9/9/2023

Dear Rippowam families,

Hopefully the excessive heat (and half days) are over for the 2023 school year.  Thanks for your flexibility as we found cool spaces for students and navigated 3 early release days.  Next week we have our first full 5 day week of the school year.  Enjoy the weekend! 

Laptop Distribution will happen starting next week!
Make sure your child’s Acceptable Use Policy and Parental Consent to Use of Online Educational Services (AUP) Agreement and SPS Technology Device Agreement Forms are filled out!  When you log into the Parent Portal you will find a navigation menu on the left side of the screen.  Within this menu is a link to Forms.  All forms included in the section must be filled out and submitted for your child to receive a Chromebook.  Contact our Parent Facilitator, Claudia Vettorazzi, at 203-977-4229 or cvettorazzi@stamfordct.gov for help.

Open School Night is Tuesday, September 19th from 5:30-7:30
This year’s open house will feature various time sessions to meet with your child's team of teachers and also visit the elective teachers as well.  You will not follow your child’s schedule as in years past, but rather have opportunities to hear from teams of teachers and other school based teams like the administrative team, PTO, support staff and others.  More information will come later this week!

Afterschool Clubs and Activities to start soon
Rippowam has many after school activities through our 21st Century grant, ESH grant, Community Schools grant and Intramural and club sports.  Be on the lookout for announcements about our fall sports - Intramural Cross Country and Club Soccer - early next week.  21st Century activities will start in early October.   You will be receiving information in the coming week about the types of afterschool clubs and activities that your child can participate in.

Upcoming Family Fun Opportunities
Join Rippowam in the following two upcoming activities:  Soundwaters Beach Cleanup and the SPEF 5K run.  Let’s enjoy time as an extended Ripp family while supporting local organizations in our community.

School Based Social-Emotional Screening and Assessment
We are excited to share that our school is participating in a Statewide Social-Emotional Learning Assessment initiative. As part of this initiative, teachers will use a social-emotional screening and assessment tool called the Devereux Student Strengths Assessment (DESSA) to assess students’ social-emotional skills. To complete the screening, teachers will assess to what degree each student has demonstrated specific social-emotional skills in the past month by responding to 8 questions (e.g., How often did the student work well in groups?, How often did the student keep trying when unsuccessful?, How often did the student offer to help someone?, etc.).  Teachers will screen students during the months of September/October and May/June.

While the DESSA screening and assessment tool is just one component of our social-emotional learning process, we want to make sure that you are informed of our use of assessment. We know the important role social-emotional skills play in each student’s success in school and we believe that the information gathered from the social-emotional screener will be beneficial to each student’s overall success both inside and outside of school.  If you have any questions, please feel free to email me at KColmenares@StamfordCT.gov.

Best,

Kristina Colmenares
Principal, Rippowam Middle School

If you didn’t see the Superintendent’s weekly message, please click HERE.