Dear Scituate School Community,

Happy New Year! As we embark on 2025, I am filled with excitement and optimism for the opportunities this year holds for our students, staff, and families. January is a time for fresh beginnings and renewed focus, and I’m thrilled to see our schools buzzing with energy as we continue to foster a vibrant learning environment.

First, I want to express my heartfelt gratitude to our teachers, administrators, and staff for their unwavering commitment to education and student success. Your hard work and dedication do not go unnoticed, and I’m incredibly proud of the progress we’ve made together.

To our students and families, thank you for your partnership and trust as we work to make Scituate Schools a place where every child can thrive. I want to thank each of you for your ongoing support and commitment to the success of our schools. Together, we can continue to make Scituate a place where every student feels valued and empowered to achieve their full potential. Here’s to a wonderful 2025 filled with learning, growth, and community.

Warm regards,

Superintendent Andries

Scituate School Department

Weather Preparedness

As winter weather sets in, please be mindful of potential delays or school closings. Our district will notify families promptly via email, phone, and our website. Please ensure your contact information is up-to-date in our system.

Elementary Families

As we enter winter, it is important that your child is dressed appropriately for school. Students will be going outside for recess with temperatures at 28 degrees or above. Please ensure your children are dressed for these conditions, and have a jacket, hat, and gloves as needed. If students are not dressed appropriately, then they will not be permitted to go outside.

If there is snow on the ground, please ensure that your child is sent to school with snow pants and boots as well, in order to play in the snow.

As we approach the end of the marking period, I want to share some important dates and updates to keep in mind:

• Feb 5 at 6 p.m.: Scituate High School will hold an Open House for 8th and 9th grade students.

Please visit our school website for the full calendar and more details. We look forward to a great year together!

What is PACT?

We want to give parents/guardians a better line of communication to myself and our school principals. We will be introducing a new Superintendent's Parent and Administrator Communications Team (PACT). PACT will be a way for myself and school administrators to hear from parents/guardians at every school and provide more insight to them into how children are being educated across the Scituate School Department. The PACT team will consist of myself, each school principal, and a parent/guardian representative from each school. Parent/guardian representatives will be selected by school principals.

Our first PACT meeting will be held on Thursday, January 30th.

• The Scituate Swim Team visited Clayville Elementary in January for a special High-Five Friday visit! Elementary and high school students love starting their mornings with high-fives and smiles!
• Music students have recently started their recorder unit with Mrs. Ethier and have mastered half, quarter and eighth notes in a fun, engaging way.

• Grades 3-5 are being active through Volleyball: Students explored volleyball basics with passing and setting. They also played a fun game of Nukem, which helped reinforce their skills and taught them how to rotate properly during gameplay.

• Jan 31st: Calling all Huskies! Join us from 6-8 p.m. for a movie, snacks, and refreshments with friends and build your own stuffed husky!
• Hope is hiring Paraprofessionals! Apply through on SchoolSpring or through our website.

Thank you to all our parent volunteers for making our Book Fair, Christmas in the Village, decorating ornaments, Holiday Shop, and munchkins possible for all students!

• Our Scholastic Book Fair was a huge success with sales over $5,000.00. Thank you to our families for purchasing books and supporting literacy!
• In the photo below, our Christmas in the Village was held the second Friday in December. Families gather in our cafeteria to make a craft and reindeer food, play games, enjoy a treat from our Bake Sale, and buy raffle tickets! We raised over $1000.00 from this event to support PTO initiatives. Thank you to all the families who joined us, baked, donated items for the baskets, and volunteers their time at the event.
  
• Congratulations to our students who earned positive office referrals in December!

• Jan. 29th: 6th Grade and 7th Grade Winter Concerts will be held in the Auditorium
• Jan. 31st: Report Cards will be emailed
• Feb 5th at 6 p.m.: Middle school students will have the opportunity to explore the Scituate High School offerings during Move-Up Night & Open House.

• FAFSA IS OPEN: The U.S. Department of Education has released the 2025-26 FAFSA form. The online FAFSA form is available to all students and families at FAFSA.gov, and the Department is processing submissions and sending them to schools. You can find their announcement here.
• Feb 5th at 6 p.m.: SHS will hold a Move-up Night & Open House for 8th and 9th grade students interested in learning more about high school opportunities!

Learning Walks

All SSD administrators and a group of teachers went on our second Learning Walk of the year. We visited Hope and Clayville elementary schools. It was great to see the many great things happening in classes. Students were engaged, connected, and learning. Kuddos to our amazing staff members and our very awesome students.

ELA Curriculum Panel

This is the fifth year of implementation of American Reading Company (ARC) as our English Language Art (ELA) curriculum in grades K to 8. We are researching other High Quality Curriculum Material (HQCM) in ELA this year. At each level, a group of teachers are collaborating with administrators, director of curriculum, and other schools to find out about other HQCM. We have set up school visits to see those programs in action and interview teachers. The process of curriculum review and adoption is established and teachers are diligently working to help make the best decision for our students.

Data Workshops

We have started meeting with each of the math, ELA, and science departments at both middle and high schools. This week, we will meet with grades 3, 4, and 5 teachers. In the data workshops, we look at our students' performance as a school department, by grade level, by school and by question. The workshops help us identify areas of strength, and those in need of improvement. We leave those meeting with three action steps that we hope will increase our scores on the state assessments. The Director of Curriculum is presenting the findings and action steps at the February 4, 2026 school committee meeting.

The Special Education Department presented their goals to the School Committee in the month of December. Some of the goals included continuing to strengthen our social-emotional learning supports, other goals that were mentioned in the presentation are listed below,

• Encouraging all Special Educators to participate in Professional Development offered by RIDE.

• Implementing new strategies to help write more meaningful and measurable IEP goals.
• Continue to help students focus on achieving their IEP goals and help fill any learning gaps.