Dear HM Families,
I hope you are all well and enjoying the transition to cooler fall weather. We’ve been extremely busy over the past several weeks preparing for the opening of school. We continue to work on the master schedule, building procedures, visuals, safety protocols, student schedules, and more. In this update, you will find some brief information about parent info sessions next week, as well as our staffing for the school year.
Additional communications will come out later this week:
- ● Orientation Days - I will have more information about what the week of Sept 14th.
- ● High Needs - Individualized letters will go to families on Wednesday.
- ● Placement - Will also be shared on Wednesday (more info below).
- ● Letters/emails from individual classroom teachers.
Information Sessions : Based on the schedule below, we will offer important info sessions for families to go over basic procedures and to answer questions you may have. All sessions will be 1 hour long, and we will use the same Zoom link. The sessions will be recorded for later viewing.
September 8, 2020
Monday, September 14th | Tuesday, September 15th |
7:00-8:00 PM ALL K-2 Families | 7:00-8:00 PM ALL 3-5 Families |
Join Zoom Meeting https://newton-k12-ma-us.zoom.us/j/94314614233 Meeting ID: 943 1461 4233 Passcode: 660872 | |
Staffing : As the superintendent outlined in his letter on Friday, we have had changes to our staffing for this year. For Horace Mann, the changes are outlined below:
Kindergarten In-Person/Hybrid Teachers
| Note: Michelle Magno will join us as our new Kindergarten teacher. Michelle has worked at Burr for the past four years as a special education aide, K classroom aide, and first grade long term sub. |
Grade One In-Person/Hybrid Teachers
| Note:
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Grade Two In-Person/Hybrid Teachers
| Note: ● Karen Sandison will be teaching one cohort of grade 2, and one cohort of grade 3. 2nd Grade students will attend in-person in Cohort A, while 3rd grade students will attend in-person on Cohort B. We will have additional details about what this looks like at our info sessions next week. |
Grade Three In-Person/Hybrid Teachers
DLA Teacher - Molly Norris (Franklin Elementary School) | Note: ● Karen Sandison will be teaching one cohort of grade 2, and one cohort of grade 3. 2nd Grade students willattend in-person in Cohort A, while 3rd grade students will attend in-person on Cohort B. We will have additional details about what this looks like at our info sessions next week. |
Grade Four In-Person/Hybrid Teachers
| ● Note: Sara Lozzi is the newest addition to our 4th grade team. Sara has worked as a behavior therapist and aide across grade levels and classrooms over the past several years at Horace Mann. Most recently, Sara completed her student teaching assignment in our 4th grade co-taught. |
Grade Five In-Person/Hybrid Teachers
| ● Note: Sara Angelo will come on board as our new 5th grade teacher. Sara did her student teaching a couple of years back with Lisa Moore, spent time as an interventionist and long term sub in another district, and returned to HM last year as a special education aide in 5th grade. |
Placements : Cohort placements and teacher assignments will come out in Aspen on Wednesday morning at 9:00am.
Please understand that this year’s placement process has been extremely complex. Just to give you a few examples:
- ● We had many requests from families for specific cohort assignments and family pairings.
- ● We have cohort constraints related to families who have children at multiple schools.
- ● We have limits on the number of desks we can actually fit into a given classroom space.
- ● We had to plan for students who will be attending school more than two days per week.
Given these constraints, please understand that we will not be able to honor cohort change or placement change requests. Having said that, please reach out to me directly with any concerns or questions. We understand how hard this is for families, and we are doing our best to be responsive and supportive.
I will be in touch later this week with more information! Thank you,
Mark Nardelli
Principal
