PTO Meeting - the Responsive Classroom at Home

We had a nice showing at the recent PTO meeting—thanks to everyone who braved the cold to come out!  PTO Board Co-President Julie Pinto greeted everyone, went over a few housekeeping details:

Franklin Families in Need

Over $1,000 has been raised so far for the Franklin Families in Need – many thanks to everyone who has contributed. This will be an ongoing fundraiser; funds can be given at any time by going to this link: http://bit.ly/1zSw5dS or you can send a check to the Franklin PTO with "Franklin Families in Need" in the subject line.

Please remember that the Winter Warm Up Coat/Clothing Drive runs until December 5th.

Retail Fundraising

Please remember Franklin as you do your holiday shopping! The PTO website has links and information on our affiliate accounts: http://www.franklinpto.org/shop_for_franklin/

Game Night

Take a break from the holiday hullabaloo and join Franklin families for some good old-fashioned fun and games! Thursday, December 4^th from 6-7:30PM in the Franklin School cafeteria. Games provided by GameWright.

Interim Principal Elaine Harold spoke briefly. Ms. Harold is a former classroom teacher and principal; she has served at interim principal at both Lincoln-Elliott and Countryside, so is quite familiar with the Newton school system. Her plan at Franklin is to support families and students through this transitional period until a new principal is hired, and help ease that new principal into the Franklin community. Elaine spoke at a recent principal’s coffee about her background and her role as interim principal – see blog for more details.  

She is eager and open to hearing from parents and caregivers – she has an open-door policy (but does encourage folks to make an appointment through Debbie Mastroianni (Debbie_mastroianni@newton.k12.ma.us) when possible. If you have a problem or complaint, she’s there to help try to solve it.

Principal Search

Julie updated the room on the search for the new principal, including some timeline updates.

Selection advisory committee: The advisory committee will consist of teachers, Newton school administrators, a Newton elementary principal, and 3 Franklin parents.   A number of people have expressed interest in being on the committee; the PTO Board will be in touch with them soon with an application to complete. The Board will select three candidates, with an eye toward diversity of background and school experience. The committee will most likely meet on January 20^th and 22th, so interested candidates need to be available on each day for a full day of meetings.

If you are interested in being considered, please email franklinptonewton@gmail.com

December 9^th, 8:30am, Franklin School: All Franklin parents are invited to participate in an informational meeting with David Fleishman and facilitators. The heart of the discussion will be to ascertain what is working well at Franklin, what are the areas that need more focus, and are what the qualities that we want in a new principal. A similar meeting will be held with the faculty. The format will be small, roundtable focus groups, engaging in open discussions.

February 2015: 2-3 finalists will visit Franklin; there will again be an open forum for anyone interested in meeting the candidates but there will also be smaller (6-8 people) discussion groups. More detail on date and format to come.

If you aren’t able to attend any of these meetings but have questions for the candidates, please email the PTO Board and they will be relayed. The hope and goal is to make this process as inclusive as possible, and give all Franklin families a chance to participate.

GUEST SPEAKER: Amy Kelly on Responsive Home

Former Franklin Principal Amy Kelly gave some background on her new position as District Leader of Social and Emotional Learning for the Newton School System. In October 2014, Newton received a $1.9 K-12 school climate transformation grant from the federal government. As part of the grant, this position was created to develop, over the next five years, a common set of practices for all schools and classrooms across the city. It will be a three-tiered system, and the first tier, which will be implemented with all students) will be Responsive Classroom.

Franklin is already using Responsive Classroom; her talk tonight touched on ways families can use the same language and practices at home, to create a cohesive, unified experience for the child (and potentially tackle some common household problems!). She discussed ways the RC principles and practices could be mirrored or modified slightly; please see the attachment for more information.

The next PTO meeting will be held on January 15 at 7:30. The discussion topic will be Internet Safety, with guest speakers Eileen Keane, K-12 Instructional Technology Coordinator for the city of Newton; Angie Galbraith, Instructional Technology Specialist at Franklin; and Jennie Simopoulos, Franklin Librarian.