More Work TO BE DONE

Dear LREI Families,

It happens every year!  We hit this week and I am surprised by how few days of school we have left, having convinced myself that we have an extra week hidden somewhere, like some Harry Potter railway platform, if I can just find it I will have a few more days.

I have had a number of questions about class placement for the coming year and I want to give a brief response to these here and then share some related thoughts as we move towards June. For families in the lower school and middle school, we will continue to follow LREI’s class placement policy as outlined in the school’s family handbook, as we did this year and each year since it was written. (You can find the policy in the handbooks at LREI.org or in LREI Connect.) We will continue to discuss each child during our placement conversations and to make what we feel is the most appropriate placement decision for that individual student. This year we added one piece to the discussions about placement. As we approached the spring conferences we asked families, again in the lower school and the middle school, “to consider whether there is anything about the way your child is currently experiencing their identity that might inform the teams’ conversations about placement.” One comment that we heard a number of times through last summer and into the past fall was that we were breaking our admonition about not making assumptions. This request of families was a way to gather information rather than make assumptions.

To broaden the scope of my thoughts, our focus, in addition to thinking about the day-to-day experience of the students this year, has been to more broadly examine the systems in which we are working. Joining our ongoing conversation about how we can group and place students in classrooms (which differs in the three divisions) we have spent considerable time looking at the systems through which we hire new colleagues – how can we “de-bias” this process while making it more efficient and ultimately more successful?  Again, while we feel we have made great strides we will, as is our style, continue to examine and improve this process. We are also spending an increasing amount of time focused on the systems that create our classroom program and are beginning a more systemic examination of the program and materials. This will be the focus of significant work this summer, with much to share in the next school year.

This is one of the challenges of this time of the year – lots to finish up and summer to look forward to, all balanced with the beginning of our excitement about projects that will arrive with the start of the next school year; some will begin over the summer with others following in September.  We will have to be patient and comfort ourselves with sunny weather and summer pursuits.

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From the Fifth Grade –  We are conducting a food drive to collect boxes of whole grain cereal, from June 3 – June 7. These donations are going to a local food pantry called Father’s Heart, where we made pantry bags and learned about how soup kitchens fight food insecurity. Father’s Heart provides meals for 500+ families and individuals every Saturday and we would like to help them. We encourage you to bring in less sugary cereal, but anything helps. There will be a box in the Sixth Avenue lobby and boxes in the middle school to drop off cereal. By just donating 1 or 2 cereal boxes, you can make a difference!

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Here come the Alumni!

This coming weekend, Friday, May 31 and Saturday, June 1 is our annual Alumni Reunion.  We look forward each year to welcoming well over 100 alumni back to LREI to reconnect with each other and with the school community. Below you will find a list of the weekend’s events to which all community members are invited.

Friday, May 31

Alumni Basketball Game

Doors open at 5:30p.m. Game starts at 6:00p.m.

Thompson St. Gym (145 Thompson Street)

All are invited to come and cheer the players on.

Saturday, June 1

Alumni Archive Session with LREI Archivist Yukie Ohta

12:00p.m. – 3:00p.m.

40 Charlton Street

Explore LREI’s archives. Loads of fun for all.