Dear Newport Schools Parents, Families, and Staff:
I hope everyone is enjoying these last few weeks of summer before we welcome our students, teachers, staff and extended One Newport community back for the start of the 2024-2025 school year! We are just one week away from the first day of the new school year on Wednesday, September 4th. We can’t wait to welcome everyone back for another year of learning, growth, and exploring all of the amazing opportunities our community partners have to offer.
This year we are changing up our formatting of the weekly newsletter to provide you an easier quicker way to read through our updates and still be able to enjoy the latest news. You will notice more bulleted items and links. We will also be providing a separate English and Spanish edition. In October we will be reaching out to you to see if this new formatting is better serving all of you. Our goal is to keep our families, staff, and community updated as best as possible.
So here we go and read on.
Our new strategic plan, Portrait of a Graduate( POG) and Vision of Excellence (VOE) are now ready for prime time!
After many months of meeting with our teachers, staff, parents, students, consultants, and community partners, we have finalized our new Strategic Plan which will guide learning in our district for the next 5 years. Please also see our associated Vision of Excellence for rigorous instruction we will implement this year and our Portrait of Graduate, which summarized the key attributes we want all of our students to have upon graduation from Newport Public Schools. Click on the links to learn more!
At the heart of our new strategic plan is a focus on strong instruction and the basics of literacy. Literacy and the ability to read makes all the difference in every content area.
One must know how to read to follow math instructions, learn about social studies and do science.
The ability to communicate and write well are life long skills that stay with us forever. They are often the key skills employers look for in the future.
Focusing on the building blocks of learning, we want to make sure that our students, particularly in the elementary grades, are where they need to be with their literacy. So that is why literacy and literacy coaches are so important for our staff to have the highest abilities and skills so they can teach our children to be able to move onto more advanced learning as they progress through middle and high school. Each week will highlight our work in literacy.
Fun Fact: Did you know that all our teachers, to help our children improve literacy skills, are being trained and implementing the science of reading curriculum that focuses on phonics and the relationship between sounds and letters. With phonics as the base, students can then decode words and grow to reading, building their vocabulary, and comprehension. This year we will be offering classes for parents/families to learn more about this so parents/families can read with their children. Stay tuned for those dates in the coming weeks.
So what about Math? Did you know:
NPS adopted high quality instructional materials.
We are working to implement more coaching opportunities for our students to work on their math skills.
We received RIDE funding this summer for a math coach for TMS! WOO-HOO!! Congratulations to Directors Aull, Andrade, Jacques, and Mooney!!
So what else is happening this year?
We have received another year of grant funding from Governor McKee and the Rhode Island Department of Education! YAY!!
This will allow us to continue our partnership between Pell Elementary and the East Bay Community Action Program, the MLK Community Center, the Boys & Girls Club of Newport County, and FabNewport for after school programs to focus on academics, social emotional support, and keep our attendance improving!! Newport students were some of the best improved in learning for students across the state AND we hit a home run improving our attendance and completing FAFSA applications at the high school. It just goes to show it is a true team effort to make learning happen every day in every home! So this year, Learn 365 will again provide high quality afterschool programs, aligned with our curriculum, to give our Pell students and families the extra support they need to master important foundational literacy and math skills.
So it is an exciting year of change and embracing the programming that showed positive results for our students. We are so excited to welcome our students, families, teachers, staff, and community partners back for the start of another great year of learning.
Enjoy these remaining days of summer break- don’t forget to join all of us at the second annual Back to School Bash on Tuesday, September 3rd from 3-5pm at the Elks. There will be great giveaways, prizes, entertainment and school supplies for everyone. Then we’ll see everyone back on Wednesday, September 4th!
Let’s make this year the best year ever for Newport Public Schools!!
Sincerely,
Colleen Burns Jermain, Ed.D.
Superintendent of Schools
