Colrain Central School News

• Tonight's the night! Join us for our annual PTO Back-to-School Ice Cream Social at 5:00 on the playground (weather permitting). Enjoy a sweet treat, pick up a school calendar, a lunch menu, and/or an afterschool program registration form, sign up for an intake conference with your child's teacher, see old new friends, make new ones, and be sure to stop by and say hi to Briggs! 🐾
• Next Wednesday, Sept. 2nd is the first day of school for students! Arrival begins at 8:30, as does our First Day Celebration. Dismissal is at 12:30 on the first three days of school.

The bulk of our communication is done electronically. Please be sure that the front office has an email on file for you and that you check that email regularly.

We are pleased to be able to offer child care before and after school for a fee. Our before school program begins an hour before school starts (7:30 am on regular start school days). This is a drop in service. Students can be brought in the back door by the gymnasium between 7:30 and 8:30. Please ring the doorbell to be let in.

The afterschool program begins at dismissal and is open until 5:30 pm.

The fee for both programs is $8.00/hour for one student and $7.50/hour for all subsequent family members. Caregivers will be required to sign a billing acknowlegement and are expected to keep up with payments. Failure to pay may result in a suspension of the program.

Please send in an extra snack or two if your child will be attending the afterschool program.

The after school program will open for the year on Wednesday, Sep. 2nd.The before school program will open for the year on Thursday, Sep. 3rd.

• The Sept. PTO meeting is Thursday, Sept. 10th at 3:30 in the staff room.

The first three days of school, September 2-4, are 12:30 dismissals. The purpose of this is to allow time for caregivers and teachers to meet to talk about the school year, share hopes & dreams for the school year, and begin building strong relationships between home and school. A strong home/school partnership is one of the greatest tools available to helping support students to make strong academic and social progress. If you have not yet signed up for a conference and would like to, please contact Sandy White in the front office by calling 413-624-3451 or emailing her at mailto:swhite@mtrsd.org

• Drop off and pick up happens in the back parking lot of the school. The front parking lot is for buses only.
• When pulling into the parking lot from rte 112, please proceed slowly and with caution. The driveway to the back lot is narrow. Please follow the arrows to form a circle around the parked cars. Please do NOT exit your car. At arrival time, 8:30-8:45, a staff member will come to your car door to escort your child to the doorway. This ensures their safety, as well as yours as a driver. Once your child has been retrieved by a staff member, please pull slowly forward and exit the parking lot, looking for other vehicles driving in.
• If you arrive after the back door has closed at 8:45, please cautiously drive around to the front lot, park, and escort your child to the front door where they will be let in by the front office staff.
• For pickup at dismissal, please proceed cautiously to the back parking lot and park behind the car in front of you. (The first car should pull up to the first spot, which is parallel with the classroom on the north end of the building.) Please do NOT exit your car. At dismissal, your child will be escorted to your vehicle by a staff member. You and/or your child are responsible for ensuring they are properly buckled in their seats, so please practice having them buckle their seatbelts prior to the start of school. Staff members will not be buckling students into their seats, booster seats, or car seats.
• I know that folks are often in a rush, especially in the mornings. Your patience is critical to ensuring everyone's safety. Our staff work hard to get students in and out of cars as quickly as possible, while ensuring no one gets hurt. Thank you for your support of, and cooperation with, these procedures.

There are several forms that need to be completed at the start of a new school year. Since most of them are now electronic, I'm including the links below for those that would like to get them taken care of early. Please be sure all forms have been completed by Friday, September 18th.

As of August 14, the Department of Elementary and Secondary Education has changed the way families will access student assessment results. Rather than sending results to schools for distribution to families, caregivers will now be able to view their child’s results directly through the MCAS Family Portal.

Below is a more detailed explanation from the Commissioner of Education.

Over the next two weeks, we will be reaching out to caregivers of all students who participated in the Spring assessments with information about how to access the portal, including their individual login credentials.

Thank you for your patience as we transition to this new process.

August 2026

Dear Parent or Guardian,

The Department of Elementary and Secondary Education recently launched an MCAS Family Portal that will allow families to access their child’s state test results. You should receive information from your district about how to access the portal using a special registration code. The portal provides your child’s initial results from the Massachusetts Comprehensive Assessment System (MCAS) tests they took in spring 2026. Even though these results are preliminary and could change slightly, DESE is sharing them with families early this year in response to feedback and to help families prepare for the start of school in the fall.

Preliminary English language arts and math results are available. Preliminary science and civics results for students who took those tests are also available. Final results, including student growth information and comparisons to school, district, and statewide results, will be available in late September. The portal will also include results from previous years.

I encourage you to review your child’s results. While MCAS scores are only one piece of insight into your child’s learning experience, they can provide helpful information about your child’s progress and strengths and indicate where additional support may be helpful.

Basic information about the test is included below and in the portal, but if you have questions about your individual child, please contact your child’s school.

About your child’s results:

MCAS scores fall into one of four achievement levels:

Exceeding Expectations

Meeting Expectations

Partially Meeting Expectations, and

Not Meeting Expectations.

The results show where your child scored, which can be a good starting point for conversations with your child’s teacher. If your child's MCAS scores do not align with other information (such as grades or local assessment results) that you have received from your child's school, you may want to discuss the causes of those differences.

