Back to School

I am so excited to have everyone back in the building. The staff return to work next Thursday to prepare for the first day of school on Wednesday, August 27th.

The summer packets were mailed earlier this week and should arrive any day now. There is a lot of information in the mailing including your child's teacher's name. If you have any questions, feel free to call the office or send us an email at hssoffice@sau88.net. The front office will be staffed during normal school hours starting this Friday and we can help with anything that you need. Please note that some teachers included a welcome letter in the mailing and others prefer to mail them directly after the mailing goes out.

We hope to see many of you on August 26th at our new all school Orientation event followed by the Ice Cream Social. We will be set up in the lobby with class lists and maps of the school and will help direct you to your child(ren)'s rooms. I sent details on the event earlier in the summer, but will include them again below.

Looking forward to another great year!

Leah Wheelan, Principal

If you are a parent of a kindergarten student and your child hasn't been to HSS for screening, please call us at 603-448-2945 to schedule a 30 minute session during the afternoon of August 21st. Your child will meet with the kindergarten teachers, a speech language pathologist, and an occupational therapist so that we can make sure to have any supports in place at the beginning of the year for your child. We assign children to their specific kindergarten teacher the day after the screening and you will be notified by email.

Date: Tuesday, August 26th

Time: 2:00 if you have one child at HSS, 1:30 if you have multiple children at HSS

We have made a few changes to our back to school events in order to incorporate some valuable parent feedback regarding the desire to meet your child’s teacher sooner in the year and to visit their classroom.

We will host a School Wide Orientation on Tuesday, August 26th. This will replace our usual Kindergarten orientation night and will include all grades. Each classroom teacher will present information and take questions for about 20 minutes. The first presentation block will be 1:30 - 2:00 and then the presentations will repeat again from 2:00 - 2:30 to allow for families with multiple children to attend more than one presentation. If you have only one child at school, feel free to join us at 2:00. These classroom sessions will provide families with an overview of the classroom schedule, expectations, staff, programs, and curriculum that the students will participate in throughout the school year.

We will also have tables set up in the cafeteria from 1:30 - 2:30 so you can meet the other teachers in our building such as Art, Music, PE, Library, Reading Specialists, Title 1 Math, ELL, Special Education, Nurse, Student Support, etc.

We will all have ice cream on the playground from 2:30 to 3:00 to end the day.

Please note:

• Your children will attend the orientation presentation(s) with you

• If you're unable to attend or can only come for the ice cream social, don’t worry! We’ll share the presentation slides with all families afterward.
  
  

Orientation Schedule:

• Classroom teacher presentations: 1:30 - 2:00 PM

• Repeated classroom teacher presentations: 2:00 - 2:30 PM

• Non classroom teachers available: 1:30 - 2:30 PM

• Ice Cream Social on the playground: 2:30 - 3:00 PM

• School tours for new families: 3:00 –3:15 PM

We’re looking forward to welcoming you back and starting the 25-26 school year with everyone.

Warmly,
Leah Wheelan
Principal, Hanover Street School

We only have two new teachers this year. I will introduce each of them in more detail in future newsletters and you'll have the opportunity to meet them in person at the Orientation and Ice Cream Social. Matt McGuigan is our new PE teacher and many of you know him already from the Lebanon community. We also have added a fourth teacher to our third grade. She comes to us from out of state with 14 years of elementary teaching experience and we will announce her name next week.

We have added quite a few special education para educators, some of whom your children will recognize as they worked for us as subs last year and others worked at Mount Lebanon School last year:

Sage Birsky

Nikki Boisvert

Karen Burdette (MLS)

Joy Conley

Pamela Crowe

Lucia Graves (MLS)

Kimberly King

Carrie Moote (MLS)

Kati O'Connell

Sue Sztuba

We are almost done renovating one classroom which will be the new music room. Other than that, we have completed some cosmetic changes that will hopefully be a pleasant surprise when you come back to school.

I'd like to also give a huge shout out to our amazing custodial staff that worked so hard this summer to get ready for our summer school program and then clean and move furniture again to have us ready for the start of school!

We are going to continue to use the loop in front of the new classrooms as an Express car drop off in the morning. It will be important that you use this loop only if your child is ready to get out of the car. If you or your child needs more time, you'll park in the lot and walk your child to the car loop. The students will head straight to the playground if they arrive before 8:00. The blue line on the map below is the Express car drop off loop.

Car pick up will be out front with no changes from last year. You will come in the 'V', park, and then join either the K-1 line or the 2nd - 4th grade line. The 'V' is the yellow entrance on the map.

Thank you in advance for driving slowly and carefully at pick up as there are a lot of people, strollers, dogs, etc. crossing the road. As always, we will have staff outside at drop off and pick up to help direct traffic.

To sign up your 2nd, 3rd, or 4th grader, click on this Registration Link.

We will take 10 second graders and 30 third and fourth graders. Auditions will be the September 8 and 10, and callbacks on September 11. Rehearsals will be Monday, Wednesday, and Thursday until we get closer to performance time. Then rehearsals will pick up to 4-5 days a week. Not all kids will be called or invited to all rehearsals.

Here is a link to the waitlist in case the registrations are full.

The HSS PTO is excited for another great year of supporting our students and staff at HSS. Our back to school meeting is Thursday, September 4th at 6:30 in the HSS Library. All are welcome to attend.

Volunteerism looks different to everyone and we do our best to include everyone. To stay connected please click the option on the ALMA registration to include your email with the PTO! Throughout the school year our meetings are the 1st Thursday of every month. Our agendas, minutes and year at a glance are all listed on the school website under the PTO tab.

Email us at: hanoverstreetschoolpto@gmail.com with any suggestions or comments!

Thank You,

HSS PTO

August 26th - Orientation for K to 4th grade and Ice Cream Social on the Playground

August 27th - First Day of School at 8:00

September 1st - No school. Labor Day