed and lucky to have the opportunity to say thank you. We also welcome any suggestions to help us to continue to move forward.

Thank you and have a great weekend!

Thank you-

Shawn M. Braman, Ed.D