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The EduGATOR!
Week of June 3
Weekly Update
Monday, June 3-Regular school day!
Huntington Annual Town Meeting -7pm Stanton Hall
Blandford Annual Town Meeting-7pm Blandford School Building
Tuesday, June 4-Regular school day!
Middle School Music Concert
Wednesday, June 5- Regular school day!
Montgomery Annual Town Meeting-7pm in GPAC
Thursday, June 6-Regular school day!
Friday, June 7-Wear your Jeans and Gator Gear! 🐊
Chester Playground Ribbon Cutting at 4:30pm
Littleville Field Day
Littleville 5th grade Step Up Ceremony
Staff Celebration hosted by the School Committee
You are invited to the staff celebration hosted by the school committee on Wednesday, June 12 to honor our retirees and award winners from this school year. The reception is from 6-7pm and it's in the foyer area outside of the cafeteria. The school committee brings yummy treats, and we highlight our staff including:
Retirees:
Gail LaBrecque
Ruth Harper
Nancy Blume
Mike D'Astous
Marie Pease
Marian Vancour
Recognition:
Amy Mason
Please join us for this lovely celebration!
Barr Update!
24-25 Proposal
After working with the eight school districts that was invited to participate in the first year of the Meeting the Moment Grant, the Barr Foundation invited six school districts to participate in the next phase. These six schools will be awarded from 100,000 to 400,000 depending on their level of commitment to this process and the ideas that generated from the first year.
I am pleased to share that Gateway was invited to submit a proposal for the full $400,000!
This amount will span over the next two school years and be allocated towards rich professional development, stipends for teacher work, community building activities, teacher travel, and student experiences including travel.
I thought we would have to submit a formal proposal for them to review and approve, but they have been sitting in our meetings and reading our notes from our work together and they did not request a final written proposal, but instead requested that we continue to clarify our ideas through a slide deck that can be presented out to the community. This slide deck will be presented formally at the district PD day in August.
The talking points that are to be included in the slide deck are as followed:
Throughout the year, we have seen the strength of relationships throughout our district. Our plan will build on our positive relationships to increase our capacity for change through the development of a culture of using both positive and constructive feedback focused on student learning.
Throughout the year, we will prioritize building our skill of giving and receiving feedback and using that feedback to increase student learning. To do this, we will engage in instructional rounds (non-evaluative, learning-based walk throughs) and provide specific, non-evaluative feedback on areas of focus to those whom we visit and develop our feedback skills to increase student learning. We will continue to encourage positive risk-taking in our instruction based on models observed and learned through PD, site visits in and out of state, and our own instructional rounds.
Next year, it is our hope that every student 6-12 will visit another school site for a full day to help build our Gateway Instructional Vision. Students will talk in mixed-grade groups to share about their experiences and will culminate their learning in a student summit, where students will share their ideas about what learning might look like at Gateway. For grades PK-5, we hope to have immersive learning experiences, which may involve inviting experts into the schools and will be facilitated by adults in the respective elementary schools and secondary students. We are hoping to connect our high school students more to the elementary schools and encourage leadership skills.
By the end of the school year, we will work together– students, staff, and administration– to develop a shared understanding of the instructional vision at Gateway and personalized goals for the next school year.
Throughout the year Central Office administration and staff will be working on clearly communicating with one another to continue to define our roles and increase trust and efficiency to empower school leaders. There will be a focus on developing a strong hiring and onboarding program for new staff to feel respected and supported.
This is a work in progress, so if you have thoughts or ideas about these talking points, please send them to me!
24-25 Site Visits
https://forms.gle/P2usT4GdaZA3Th5j9
There is one visit already scheduled through Barr--this is a visit with two staff seats available. The visit is scheduled for October 21-24 to Louisville, Kentucky to see STEAM Academy (high school) and Eminence K-12 School. It is planned through the NGLC in partnership with the Barr Foundation, and they also require two students and two parents to participate in the trip as well. If you are interested in participating in this experience and you have not yet done an overnight Barr trip, please email Kristen and Will directly to express interest no later than Friday, June 7. The team will be selected based on the criteria set from NGLC. Obviously, you must plan to be at Gateway next year to participate. The draft agenda is below. Given the limited amount of seats and the time away from school, it is likely that NGLC will not be able to accommodate everyone who may be interested in this trip, but we promise to plan more amazing opportunities!
Congratulations Class of 2024!
Kaitlyn Maynard, Salutatorian
Alexi Bonenfant, Valedictorian
Joey Pisani, Class President
Every grad gave Dr. Sullivan a rubber ducky
Chorus and Mr. Rose
Band and Ms. Guertin
Celebrating Amy Mason!
