Salem Public Schools Update

July 1, 2022

SPS families,

Next week, we start our summer school with almost 1000 students enrolled across the district! This represents almost 30% of our student population engaging in meaningful programming that offers academics and enrichment to our students. We are excited about being able to offer a year-round experience to so many of our SPS learners. As we have done historically, we will also be providing meals to SPS families at select sites throughout the city (see information later in the newsletter).

As we begin the summer months, we are actively planning for a strong beginning to the school year as we complete facility upgrades, participate in professional learning, examine our safety protocols/systems and fill our staff openings. As part of this preparation, we are planning to launch a mental health task force aimed at enhancing the services we provide our students, inside and outside of school.

Since the pandemic, many more of our young people and their families are struggling with depression and anxiety. Given this increase, we want to be sure that our resources are leveraged to ensure that our community receives access to the highest quality services in a timely manner. If you are interested in participating on the task force, please email superintendent@salemk12.org by the end of July. We are looking for parents, staff, students, and community members to participate. Thank you in advance for your commitment to this important effort.

Enjoy the 4th of July holiday with your families!

Steve

We are hosting community book discussions on our summer community reads. Please bring a chair or blanket and meet us near the bandstand on Salem Common, 5:30-6:30 on the following dates:

July 27 - Ace of Spades

August 11 - They Called Us Enemy

August 16 - Nevertheless We Persisted

We hope to see you there!

Our Summer Eats program begins on July 5th! Kids and teens in Salem eat for free on-site at these locations all summer long! No ID or registration is required. See below for specific locations and times.

Summer brings opportunities to spend time with friends and family and enjoy the outdoors. We hope that you and your student will also continue to read and develop a love of books and learning new things.

Here are summer reading suggestions created by the American Library Association for students in Grades PreK-8 that will help you and your student select books together. As always, we suggest that you follow your child’s lead and choose books and topics that interest them.

Birth-PreK

Grades K-2

Grades 3-5

Grades 6-8

The Salem Public Library will be supporting our summer reading by stocking copies of the summer reading suggestions and allowing you to view the titles and place holds through Noblenet online. The link to these lists from Salem Public Library are included below:

Birth-PreK

Grades K-2

Grades 3-5

Grades 6-8

Some young readers like to read several books about the same character. Check out these popular series for K-2 readers!

Here are some helpful resources: booklists in Spanish, divided by primary and secondary, from the NYC libraries

https://www.bklynlibrary.org/summer-reading/booklists

https://www.nypl.org/books-more/recommendations/staff-picks/kids?f%5B0%5D=terms%3AEn%20Espa%C3%B1ol

Books in Spanish and Portuguese (Framingham Public Library)

Additional suggestions for middle school readers can be found here.

ST Math is a research-based, visual instructional program that helps students to build deep understanding of math concepts. JiJi crosses the screen every time a student successfully completes a puzzle, leading them to the next puzzle. Completing 60 puzzles/week is a great summertime goal!

Learn more about ST Math, including why there are no directions, and why it takes a while to solve some puzzles here:

Parent Guide - ST Math

Guía para padres - ST Math

Track completed puzzles here - bring this in to your new teacher in the fall!

JiJi Summer Club - Tracker

Club de verano de JiJi - Tracker

Students can also play math games with family and friends:

UNPLUGGED Summer of Math - English

UNPLUGGED Verano matemático de JiJi - Spanish

Additional resources:

Links to Storybooks and Games

Children are used to logging into ST Math from their Chromebooks on the ClassLink page.

To log in from another device at home, see the directions here:

Accessing ClassLink from any computer - English

Accessing ClassLink from any computer - Spanish

If your child needs help logging in, please call the IT helpline at: 978.619.1450

Welcome to the Virtual Backpack. This is a space where we will place items that in the past may have been a flyer in your student's backpack from friends and partners to SPS.

A reminder that ParentSquare is the district platform for communication. You will receive communication from the district, your school, and your student's classroom all in one space. You can communicate 1-to-1 with teachers, sign up for parent-teacher conferences, and more.

This is how the schools will communicate with families districtwide going forward. Please be sure you are receiving messages from ParentSquare. If you are having trouble, contact your school's front office. You can visit www.parentsquare.com for more information.

Email: publicrelations@salemk12.org
Website: https://www.salemk12.org
Location: 29 Highland Avenue, Salem, MA, USA
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/SalemPublicSchools
Twitter: @SalemSchoolsk12