February 2025 - Posts
Good afternoon, RJ Grey Families:
I hope you were able to enjoy your February vacation last week. As we settle back in after a short break, our gaze starts to turn to next year! Below, I lay out a few items that are on the horizon for all of us.
Behind the scenes, our admin team is planning for what school will look like in the 25-26 school year. If you've paid attention to the budget highlights from the Superintendent and School Committee, there are planned staffing reductions across the District next year to meet our proposed budget. Specifically, at RJ Grey, we are planning to reduce three classroom teachers. As a result, we will move from having 8 teams to 7 teams next year. Our teams will be larger than recent years (approximately 120 students per team), and our class sizes will be larger too (approximately 24 students in each class). This class size average is within the school committee guidelines, so we'll be in line with other schools in the District.
It is always a tricky balance when reducing teaching positions from a middle school since teachers come in groupings (teams) and teaming is such an integral part of how we keep a large school feeling as small as possible. The reduction of a single team next year means that we'll have 3 full-size teams in 7th grade and 3 full-size teams in 8th grade. The seventh team will be a full-size team, made up of both 7th and 8th graders. We anticipate having about 50 7th graders on this team, plus about 70 8th graders. The students will attend classes with classmates from their own grade but will share a set of teachers that teach in both grades. Your incoming 7th or 8th grader will likely not notice much of a difference in their classroom experience. As for the personal aspect of our work, we are sad to be losing several staff members whose work and friendship we deeply value.
In thinking about next year, around March 19th, 7th grade parents will hear from me about course registration for 8th grade. At that time, I'll share with you the website and Parent Portal link to choose Grey Block classes and to see the recommended math class for grade 8. For current 8th grade families, the Parent Portal will be open from March 14 - 24 for you and your child to view recommended courses and choose electives for ninth grade. Teachers will talk more about high school courses in the coming weeks. Our Central Office publishes a document each year, Understanding Course Selection. This is by no means a "required read," but it is available for anyone interested in knowing more about our courses.
In other news, several staff members talked to me this week about parent drop-off in the mornings. Some of you know that one or more RJ Grey administrators are outside in the car drop-off area each morning from 7:35 - 7:55. My task at that time is to make sure students and staff safely exit their cars, cross over traffic, and enter the building. My secondary task is to keep the cars moving in a way that allows you all to drop off your passengers and get to the next parts of your day as quickly as possible. I have heard that parent drop-off has been happening in other RJ Grey parking lots and on the roadway in front of the gym. If we had more staff available at that time to monitor safety, we would deploy them to those locations. Since that is not available, I really ask that each parent uses the main parking lot (at the bottom of the stairs) to drop off in the morning. Pulling into another parking lot interrupts the arrival of staff and creates a potentially unsafe and supervised situation. I appreciate your cooperation and ask that you drop off only in the lower parking lot in the morning.
Thank you to everyone who contributed to our Library Squad's recent book drive. We donated over 1190 books to More Than Words! I am always so grateful for you - when we ask, you give! Thank you very much!
Take care and I hope you have a nice weekend,
Jim
jmarcotte
Good afternoon, RJ Grey Families:
I hope you are doing well on this dreary day. In stark contrast to the dark conditions outside, our cafeteria was transformed overnight into a sunny, positive representation of our school community! In Advisory on Tuesday, each student added the name of someone in a buddy advisory to an individual paper heart. In some cases, a message or other note was added to the heart. Thanks to several of our teachers and some student volunteers, more than 800 paper hearts were hung up in the cafe yesterday afternoon. Today at breakfast and lunch, many students took the time to try and find the heart with their name on it. I haven't found my own heart yet, but I'll keep looking!
At RJ Grey, we work every day to support our students and our staff. We are proud of our work to recognize and appreciate all of our students. Every student, from every community, from every religion, from every gender, and from every background is welcome here and we are a better place for it! It's nice to close out our week with a positive reminder about the importance of community.
Tomorrow is Blue and Gold Day! This tradition is another great opportunity for us to experience our community. We'll hold grade-level student assemblies that will feature our performing arts ensembles (band, chorus, orchestra) and will be led by our student council. A rousing game of musical chairs will be a highlight, I'm sure. If your child has some blue and gold gear to wear to school tomorrow, they will fit right in!
Now that our winter sports season has wrapped up, we can expect more predictable routines after school hours. As a reminder, students who stay for extra help or a club or activity are welcome to stay after school. Otherwise, students should be heading home after school. After vacation, we'll reiterate our expectations to students and remind them about our limited supervision after school hours.
I hope that you are able to enjoy some time with your families over the coming vacation week! My family will be staying close to home. We hope to remain healthy and avoid the viruses that have been affecting many of your families! I hope you have a healthy week, too!