Thank you to everyone who was able to celebrate Amy Mason's acknowledgement from Western Mass News and the Surprise Squad with Gary Rome Hyundai! Here's a quick video of the excitement captured on the celebration day!
The airdate of the piece will be on June 26th at 5:30PM on ABC40 and streaming. If streaming, open Western Mass News on Apple TV, Roku TV, Android TV, or Fire TV, there is a Surprise Squad channel. You can also stream it live. It also will be on westernmassnews.com.
Mentoring Program Surveys
If you participated in the New Teacher Induction and Mentoring program at Gateway during the 2023-2024 school year or any recent years (2019-2023), please complete one of the surveys linked below if you have not already done so. Your feedback will be extremely important in helping us prioritize what is needed to make the new teacher induction and mentoring experience better. If you can please take a few minutes to answer the survey questions, that would be very much appreciated. Data from the survey will be carefully reviewed to ensure that all identifiers are removed, then analyzed, and will be reviewed by the taskforce of teachers and administrators who signed up through the Edugator to be part of the Mentoring Taskforce. We will not share individual responses.
- For Mentees (Unit A Staff new to Gateway in the 2023-2024 or 2022-2023 school year), please complete this survey.
- For Mentors, please complete this survey.
- For Mentees from recent years (Unit A Staff new to Gateway in the 2019-2020, 2020-2021, 2021-2022 or 2022-2023 school year), please complete this survey.
- For Mentors from recent years (Unit A Staff who served as a mentor in 2019-2020, 2020-2021, 2021-2022 and/or 2022-2023 school year), please complete this survey.
Please complete surveys by Friday, June 6.
Transportation Coordinator
If you have questions or concerns about transportation including the buses, the school-owned vans, or the 7D student transport license required for some paraprofessionals, please see Deb Burkott in Central Office. Deb can be reached by emailing dburkott@grsd.org
Summer Program with the YMCA
Summer Programming
You may have heard that the district is shifting its K-4 summer program to be managed by the YMCA. The rumor is true! Administration met with the YMCA of Greater Westfield this week, and we are pleased to share that they will be assuming the management of the Grade k-4 summer program. The YMCA will still be offering FREE programming as planned with field trips located at Littleville Elementary School for the five weeks. As you may know, we have had staffing challenges at Littleville wrap around this year, and turning over management to the YMCA will alleviate this concern. The YMCA is looking to hire Gateway staff and then bring in other staff to work our program to ensure that we can run this camp for our community. They have a 13 students to 1 staff ratio, which is wonderful to ensure consistent supervision and engagement.
The district will still be offering district-run 5-8 summer programming as well as Special Education summer programming.
SEPAC Informational Session
Annual Town Meetings
If you live in the Gateway District, please consider attending your annual town meeting. This is an important meeting to vote on a number of town related matters, including the school budget! I personally love to see democracy at it's finest. Everyone gets a vote and every voice is heard!
Blandford-Monday, June 3 @ Blandford School Building 7:00pm
Chester-Monday, June 10 @ Chester Town Hall 7:00pm
Huntington-Monday, June 3 @ Stanton Hall 7:00pm
Middlefield-Saturday, May 4 @ Town Hall 1:30pm (School Budget Approved!)
Montgomery-Monday, May 20 @ Montgomery Town Hall 7:00pm-POSTPONED TO JUNE 5 to be in GPAC for more space
Russell-Monday, June 10 @Russell Elementary Building 7:00pm
Our Annual Report
Our District Priorities
These priorities were introduced on opening day, but I am re-sharing to emphasize our focus on these two areas. Our PD, evaluation system, support for teachers in the classroom, walk throughs, and discussions at meetings will be centered around this work.
Cultural Priority
All staff in the Gateway Regional School District will intentionally build positive, caring relationships and uphold clear, equitable systems and policies so students are respected, feel safe to learn, take risks, and make progress towards their goals every day.
Instructional Priority
Gateway educators deliver excellent, culturally responsive learning experiences grounded in our high quality instructional materials and review data to make adjustments to their practice so that students make their thinking and reasoning public while engaged in rigorous, grade-appropriate tasks.
2024-2025 Calendar
Past EduGATORS!
Looking for something? Here is a link to the past EduGATORS this month for your convenience:
- Lots of weekly to dos
- State budget update
- new IEP meeting for caregivers
- Musical Visitors info
- Barr update
- Budget info
- Last call for task force
- Updated 2024-2025 Calendar Info
- Budget Info
- Initial Summer Task Force Invitation
- YMCA Summer Employment Opportunity