Hello Marblehead Community Charter Families,

We have had a fantastic week of learning at MCCPS. Our new team members were here on Monday and then our full faculty and staff arrived on Tuesday for a week of professional development workshops. We have been learning new strategies for project-based learning, planning, and instruction. We have been discussing how to best meet the needs of our students on both the academic side and the social emotional/mental health side. And we have been readying our classrooms for the return of students on Monday. Our team is ready and our team is strong. 

We have some new team members this year. We will soon produce a series of introductory videos to share throughout the coming weeks. Here are some brief introductions. 

Our Dean of Students is Stephanie Brant. Stephanie comes to us from the Salem Public Schools where she was most recently. She is here to support our students and ensure they have a positive learning environment. Stephanie has a wealth of knowledge and a background in both social work and special education. 

Our School Nurse is John Purdy who many of you know already. John is a parent of two of our current students and has subbed for us in the past in the Nurse's office. 

Our 7th grade team welcomes Jenny Prag as the humanities teacher. Jenny served as a learning specialist last year while finishing up her masters degree at Boston College. Jenny will be joined by Katie Gaudette a math/science teacher and Chris Doyon who will teach math at both the 7th and 8th grade level. Katie and Chris both join our team from the Mystic Valley Regional Charter School. 

By design, we want our learning specialists to train and learn more about teaching and learning here at MCCPS in order to be prepared to become lead teachers when there are openings. This was the case for Jenny in Grade 7 and the 6th grade team welcomes Joey Van Bragt who was a learning specialist for us last year. Joey will teach math and social studies in 6th grade as he partners with Jess Xiarhos who will teach English Language Arts and science. Joey will also coach soccer. 

Our 5th grade team welcomes a strong inclusion teacher from the Marblehead Public Schools, Katie Cooper, who will support our students in the 5th grade classrooms. 

In order to maintain our high levels of student support in classrooms, we have a number of learning specialists on board to allow us to have two adults in every classroom. We are excited to partner with Endicott College, as we have done in the past and bring on two teachers in their Fellows program to join our team. Our new learning specialists include Allison Ferris, Giana Vozella, Kate Crane, and Skyla Brooks. 

As we look to both support our art classes and provide Emily Miner with some experience as she works toward becoming an art teacher, we are excited to share that Emily will continue as the Office Manager and also be an assistant art teacher. We are also excited to share that Meg Upton, a parent of a current 7th grader, will be our Assistant Office Manager. 

As you can see, we have strengthened our team and we are ready for an outstanding year. 

Today the faculty participated in a workshop about preventing bullying. The Massachusetts Aggression Reduction Center (MARC) met with us and will be back in September to meet with students and empower them to help us create a safe learning environment for all. 

As of this morning we have just one open seat and an offer out to fill that spot. So, we are on target to be fully enrolled for this year. We appreciate you all choosing to send your children to school here at MCCPS. We are committed to getting better every day to best meet the needs of every student. 

We can't wait to see you on Sunday at the BBQ and on Monday for the first day of school. See below for the Arrival/Dismissal procedures. 

Peter Cohen, Ed.D

Head of School

ARRIVAL/DISMISSAL PROCEDURES

Our school is located at 17 Lime Street in Marblehead. Students are expected to be at the school and seated at their table in the Community Room no later than 7:45am for our community meeting. Parents are welcome to join us at the community meeting or join us for lunch. If you will be eating the school lunch, please give us advanced notice that you are joining us.

Students should arrive between 7:15-7:40am. For arrival, please enter the first driveway entrance and circle around all the way to Lime Street in the second driveway. Everyone should pull all the way forward. This means that students may need to walk back from the car to the front entrance of the school. Students should exit cars on the school side of the car. Please do not stop the car at the front entrance of the school. If you can pull all the way forward, it expedites the arrival process. KEY TAKEAWAY: Pull the car all the way forward at arrival.

For dismissal, students should be picked up at 3:20pm on Mondays, Tuesdays, and Thursdays. Dismissal is at 2:30pm on Wednesdays and Fridays. Once again, cars will form a queue in the driveway loop. It is essential that everyone pull their car as far forward as possible. While some cars may wait along the fence on Lime Street, please do not park beyond the fence, as this causes a gridlock situation whereby other cars cannot get by. We are paving a section of the parking lot on Friday that will widen the area where cars are in line at dismissal. Once that is complete, if you are at the front of the line, please pull over to the right, so that cars that already have retrieved their passengers can exit around the cars still in the queue.

We will be out there to direct traffic and train everyone on these procedures. We appreciate everyone's help with the above procedures and your patience during the first few days when new families learn the system.

https://www.marbleheadcharter.org/student-success-fund-3/