Gator News

Dear Caregivers, Gators, and Community Members!

For all those that I haven't yet had a chance to meet, my name is Julie Conrad. I am starting my second year at Main Street Middle School as principal. Seeing the community pull together to get through the tough moments of this summer has been inspiring as has seeing some of our Gators helping where they can. This just solidifies further my belief that this is an incredibly special community and place. Even with the challenging summer, I find myself very excited for all that this year holds for our Montpelier and Roxbury students. I look forward to seeing the ways in which we as a school will pull together this year to continue to grow and learn together...and leaning into one another when we need it.

School begins in two weeks! You should be receiving a welcome back mailing soon with lots of great information to get ourselves ready for the school year. In that mailing is a lot of information and some important forms that allow us all to kick-off to a great start to the year! The Gator News is our regular communication to caregivers, families, and community members to keep you informed of all the on goings at Main Street and what's coming up.

Building Drop In Times- We know that parents, caregivers, and even students sometime feel better starting the school year having a little time to look and find their rooms prior to the start of the school year. This year, we will have two drop in times to accommodate this need.

• Monday, August 28 from 8 a.m. to 9 a.m. is the Grades 5 & 6 drop-in
• Tuesday, August 29 from 8 a.m. to 9 a.m. is the Grades 7 & 8 drop in

Please note, this is not a time to conference with a teacher. Some support staff and teachers at other grade levels will not be available during this time because they will be in in-service meetings. Our staff all have in-service commitments that start at 9 a.m. so we will ask you kindly to leave at 9:00 a.m.

Consider Becoming a Substitute! As we close out this year, I'd love to encourage those who may be able to consider becoming a substitute teacher. Our schools are always in need of a substitute for our school staff. We love our substitutes and would love for you to consider helping our school community in this way!

Volunteering at MSMS! We love inviting Caregivers and Community Members to find ways to contribute to our school community! If you are interested in volunteering, please go to our district website at mrpsvt.org/volunteer to see the process and requirements for background checks. We have three levels of volunteers. Last year we had volunteers chaperone dances, pop popcorn with our Caregiver Alliance, serve on interview committees, chaperone field trips, and other opportunities. We welcome your partnership and will work with you to make yourself an approved volunteer.

We will soon have a need for Level 1 Volunteers to help us organize and pack our Safety Backpacks with the needed supplies for classroom teachers! Let us know if you're able to support that next week for a few hours!

#GATORNATION CELEBRATIONS!

Have a Gator Celebration? Email me! julieconrad@mpsvt.org

We LOVE to celebrate the great things our amazing GATORS do both in our school community and community at large! Do you have a shout out on how one of our students or staff have stepped up? Please email me and let me know so we can spread our Gator Pride!

A HUGE SHOUT OUT to Mickey, Fred, and Cris aka the "Dream Clean Team" for their efforts to make Main Street Middle School beautiful, clean, and ready for another great school year. With the high school flooding, our building has had more traffic this summer than it normally sees as programming shifted to our building. Even with this challenge our staff has done an amazing job. Everything is clean, maintenance projects completed. We have a few subcontracted construction projects still in progress but the building as a whole looks AMAZING! If you see our custodial crew in our building or in the community, please make sure you thank them for their incredible work. And thank you to Tom and Andrew for their leadership with all these things and more.

Please reach out to me if you or your child need anything. We're here to help our Gators grow and believe in the partnership with families and caregivers.

Warm Regards,

Julie

We are incredibly lucky to have a wonderful crew of new staff joining our school. We only had a few people leave our MSMS team last year for personal reasons. We are excited to be able to fill previously vacant positions as well as increase our capacity in our school in the areas of Special Education, Social Emotional Learning (SEL), and intervention.

We are currently understaffed in one position. We have not yet found the right fit for Main Street Middle School in the position of a 7th and 8th Grade Math teacher. Luckily, we have a plan to ensure high levels of learning for those students. For the first semester, MSMS Principal, Julie Conrad (long time math educator before turned administrator), and MRPS Math Coach, Amy Kimball, will be splitting this position teaching 7th and 8th grade math, respectively. We will continue to advertise and look for a good fit for this position.

Theresa White has taught in Vermont schools since graduating from Brown University with her master’s degree in 2007. She had the pleasure of teaching upper elementary students in several Vermont communities, with a particular focus on science. Seven years ago, she discovered a passion for supporting striving readers. Since then she has trained as a reading interventionist and earned several credentials from the Orton-Gillingham Academy. This year Theresa transitioned from classroom teacher into the role of literacy interventionist and coach. She believes that every student can become a successful, confident reader and that we should honor their intellect along that journey. Theresa lives with her family in a solar-powered, strawbale house they built by hand in Brookfield.

Lauren Singer moved to Barre, Vermont in the fourth grade. She attended Barre Town Middle and Elementary school and graduated from Spaulding High School. After graduation Lauren attended Plymouth State University where she studied Health Education. For the past eight years she has been a middle school Health teacher. Lauren recently completed her Masters in Education where she focused on incorporating SEL in her classroom to create a more positive classroom community. Lauren currently lives in Montpelier with her husband and corgi. During her free time she enjoys reading, working on puzzles, building Harry Potter LEGO, and cooking. She is very excited to be joining the MRPS community and the SEL team!

