News and events

The courtyard behind the gym has a new job. Over three Saturdays in September, more than forty parents, grandparents and neighbors built cedar benches, raised planters and a shade sail, turning an empty corner into a reading garden.

Classes can reserve the garden during the school day, and families are welcome there from 2:20 to 3:00 p.m. every afternoon when the weather allows.

Thank you to everyone who lent a hand, a tool or a sandwich. Our students noticed, and they are already asking for a second garden.

Our fifth graders spent the first weeks of school assembling a small weather station, and it is now bolted safely to the roof above the science lab.

Each morning a pair of students reads the instruments, logs the numbers and writes a two-sentence forecast for the whole school. By June they will have a full year of data to study.

Families can follow along on the display case outside Room 212, where the class posts a weekly chart.

The first week of school is always busy, and this year it was also joyful. Attendance reached 97 percent, the highest start we have recorded.

More than 300 families came to the welcome picnic on the field, where teachers served lemonade, the grade 8 students ran face painting and our kindergarten families met each other for the first time.

Thank you for getting your children here on time and ready to learn. Good attendance is the simplest way to help them grow this year.