|
|
|
|
September
19, 2008 Volume 3, no.
2 |
|
|
Quick
Links |
Day
Website
Newton
Public Schools
Website |
|
|
Dear
Families,
I
am happy to say that students and faculty are settling in to
the routines of the new school year. It's great to be
back to school and to see students so excited about
learning. During the next few weeks, you will have the
opportunity to learn more about our school at
Back-to-School Night and Parent/Family Visiting Days.
Sports, theatre, and clubs are getting organized. I
encourage you to check out our website www.newton.k12.ma.us and our newspaper,
THE DAYTIME
to learn about all of our
activities. There's lots of exciting activity at
Day! |
|
|
Professional
Development Early Release Day on Monday, September
22nd
The
first of six professional development days planned for
this year and the first is coming up soon! On Monday,
September 22nd, students will be dismissed at 11:30
a.m. Lunch will be served. There will be no activities
for students after 11:30
a.m.
|
|
Back
to School Night on September
24th!
Our
annual Back-to-School Night will be held on Wednesday,
September 24th from 7:00-9:00 p.m. This is an evening
for parents/guardians to visit the school and meet their
child's teachers. The evening will begin in your
child's homeroom where you will pick up his/her schedule and
hear a short presentation from the
principal. You will then
follow your child's schedule (provided in homeroom) to meet
the teachers and hear about the curriculum. We look
forward to seeing you on Wednesday
evening. |
We
have received preliminary MCAS results from last spring's
tests, and there is much to celebrate. The official
results will be publicly released by the end of
September when you will receive your own child's scores in the
mail. As a school we earned a "Very High"
performance rating in English Language Arts and a "High"
performance rating in Mathematics. The great majority of
our students scored in the Proficient and Advanced categories
on both tests, and fewer students than ever scored in the
Warning category. We are particularly pleased with our
improvements in Mathematics, because all groups met
improvement targets for Annual Yearly Progress (AYP) under the
Federal No Child Left Behind (NCLB) Act. This is
particularly important since last year, we had been identified
as a school in need of improvement because our special
education subgroup had not made sufficient progress toward the
targets. We will continue to provide support to
struggling students in mathematics this year, and will strive
to have a second year of meeting improvement
targets.
Although
our overall school performance rating in English/Language Arts
was Very High, the special education subgroup has not met the
improvement target. For this reason, we have been
identified for improvement undert the federal NCLB Act.
We will work with regular education teachers and special
educators to develop supports for those students who need to
improve in this area.
We
will be mailing individual MCAS results by September
29th. If you have questions about your child's
results, please contact your child's guidance
counselor. |
Wishing
you a wonderful weekend and looking forward to meeting you at
many of our upcoming
events.
Gina
Healy
Principal,
Day Middle
School
|
|
|
|
|
