Dear Kindergarten – Grade 7 Families and Friends,

It is hard to believe that we are just three months away from the end of our first year back together as a PreK-8 community in our big, beautiful, brand new building!  This year has been quite busy and filled with successes and challenges as we moved through our growth and development as a reunified school. It is exciting to begin to plan forward for our new journey towards building a thriving community where all students, families, and educators are seen, known, heard, connected, and respected.  We look forward to partnering with each of you in the coming school year.

Each year, beginning in April, we devote a great deal of time, care and thought to creating the following year’s classes. This letter describes our class placement process. The goal of the placement process is to create balanced and equitable classes that provide the optimal learning environment for both the individual child and the group of children as a whole.  We strive to create groupings that provide academic peers for each student and make it possible to provide high quality instruction and the most effective student services. As we balance classes, we create clusters as follows:

• Each class will have students who can spark each other, have common interests or will work well together.
• Each class will have students with varied learning strengths, and students with special needs will be clustered to facilitate service delivery.
• Given sufficient numbers, students will not be isolated in terms of gender, race or ethnicity

Friendships are considered, but our primary focus is to provide appropriate learning peers for each student, understanding that each year brings new opportunities for friendships.  The Brookline School Committee’s “Student Grouping, Inclusion and Placement Practices” policy states:

“When determining class placement of students at any grade level in elementary school and in the creation of middle school class lists, consideration shall be given to various student learning needs. In order to create effective learning environments and maintain valued diversity within each classroom, efforts will be made to place students with some peers who share similar profiles so that teachers can more effectively address the strengths and needs of all students.”

Class building is a team effort to which we devote a great deal of time and thought.  Grade-level teachers, literacy and math specialists, special education teachers and related service providers, ELE teachers, guidance counselors, and principals all work together on our placement process.

Family Role in the Placement Process

Our placement process includes an opportunity for families to provide information or share unique circumstances that you feel are important. We respect your right to advocate for your child and understand that you know your child best over time. If you feel  that you have additional information that the placement team is not aware of, you are invited to fill out our Class Placement Feedback form: https://goo.gl/forms/PTw3cKFXbq2cKQCi1 We will NOT be accepting letters via email this year and encourage all families who wish to submit additional information to use this form so we can keep all the information organized.  

All information must be submitted via the form no later than Friday, April 12th.

Submitting a letter is optional.  The same care and consideration will be given to every child during the placement process whether a parent/guardian submits input.

If you do submit a letter, your information will be shared with the placement team.  Please remember that our primary objective is to ensure that each student will be assigned to a class that he/she can learn and grow academically and socially, and to build classes that function as lively heterogeneous cohorts.  Requests for specific teachers in writing or in person will not be considered as part of this process. We take our responsibility seriously and, therefore allocate ample time and care as we engage in reflection while looking forward to plan for next year’s classes.

If you are planning on moving and/or sending your child(ren) to another school for the 2019 - 2020 School Year please fill out the bottom half of this online form to help us gather information regarding next year’s students: https://goo.gl/forms/PTw3cKFXbq2cKQCi1  You will need to fill out multiple forms if you have more than one child at Coolidge Corner School.  

Sincerely,

Jen, Dave, Saeed, and Steve