Shrewsbury Superintendent Issues Update

From Shrewsbury Public Schools

Dear Shrewsbury Families & Community Members,

We are coming to the end of a very successful school year, with a half day for students this coming Tuesday, June 21 (see communications from your child’s school for specific dismissal times). I greatly appreciate your support of our students and educators as they worked hard to achieve our district’s mission of preparing our students with the skills and knowledge they need to be successful citizens. Please accept my best wishes for a terrific summer season ahead!

Please note the following information:

1. State Science Fair and Science Olympiad winners
2. Best wishes to our retirees
3. Congratulations to the SHS Class of 2016
4. K-8 classroom teacher assignments for next year -- August communications through PowerSchool
5. Your help requested for a BRIEF survey on student engagement and challenge
6. Please register for bus service by June 30

1) The following students were honored at this past Wednesday’s School Committee meeting for achieving first place in state science and engineering competitions:

• Marzuq Iqbal, Grade 7, First Place, whose project involved creating a way to connect home smoke alarms so that a text is sent when batteries become low.
• Aryan Naik, Grade 11, First Place, whose project involved a study of stomach microbiota in zebra fish to determine a correlation with clinical depression connected to glucose consumption.
• Vikram Pathalam, Grade 11, and Varyn Swamy, Grade 11, First Place, whose project involved creating a software program that utilized MRI scans from a database to diagnose the prevalence, type, and severity of dementia.
• Mounith Madadi, Grade 12, and Andrea Williams, Grade 11, who won First Place in the “Wright Stuff” engineering challenge in the state Science Olympiad competition, where the model plane they designed and built performed best at staying aloft.

Congratulations to these students for their outstanding achievements, which represent a very sophisticated level of scientific research and engineering design. For more information on their projects, you can watch their presentations from the June 15 School Committee meeting.

2) Best wishes to staff members who are retiring:
Congratulations to the 19 staff members who are retiring from our school district, who are listed at the end of this message. Collectively, they represent over 360 years of experience! We wish them the very best for a healthy, happy retirement, and we thank them for their dedication to the children of Shrewsbury during their careers here.

3) Congratulations to the SHS Class of 2016:
Almost 400 members of the Class of 2016 graduated from Shrewsbury High School on June 2. You can watch the ceremony online at the Shrewsbury Media Connection’s website here. In my remarks to the graduates, I attempted to express some thoughts about what it truly means to have “class.” We are very proud of our graduates, who have incredible potential. Thanks to our community for providing them with an education that has prepared them well for the next phase of their lives and beyond.

4) PK-8 classroom teacher assignments for next year -- August communications through PowerSchool:
Over the past few years, middle school team assignments in Grades 5-8 have been provided through the PowerSchool Parent Portal in mid-August, and this enabled a better process at the middle level. This year, this approach will also be used to communicate all K-4 classroom teacher teacher assignments, instead of this information being included on the year-end report card. The expectation is that elementary teacher assignments will be available in the PowerSchool Parent Portal on or about August 1. This change is being made to improve our ability to ensure balanced class sizes and compositions without having to change a student’s original assignment, given that many students move in and move out of the district during the summer months. A communication will be sent to families in late July with instructions for accessing this information in PowerSchool.

5) Please help us by taking a BRIEF anonymous survey on student engagement and challenge: As part of reviewing progress towards achieving our district’s strategic priorities, I am interested in parents’, students’, and educators’ opinions on the level of student engagement and challenge in our schools. Please click here to give your quick impressions regarding this topic -- it should not take more than a couple of minutes, unless you want to add an optional comment. Thanks in advance for providing your perspective!

6) Please register for the bus by June 30th:
If your child plans to ride the bus next year, we urge you to register him/her now to avoid the $50 late registration fee. Well over 65% of riders are already registered and nearly 94% paid using the new and convenient online payment system. Remember that anyone who will be riding the bus, whether a fee is owed or not, and including students attending private schools within Shrewsbury or Assabet Valley Regional Technical High School, must register online. Registration and payment must be completed via the Powerschool Parent Portal here.

