Dear Families,

Thanks to all joined us for the Museum Mile and Annual Town Meeting. The Museum was amazing! Each classroom had a unique display of children’s work. Families had fun exploring the exhibits and marveling at all the creativity!

The Annual Town Meeting was powerful!! We began working on a School Charter and developing plans for reimagining the parent experience at The Earth School. Participants shared ideas and questions about various aspects of the school’s program. If you did not attend and would like to contribute ideas about the topic discussed, here is a short questionnaire that participants completed on Saturday. There was plenty of discussion after we filled out the questionnaires and many important ideas were expressed. If you would like to add anything that didn’t make it on to your reflection sheet, you may use this same link. And, of course, now we that we have raised questions and issues, there is the necessary work of how to follow up with next steps. If you want to be a part of these discussions, the PA, the SLT, the Representation Team (RT) will all be grappling with how to funnel this energy into tangible change.

Annual Town Meeting’s focus on adult relationships in the school emerged from a concern that was expressed by many people in our community. We truly value hearing your perspectives and feedback! In fact, gathering feedback from a variety of sources is an important part of the process for creating next year’s Comprehensive Education Plan (CEP):
• Teachers reflect on student performance and professional development experiences
• The PA, SLT, and RT consider the past year’s work and start looking ahead
• Abbe reviews classroom observation docs, feedback from parents, feedback from District walk-throughs and evaluations
•  Additionally, on May 2, 9, 30, I will have a drop in “Coffee Hour” if you want to share additional ideas for next year’s planning.

Annual Town Meeting was wonderful and so important, but we did not get to everything! Rather than cut short the powerful conversation, we decided to postpone the “Cyberbulling, Social Media, and Screens” discussion. Please reach out to me or your PA/SLT reps if you have a preference for when to reschedule (evening?, after/before school?)

Tap Water Watch Campaign As you may know The Earth School has launched a crowdfunding campaign to pay for filtered water bottle filling stations so children have easy access to fill their reusable bottles. Please share this link with work colleagues, friends, family, and anyone who might want to contribute a few dollars for these filling stations. We’re about halfway there!! Please share widely on your social media. https://tapwaterwatch.com/campaigns/the-earth-school-01m364/

All for now! Abbe