3/20/17 Daily Bulletin

Shout Out

Shout out to Lindsey Wright for taking time out of her day to come run an IEP objective with one of our PACE students! We appreciate your dedication to helping all students make progress!

Shout out to Christopher Smith for his dedication to our students in PACE. We will miss your dedication, caring and happy demeanor each day here at the Curley. Best of luck in your new job!

Shout out to Alisa Fleming, Rose Rodriguez, Charles Tewksbury, Lindsey Morgan and Sean Guthrie for spending their Friday afternoon interviewing for our middle school science position. Your dedication and enthusiasm was appreciated!

Shout out to Olivia Peters, Paige Stokes, Rose Rodriguez and Eileen Cronin for facilitating this work all year and for giving up their Saturday to take students to the Destination Imagination Regional Competition. It was amazing to see our students shine amongst their peers around the state. If you see any of these middle school students today give them a high five for their great work: Uma, Jahzaria, William, Mazen, Flora, Arlene, Elizabeth, Emma, Victoria, Lea, Joselyne, Nairobi, Leslie, Stephany, Hanna, Katie, Samiya, Yami, Jaslyn, Lily, Catherine, Jo, Janie, Kirsten, Vianna, Victoria, Max, Alec, Brennan, Tikal, Lewis, Ben, Robeson. One team placed 3rd in the engineering category and another team placed 3rd in the Fine Arts category! Congrats to you all!

 

Shout out to Rafael Perez Abreu on his acceptance into Boston Arts Academy next year! We are so proud of your progress at the Curley and how you worked hard to achieve your dream. We look forward to seeing your future artwork! Thank you also to the team that has supported Rafael at the Curley Tristan Maiden, Liz Spring, Cassie Mountain, Christopher Smith, Jessica Burque, Jen Richards, Kandi Quarterson, Alison Lozano, Geju Brown and many more!!!

BTU Vote

There will be a BTU vote (BTU members only Paras & Teachers) on Monday, March 20th from 7am-8:15am in each main office. The first vote will be about the January 2nd PD date and either reporting to school that day for PD or converting it to hours to be used throughout the school year. The second vote will be part of a waiver that will need approval through the SSC. (See explanation below). Attached is the ballot. 

Trimester Proposal -- Fact Sheet
The ELT team would like to propose a move to trimesters across the whole school. Currently Grades K-5 use trimesters for grading and Grades 6-8 use quarters. This creates several challenges for teachers, staff and families.

Moving to trimester grading from K through 8 would give us:

• uniformity and consistency throughout the school
• more equitable distribution of coursework for MS students
• opportunity for a school-wide report card night
• less work for teachers and staff

This change would most significantly impact the way that we calculate 6th grade and 8th grade GPAs when reporting these data to exam schools. For both 6th and 8th graders, the first trimester grades would be submitted instead of grades from the first and second quarters. This does not necessarily put our students at a disadvantage; it is however a big change from current practice. This practice is done at other K-8 schools and they have not seen any negative impact on exam school acceptance.

The ELT team believes that this change would greatly benefit our school community by creating uniformity across the grade levels.

ILT

Please join us for ILT on Wednesday, March 22nd from 3:00pm-4:15pm in Room 214.

MCAS (Changed as of 4pm on 3/17/17)

Below you will find the NEW MCAS testing schedule. We had to make some changes to the Math and Science testing dates. DOE is requiring all schools to test in the following sequence: ELA, Math, and Science. As a result, testing dates have been adjusted. Please print and save this calendar. Let David Diaz know if you have any questions. Please look at the new schedule by clicking on the following link:
MCAS 2.0 Testing Schedule 

In preparation for the MCAS please take a look at the MCAS google slides. The administrative team will be visiting grade level meetings to go over MCAS logistics. Please take a look at the MCAS google slides so that you will be prepared to ask any questions you may have when the admin team comes to your grade level meetings. Below is the schedule of when the admin team will be at your grade level meetings.

MCAS Google Slides

MCAS 3-5

MCAS 2017 6-8

Lion King Performances

The Lion King performance dates have been announced:

School Shows
· March 21st and 22nd at 9 a.m. Curley Auditorium
· March 21st at 1 p.m. Curley Auditorium

Evening Shows
· March 23rd and 24th at 6:30 p.m. Curley Auditorium

*****April 6 Shubert Theatre Doors open at 5 pm & Show starts at 5:30. (This is an amazing opportunity for all of our students!!!!!)

Families are welcome to come to either performance and all students will attend one of the daytime performances.

Here is the link for the Lion King schedule:
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/15CezwWnrjIk8g5avYF30Wkkx02yoV0GCowuFERHrmXs/edit?usp=sharing

We Care About Our Community!

The Curley Community is excited to announce that we are launching a Community Caring Project this spring.  We will kick off the project by hosting a school-wide Caring March on April 12th at 1:30pm.  All staff and students will participate and families will be invited to march with us.

Many of our students have participated in marches for various causes over the past few months and there have been discussions in many classrooms about the rights of different groups of people in our community.  There is some inspiring work already happening at the Curley.  Ms. Strait’s 4th grade class is doing a Hunger Project, Ms. Mylett and Ms. Moran’s class is spreading kindness by making kindness rocks, and Ms. Merdkhanian’s K1 class had their own march after several students attended the Women’s March in February.

We would like for all classes to gather with their buddy classrooms to collaborate on this project. Students should think about what they care about, and work with their buddies to create signs and posters for the Caring March.  There are lots of things that we care about in our community.  The possibilities are endless!  