Take care and I hope you have a nice week,
Jim
jmarcotte
Good morning, RJ Grey Families:
You're receiving a morning edition of Eye on the Junior High this week as I sit in my quiet office and some snow is slowly falling outside my window. My wife's district, along with my kids' school district also decided to play it safe and close for today. Thus, it was in my best interest to come to school for a bit to get some work done! Good luck to anyone who needs to travel later this afternoon. In case your child asks, tomorrow (Friday) will be a Day 4 as laid out on our What Day Is It Calendar.
For those tracking the last day of school (me, and every teacher), today's snow day moves our final day of school to Friday, June 20th. Additional snow days will extend our final day into the following week. Fingers crossed for Mother Nature's cooperation. If you aren't aware, the School Committee recently approved the calendar for the 25-26 school year. In the spirit of continuously trying to improve our student attendance, please take note of the calendar as you plan any late-summer trips or vacations for next year. The first day of school for most students is Wednesday, August 27th. The first day for 8th graders and students in grades 10-12 is Thursday, August 28th.
Our RJ Grey students and families continue to step up when they're asked. You know that we held a recent food drive through our Advisory program. The Acton Food Pantry reports that we collected 860 pounds of food! Our Advisories competed to guess the correct number of items donated, and we are happy to report that Ms. Manto's Advisory won this month's challenge. They correctly guessed that we collected 817 individual items. They will keep the Advisory Competition Trophy until next month! A sincere thanks to everyone who helped us with this food drive.
We are nearing the end of National School Counselor Week. We have four excellent school counselors and three school psychologists at RJ Grey who do important work every day. I happen to be attending a conference tomorrow with one of our counselors, where we will lead a middle school breakout session about the important relationship between counselors and administrators. I rely on our counselors every day. They are often very knowledgeable about students, their families, and their needs in the classroom and beyond. We are wrapping up our annual administration of the SOS (Signs of Suicide) Program this week. The counseling team is instrumental in our annual teaching about depression and suicide. 7 Red's lesson was bumped from today and will now happen on Tuesday morning.
The main focus of our SOS work is to have students remember a simple acronym, ACT: Acknowledge, Care, and Tell (a trusted adult). I find that the acronym is useful in lots of situations but is highly applicable to a situation when an adolescent is concerned about a friend who might be feeling depressed, upset, or in the worst case, suicidal. We talk with students about the differences between sadness and depression, we alert them to warning signs for depression, and we ask them to think about who a trusted adult is for them. While we hope all RJ Grey students have at least one trusted adult at school (89% report they currently do), we know that almost all of them are more likely to have someone they trust in their homes (94% report that they do). One of the vignettes presented in the SOS video is between two middle-school-aged boys. While one of the boys is resistant to talking to his own mother because she has so much going on, the friend offers up his mom as someone who could help. Please know that many of you may be a trusted adult for kids who aren’t even in your own family! Kids certainly know who they can trust, so please be open if a student needs to talk to you about something important. Thank you for your ongoing support of all of our students.
Take care and I hope you have a nice weekend,
Jim
jmarcotte
Good afternoon, RJ Grey Families:
Happy New Year to all who celebrated this week! Happy Year of the Snake! Thank you to everyone who helped make our Summer Fun in Winter celebration happen last Friday! The students who attended enjoyed themselves and the snacks and drinks that were provided. Thank you to a long list of parent volunteers who helped organize and work at the event: Beth Chimento, Diana Patterson, Hilary Greven, Allison Hsaio, Viviane Reis, Deepti Sahasrabudhe, Jessica Haddad, Caitlyn Ryan, Mindy Fishman, and Dereka Young.
Trimester 2 Interim Reports were emailed on Monday. As a reminder, not every student receives an Interim. We reserve these reports for students whose averages fall below a C-, or for another reason that a teacher deems necessary. As both a principal and a parent, I don’t like surprises. We ask our teachers to err on the side of caution and send communication if homework, participation, or other areas need improvement. If you have any question about the Interim after speaking to your child, please be in touch with the classroom teacher. Trimester 2 ends on Thursday, March 13, so there is plenty of time to make any adjustments for the remainder of this term.
As a reminder to 8th grade families, the high school is hosting a Transition to ABRHS Night for parents and caregivers on Wednesday, February 12 from 6:00 - 7:30 in the high school auditorium. If you cannot attend, the event will be recorded and shared through email after February vacation.
At times, families will share important congratulations for events their children participate in outside of school. Four of our students recently competed at the Eastern Synchronized Skating Championships and won Gold! They will now go to the National Championships in February! Congratulations to Camilla, Ruby, Krushi, and Avery!
Finally, if you're looking for something to do as a family this Saturday morning, the Acton Memorial Library is hosting a performance called "The Ice River: A Monkey King Story." This lively puppet show comes from the Chinese folktale Journey to the West, a text our eighth graders are familiar with from their China unit in social studies earlier this year. Tickets are free, but you do need to register in advance. Please click here for more information.
Take care and I hope you have a nice weekend,
Jim
jmarcotte
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