Don’t forget to scroll down to check out information about our retirees

Thank you for your continued support of our community’s public schools. If I can be of assistance to you, please contact me at 508-841-8400 or at jsawyer@shrewsbury.k12.ma.us.
Joe Sawyer
Joseph M. Sawyer, Ed.D.
Superintendent of Schools
Shrewsbury Public Schools
100 Maple Avenue
Shrewsbury, MA 01545

Shrewsbury Public Schools: Retiring Staff Members

Teachers:
Ms. Karen Catalanotti has served 37 years as an educator, with 35 of those years here in Shrewsbury. She is retiring as a First Grade Teacher from the Walter J. Paton Elementary School.

Ms. Pamela Catino has served 35 years as an educator, with all of those years here in Shrewsbury. She is retiring as the Reading Specialist Teacher from Sherwood Middle School.

Ms. Mary Cipro has served 28 years as an educator, with 25 of those years here in Shrewsbury. She is retiring as a Kindergarten Teacher from the Beal Early Childhood Center.

Ms. Susan Conley has served 37 years as an educator, with 36 of those years here in Shrewsbury. She is retiring as the Curriculum Coordinator and Instructional Coach from the Calvin Coolidge Elementary School.

Ms. Barbara Connolly has served 35 years as an educator, with 23 of those years here in Shrewsbury. She is retiring as a Second Grade Teacher from the Walter J. Paton Elementary School.

Ms. Gail Flanagan has served 21 years as an educator, with 16 of those years here in Shrewsbury. She is retiring as the Instructional Technology Specialist Teacher from Sherwood Middle School.

Ms. Susan Lane has served 23 years as an educator, with all of those years here in Shrewsbury. She is retiring as a Third Grade Teacher from the Calvin Coolidge Elementary School.

Ms. Moira Lumley-Chan as served 5.5 years as an educator, with all of those years here in Shrewsbury. She is retiring as a Science Teacher from Shrewsbury High School.

Ms. “Meme” Middlesworth has served 31 years as an educator, with 15 of those years here in Shrewsbury. She is retiring as a Kindergarten Teacher from the Beal Early Childhood Center.

Ms. Elaine Morgan has served 26 years as an educator, with 16 of those years here in Shrewsbury. She is retiring as a Fourth Grade Teacher from Floral Street School.

Ms. Ellen O’Leary has served 16 years as an educator, with all of those years here in Shrewsbury. She is retiring as a Speech & Language Pathologist from Floral Street School.

Ms. Sandra Siegman has served 22 years as an educator, with all of those years here in Shrewsbury. She is retiring as a Math and Science Teacher from Sherwood Middle School.

Ms. Sharon Theoharides has served 16 years as an educator, with 10 of those years here in Shrewsbury. She is retiring as an Inclusion Teacher from Sherwood Middle School.

Administrative Assistants/Secretaries:

Jennifer Koch has served 10 years in education, with all of those years here in Shrewsbury. She is retiring as the Special Education Department Administrative Assistant/Secretary from Shrewsbury High School early in the fall.

Paraprofessionals:

Karen Helmstadter has served 20 years in education, with 12 of those years here in Shrewsbury. She is retiring as an ABA Technician from Oak Middle School.

Theresa Landers has served 24 years in education, with all of those years here in Shrewsbury. She is retiring as an Instructional Aide from the Beal Early Childhood Center.

Gay MacLean has served 40 years in education, with 5 of those years here in Shrewsbury. She is retiring as an Instructional Aide from Parker Road Preschool.

Lisa Manley-O’Brien has served 20 years in education, with 16 of those years here in Shrewsbury. She is retiring as an ABA Technician from Spring Street Elementary School.

Dawn Vigliatura has served 17 years as an educator, with all of those years here in Shrewsbury. She is retiring early next year as the Library and Media Paraprofessional from Shrewsbury High School.

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