Tuesday, September 8, 2020

Family Update 9/8/20

 

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

  • ●  Courtney Bonzey
  • ●  Julie Ferland
  • ●  Michelle Magno
  • DLA Teacher - Lisa Seyferth

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

  • ●  Mary Brown
  • ●  Allison Rose
  • ●  Sarah Thorne
  • DLA Teacher - Melissa Chatfield and Sara Thorne

Note:

  • ●  Mary Brown joins us from the Underwood staff and will be with us for the 2020-2021 school year. Mary is a graduate of Boston College and spent last year as a Kindergarten aide at the Angier School.
  • ●  Sarah Thorne will be teaching one cohort in-person, and one cohort of DLA. We will have additional details about what this looks like at our info sessions next week.

Grade Two

In-Person/Hybrid Teachers

  • ●  Priscilla Bartley
  • ●  Melissa Lewis
  • ●  Karen Sandison
  • DLA Teacher - Allie McNamana (Mason-Rice Elementary School)

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

  • ●  Emily Bard
  • ●  Marita Rosen

  •   Karen Sandison

             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

  • ●  Maureen Berardi/Lauren Fischer
  • ●  Sara Lozzi
  • ●  Carol Oldmixon
  • DLA Teacher - Claudia Hoover

● 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

  • ●  Loriann Akdag/Heather Dias
  • ●  Sara Angelo
  • ●  Lisa Moore
  • DLA Teacher - Mike Feldstein

● 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