Here are some things that students may care about and want to put on signs:

• Animal rights
• Illnesses 
• Hunger
• Access to school
• The environment
• Immigrant rights
• LGBQ rights

Timeline for the Curley Community Caring Project

• March: prepare for the Caring March by talking to your students about what they care about and creating signs and posters with your buddy class
• April: March with your buddy class on April 12th at 1:30.  
• May and June: Create and complete a community service project.  Ideas, lesson plans, resources and support will be provided.

March, 2017 Curley Cares Student Awards

Recognize those students who are doing their best to show growth and support the Curley Cares way by using THIS FORM to submit names so students can receive an award at our upcoming Thursday, March 23, 201 7 Curley Cares assemblies.
Please refer to THIS LIST to see those students who have already received awards this school year .
The intent behind Curley Cares is reinforce positive (caring) behaviors and that each Curley K8 student receive at least one Curley Shares award each year.
All Curley K8 staff members - not just for homeroom teachers - can submit student names for an award.
If you'd like to give more than 3 awards, please coordinate with your grade-level colleagues such as specialists or other staff. If it is for a larger group of students (such as a sports team, etc.) please email Kate (kdavis3@bostonpublicschools.org) directly.
Submissions are DUE by 4:00pm on Monday, March 20 , 2017 .

STAR Reading Progress Monitoring (Grade 3-8 Only)

Progress monitoring is scheduled for March 20th - 24th for all students reading below grade level, including students ranked “On Watch”, “Intervention” and “Urgent Intervention” for the winter STAR Reading Benchmark.

Progress monitoring is completed independently by focus students, and can be scheduled during the WIN block or other convenient time. To begin the assessment, students log into “STAR Reading”, and begin testing. Progress monitoring should take no longer than 20-25 minutes per student.
Please contact Eileen Cronin if you have any questions.

Winter Term Report Card Grading Window for Grades K2-5

The elementary grading (Grades K2 - 5) window is open from March 7th to March 24th. Please refer to the materials below for assistance entering your grades. After entering grades, teachers need to click the "Post Grades" button to write the grades to the report card.
Entering Grades Handout
Elementary Comment Codes Handout
How to verify that your grades are posted

Instructional Focus Review - POSTPONED TILL 3/28/17

On Tuesday, March 28th from 8am-1pm representatives from BPS will join us for a walkthrough of classrooms and look for evidence of our Instructional Focus "Teachers will vary demands and resources, to optimize challenge, so students can express a clear, organized idea." Visitors may enter any classroom during this window.

10th Annual Curley Silent Auction

The Curley School Parent Council (SPC) will be hosting their 10th Annual Silent Auction at Canary Square on Tuesday, March 28th from 6pm-9pm and would like to extend an invite to all staff, friends and families. The money raised from the Silent Auction goes to directly supporting our school such as Playworks, BalletROX, Arts supplies, science supplies, staff luncheon, Chromebooks etc... There will be more information that will follow about the online auction. Any donations or specific questions can be directed to Ann DeGeorge (ann.c.degeorge@gmail.com) or Eyleen Iraola (eiraola@gmail.com).

Hiring

Hiring season is here! We have 10 jobs posted on www.teachboston.org. We need your help in hiring the best teachers to join our team. Please sign up to be on the interview committee ASAP. No previous experience is necessary but we value your opinions.

Position	Interview Date	Interview Time
K0/K1 ASD	Wednesday, March 22	3pm-6pm
K1/K2 ASD	Wednesday, March 29	3pm-6pm
Grade 1	Thursday, March 23	3pm-6pm
Middle School Math	Thursday & Friday March 23 & 24	3pm-6pm
K-8 Theatre Arts	Monday, March 20	3pm-6pm

Save the Date

Please reserve Friday, June 2nd for our End-of-the-Year and Retirement Party.

Place: Florian Hall

Time: 5 p.m. to 10 p.m.

Appetizers, Buffet, Music, Dance, Celebrations!

Field Trips

Are you going on a field trip soon? Have you shared this information with the nurses and the cafeteria? This is a friendly reminder that the nurse's and cafe should be notified 2 weeks in advance of scheduled field trips. Teachers should also be carefully checking the returned permission slips. They should notify the nurse's office when a parent checks the "yes" box stating that their child requires medication while on the field trip.

Using ESS

If you wish to request a day off (medical appointments, religious holidays, professional day, bereavement, personal day etc...), sign on to Boston Employees Self Service (ESS, Please bookmark this page). When possible, request a personal day at least two weeks in advance. Staff members will request sub coverage through SubCentral (https://subcentral.bostonpublicschools.org/logOnInitAction.do). Please do not decide whether you think a sub is needed and submit the request as soon as you know a day you will be absent. We have many unexpected coverage needs that might need sub help. We are attaching a list of subs who usually work at the Curley upon request.

Sick Day Procedure (teachers and paraprofessionals)

• Call/Text Katie Grassa at 857-265-4954 immediately, no matter how late/early
• Enter the absence in SubCentral (teachers only). Link: https://bostonps.eschoolsolutions.com/logOnInitAction.do
• If it is after 6:30am, also send an email to Katie Grassa, David Diaz and the secretary.

Buddies Update

Are you struggling to think about what to do with your buddy classroom during these cold, snowy, winter days? Check out this link for ideas and feel free to add any fun ideas you may have!

SPED PD Options

Below are some PD options being offered at the Curley during our contractual PD dates. Staff may want to include one or more of these into their team PD plan. Here is the link to sign up   https://goo.gl/forms/BwtGbumLgXBfLUMF2

• April 27th --- Understanding Disabilities and Services available 
• May 18th --- Middle School Transition/Life Skills 
• June 1st --- Inclusion