Please note that if your child took the MCAS Alternate Assessment (MCAS-Alt), their results are reported with different achievement levels (Progressing, Emerging, Awareness, or Incomplete).

About the content that MCAS measures:

MCAS measures the knowledge and skills included in the Massachusetts state learning standards. Teachers and other experts designed these standards to help prepare students for success in the next grade level and beyond. More broadly, Massachusetts learning standards are designed to help students build the knowledge and skills they need to succeed in school, career, and civic life.

Massachusetts teachers and other experts take those learning standards and use them to review and develop MCAS questions.

About the MCAS:

Students in grades 3–8 take English language arts and mathematics tests each year, and students also take those tests once in high school. Science tests are given in grades 5, 8, and once in high school. Civics tests are given in grade 8. Some of the tests are required by state and federal laws.

MCAS results are not part of the state graduation requirement, but the tests remain an important source of information for families, educators, and policymakers. In addition, high school students’ MCAS scores may qualify them for scholarships to state colleges and universities and can fulfill part of the requirements for the State Seal of Biliteracy.

MCAS results are included in our state’s accountability system (download), which identifies which schools and districts need assistance. In other words, MCAS results help show you how your child is doing, and they help show me how our state’s public school system is doing. MCAS results help us identify trends and see where schools and districts might need help.

Our goal is for every student to feel supported and be prepared for the many opportunities available in Massachusetts and beyond.

Additional information:

More information about MCAS is available on DESE’s website.

Sincerely,

Pedro Martinez

Commissioner

135 Santilli Hwy, Everett MA 02149 Voice: (781) 388-3000 TTY: 1-800-439-2370 www.doe.mass.edu

8/28: 5:00 pm: PTO Back-to-School Ice Cream Social

9/2: First Day of School & First Day Celebration

9/2-9/4: 1:00-3:30 Intake Conferences

9/7: No School in observance of Labor Day

9/9: 6:00 pm: School Committee meeting

9/10: 3:30 pm PTO meeting

9/17: Mary Lyon Foundation Resource Fair @ MTRS

9/23: 6:00 pm: Open House

9/26: 10:00 am: CCS Foundry 5K & Fun Run

9/26: 1:00 pm: Colrain Food For all pop up event in gymnasium

12:30 dismissals: 9/2, 9/3, 9/4, 9/16, 9/23

Colrain Food For All · fall 2026

CFFA Contact Info

624-4455

info@colrainfoodforall.org

Food bags will go home with every student this year starting Thursday, September 10, and then every other Thursday. Every student at Colrain Central goes home with a bag of easy, kid-friendly food. It comes from Colrain Food For All, an all-volunteer neighborhood group and a partner of the Food Bank of Western Massachusetts. That first bag comes with a short sheet. Your child's name and grade, any food allergies, and a box to check if you'd rather not receive bags.

The share table

If there's something in the bag your family won't eat, send it back to school. It goes on the

share table, and any other student can take it.

Send the bag back

Every bag is sewn or crocheted by somebody in Colrain, and we use them over and over.

Send the bag back to school and your child gets a punch on the card that came with their

first bag. Six punches and they pick out a book to keep! We don't have enough bags to

hand out new ones every time, so getting them back is what keeps this running — and it's a lot cheaper than plastic.

Free groceries on the last Saturday of the month

Saturday, August 29, 1:00–3:00 PM, behind the Griswold Memorial Library, 12

Main Road.Then we move indoors to the Colrain Central School gym: Saturday, September 26

and Saturday, October 31, same 1:00–3:00 PM. Rain or shine. Free groceries for anyone who needs them — no sign-up, no ID.

Groceries any time

Tell us what you'd like and we'll pack a box. Scan the code, fill out the form at

forms.gle/dehz2jasvnKGen6U8, or just call or text 413-624-4455 and

we'll take it down over the phone. Paper forms are in the Little Free Food Pantry at the library. We call/text you back to find a pickup time that works, and if getting there is hard, say so —

we may be able to deliver. You're always welcome to order for a neighbor.

Looking for a way to help?

We could use your fabric scraps

Cotton fabric scraps and clean cotton t-shirts — stains and holes are fine, we cut the

shirts into yarn. Drop them off or bring them to bag-making Wednesdays, 5–8 PM at the

Griswold Memorial Library, or call or text 413-624-4455 and one of us will come get

them.

And we could use your hands

Wednesday evenings, starting September 9 — packing the bags at Mohawk Trail

Regional School in Buckland, the night before they go out. Two to three hours, every other

week.

The last Saturday of the month, at the pop-up — 11:30–12:30 setting up tables and

laying out the food, 12:45–2:00 saying hello at the front of the line (no lifting at all), or

3:00–4:00 packing up.

Whenever you have an hour — sewing or crocheting bags at your kitchen table, writing

thank-you notes, making a few phone calls, typing numbers into a form, driving a food

run, or bringing us whatever your garden gave you too much of.

Tell us you're interested at forms.gle/Et7A8ndYPe6ZewTj7, or call or text 413-624-4455.

Colrain Food For All is fiscally sponsored by the Interfaith Council of Franklin County and is a partner of the Food Bank of Western Massachusetts.