Hello and Happy Friday!
It’s exciting to think that in just 13 days we will welcome your students back to school:) We hope you have had a wonderful summer and have been able to enjoy the sunshine now that the rain has subsided a bit. It’s going to be an amazing year. Starting today, you will receive communication from us each Friday throughout the school year. Here’s what you need to know:
Communication
As you may have noticed in our first communication of the year, the weekly FYI’s are now called the Brookside Blast. We will send this each Friday so that you have all of the timely information you need. It will be linked under the “Quick Links” section of our school website. The most recent edition will also show up under “News and Events “. Community Events will be housed under the “News and Events” section as well. A link will also be provided for Community Events at the end of each Brookside Blast. Our goal is to give you timely and important information as well as make it easy to find if you need to refer back to it.
COVID Update
We know that many of you have questions about what the return to school will look like on August 26th. While many of us hoped this year would be “back to our regularly scheduled programming,” that does not quite appear to be the case. Late last week, the AOE released general, basic guidance/recommendations.
What we know now is that at a minimum, we will be following the recommendations from AOE, which include masking all staff and students for the first two weeks of school while indoors (and longer in buildings with younger students). You can expect to hear more detailed information communicated to our community at large by Superintendent Nease between now and August 20. We will ask for your patience and understanding as we work to determine the specifics of our HUUSD implementation that we believe will keep all of our students safe emotionally and physically. We know this is a scary time, considering the recent COVID outbreak at summer camp in Waterbury. We are committed to keeping kids safe and in school:)
Name Change
As you are aware, we are now functioning under our new name: Brookside Primary School. We were formerly the Thatcher Brook Primary School. Last fall, information was shared with the community that revealed the brook and school’s former namesake, Partridge Thatcher, was a former slave owner. This realization and community engagement led to a desired name change by students, staff, and our community as it was not in line with our current work around anti-racism, nor does it represent our core school and community values. Under direction from the School Board, Ms. Schoolcraft led a renaming process that resulted in a name change. You can expect to see our sign changed in the coming months and other visible changes, including school spirit wear. Early in the year, we will be renaming our mascot which is an eagle. We look forward to engaging our students and families in this process.
Start of year
By now, you should have received a letter from the school indicating your child’s placement. If you have not received this, please contact Sarah or Chris via email.
The first day of school will be August 26th. School will open at 7:30 am with a start time of 7:50. Dismissal this year will begin at 2:25pm, as the bus routes in HUUSD have been consolidated and revised. You can find the bus routes here.
You can expect to hear from your child’s classroom teacher shortly, including details for the upcoming school year as well as plans for “start of the year conferences.” These informal meetings are opportunities for you and your child to make a connection with your child’s new teacher as well as identify some hopes and dreams for the year.
Multi-age classes
Historically, Brookside has had multi-age classes. In the last several years, this was gradually shifted to single grade classrooms across the school. Teachers will now loop with their classes. This means that children will have the same teacher for grades 1st and 2nd. In 3rd grade, students will shift to a new class and have that same teacher for grades 3rd and 4th. This decision was made in order to streamline instructional planning for teachers and allow them to focus on teaching one single grade in a given school year. Our hope is that teaching a single grade combined with looping (having the same teacher for two years) will better allow us to meet students' needs.
Community Events (Also found under New and Events on the Brookside website)
Contact us:
Chris Neville
email : cneville@huusd.org
Phone: 802-583-8026
Sarah Schoolcraft
email: sschoolcraft@huusd.org
Phone 802-583-8007