Judith considers herself a "native" Westerner as she spent most of her adult life in New Mexico and eastern Idaho. She graduated from the University of New Mexico in Albuquerque with degrees in Religious Studies and Philosophy (Logic and Epistemology) while she worked for a contractor as a groundwater scientist and program analyst under contract with the US Dep't. of Energy's Hazardous and Radioactive Waste Management program. In that capacity, she worked on projects that involved clean-up and remediation of Manhattan-era legacy waste sites. When the travel became more than she wanted, she went back to school for a Master's in Special Education, and she managed a Day Treatment program for middle level students in a very large district in Idaho. That program was subsequently de-funded by the state legislature, so she applied to do similar things in Vermont, and eventually worked in the Northeast Kingdom for 11 years. During that time, she went back (again!) for a Master's in Clinical Mental Health, and have spent the subsequent years as a school-based clinician and clinical coordinator for a designated mental health agency. She enjoys biking, kayaking, and cross-country skiing, and is learning to knit and play the violin.

Jordan Norcross is very excited to join Main Street Middle School! He grew up in Essex, Vermont. While in high school, I played hockey, football, and rugby. He currently still plays rugby as it is a sport he is very passionate about. After high school, he moved to Mexico where he lived for two years and learned Spanish. He then moved to Hawaii where he completed his bachelor's degree. Although he has lived in many different places, Vermont is still his favorite and will always be his home. He currently lives in Williston. He loves working with children and believes that he can learn just as much from them as they can learn from him. He is looking forward to learning together this coming school year and being a part of this amazing community!

Mr. Lucas is excited to be a Gator in the upcoming school year teaching English Language Arts / Humanities. He is originally from from upstate New York and enjoys skiing in the winter and hiking in the summer. He has a black Golden Retriever named Barkley who joins him on hikes and has been known to create mud pits in the back seat of his car. He decided to become a teacher because he values education and hopes to create a learning environment where students can have fun and enjoy school.

Christiana Athena-Blackwell is a singer, multi-instrumentalist, songwriter, performer, and music teacher. She has a Ph.D. in music education from Penn State and an MA in ethnomusicology from Tufts University. Combining the two fields she is passionate about music education as a means to explore culture, history, and identity. She has presented at national conferences on the concepts of Culturally Sustaining Pedagogy, Culturally Responsive Teaching, World Music Pedagogy, Honk Pedagogy, and race and identity in music. She has spent time studying music and dance in Brazil and Ghana which she put into practice as a performer, scholar, and teacher. She has participated in several Boston-based ensembles including Afro Brazil, the Agbekor Drum and Dance Society, and Second Line Social Aid and Pleasure Society Brass Band. She was a founding member of School of Honk, a New Orleans-style community brass band school, and Afropop Night Live concert series. She currently performs in two local Vermont-based music projects: Pluto Rising (dance music) and Pointe Noir (cajun music).

Originally from Knoxville, Tennessee, Ally earned both her Bachelor and Master of Music in Music Education from the University of Tennessee. In Knoxville, she was a freelance musician and private flute teacher. She spent eight years as a choir and band director at a small school on the coast of Virginia, and in her free time, she played flute with the Orchestra of the Eastern Shore, co-founded the ukulele group The Sonic Ukes, and worked at a local alpaca farm. Ally moved to Vermont in 2020 and lives in Montpelier with her husband, Jeremy, and her dog CRASH!! (Yes, it has to be spelled like that!) In her free time, Ally enjoys making music with her friends, knitting, reading, biking, and being outdoors as much as possible. She is thrilled to be a part of the MSMS and MHS families!

Ally Fischthal graduated from Champlain College in 2019 with a Bachelors of Science in Psychology. After spending a few years working with teenagers in crisis, she decided to go back to school to obtain a Masters in Social Work from the University of Vermont. During her time in grad school, she spent time working in a K-8 school learning the ins and outs of public schools. She graduated with her Masters in Social Work this May and is super excited to get started at MRPS next school year!

Kris (they/them) was a public school educator in New Mexico and Colorado for sixteen years. They hold a Bachelor and a Masters degree in Special Education from Auburn University and a M.A. degree in Transpersonal Ecopsychology from Naropa University. Kris will be moving to Vermont this summer with their 12 year old daughter and is looking forward to building rich connections and providing an inviting, supportive learning environment for students and their families. Originally from Louisiana, Kris is thrilled to join the Gators at Main Street Middle School!

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Caregiver Reporting: If you believe you have witnessed or experienced discrimination, bias-based harassment, sexual harassment, sexual misconduct, or bullying at MRPS, please report it to a school administrator as possible. If you do not feel comfortable reporting in person, please complete this reporting form. If you have any questions please contact MRPS Director of Social Emotional Learning & Wellness, Jessica Murray, at jessicamurray@mpsvt.org or (802) 505 0435.

Click here to get the full list of 2023 - 2024 MRPS School Board Meeting Dates!

Montpelier Roxbury School District Board Committee Meetings

• Facilities and Energy Committee is scheduled to meet on Thursday, August 17th at 8:00am