Hello Coolidge Corner School Families and Friends,

We hope you are enjoying the start to the summer break and finding time to slow things down, reconnect with family and friends, read, and play outside.  The following communication outlines a few important pieces of news regarding our CCS Priorities and Summer Feedback Sessions, Class Placement Information, and Additional Summer Information.

CCS Priorities and Summer Feedback Sessions

It was certainly a BIG year for our school with many exciting accomplishments.  As we pause to reflect on and celebrate the many positive points of the 2018-2019 school year it’s hard to believe that all fit inside 10 months!!  

As we look ahead to building on our strengths to address our challenges we have been engaging the community over the past year, and intensively over the past two months, to identify key priorities to focus on for the 2019-2020 school year.  

In May we held two open Family Feedback Forums, an open Staff Feedback Forum, and held individual and group listening sessions.  We spent time in June taking in all of that feedback coupled with many other pieces of information and data and began shaping our two priorities.  Throughout that process we engaged working groups such as our School Council, Access and Equity Team, PTO, and School Support Team to check in and provide additional feedback as we narrowed our focus areas.  

In mid-June we shared out our two priorities and gathered additional feedback in a family meeting on June 14th and a staff meeting on June 18th.  You can view slidedeck from both those presentations by clicking on the hyperlink.  

This summer we will be working on identifying objectives, action items, and benchmarks that will help move us towards increased clarity and cohesiveness as a community.  Once these are identified we will gather additional focus groups for more feedback on the items before finalizing the plan, writing it into our School Improvement Plan, and sharing it broadly in August.  

As part of and in addition to our work on solidifying our plan to make progress on our two identified priorities I will be hosting summer listening sessions with families.  You can use our online scheduling tool to sign up for a time slot.  You are more than welcome to come alone or bring a group to each session.  

Class Placement Information

Families can expect class assignments for Kindergarten through Grade 5 to be mailed home during the first week of July.  The class placement process began in March when we invited families to submit feedback through our online form. It continued through multiple rounds of meetings in May and June and careful and thoughtful attention was given to each student’s teacher and class assignment.  Balancing classroom cohorts is a complex process that our staff has dedicated much time, effort, and thought to these past three months. Class placements are finalized at this stage and it is very rare that we would make adjustments to a student’s placement during the summer months.  

Along with the class assignment for your child you will find information from your child’s teacher, information from the PTO about how to access the directory, and a welcome letter from the administrative team.  If you do not receive your mailing by the end of July, please email me so we can be sure we have the correct address on file and I can share digitally with you the class assignment.  

Summer at CCS

We hope that everyone gets a chance to get out and enjoy the gifts of warmer weather and relaxed schedules this summer.  We also hope that your children are spending some time reading, or being read to, over the break. Be sure to send us your photos of your child and/or your family reading over the summer break for our #HiveReads challenge and we will put the photos up on our display board in the main lobby on the first few days back to school in the fall.  You can email us your photos at 345BeesRead@gmail.com or tweet them out to us @TheHiveInCC and use #HiveReads.  We can’t wait to see all the great books our families are reading this summer! 

Most of our staff does not work at CCS during the summer months.  As such, you may find that if you email an educator you do not get a response back.  The first official day back for most of our staff is Tuesday, September 3rd. Should you need anything during the summer months you can call me at 617-879-4403 or email me at jennifer_buller@psbma.org.  You are also welcome to stop by the building, say hello, and share a fun summer story if you are in the neighborhood.  I am in the building most days and you can find me in the main office.  

This is such an exciting time for our community!  Having spent the year listening, gathering information, and getting to know our new big space, we are poised to dig in to the important work of weaving back together the tapestry of our community.  Some of what lies before us are small technical challenges that can have a big impact and set us moving in positive directions. And some of our challenges require sustained commitment, focus, and monitoring over a year or more.  We encourage everyone to join us in this collaborative work and remain committed to building a positive, thriving, warm, welcoming, inclusive community that fosters connectedness and growth for all our students.  

Have a safe and happy summer and KEEP READING!!!

Jen