February 18, 2022 Meeting Minutes

HSA Meeting Minutes
February 18, 2022 9am

9 people live, 12 participants via Zoom; Dr. Oates and Ms. Fischetti

Super Science Saturday announcement – Presented by Shelia Brogan

34th year of Super Science Saturday. It will be virtual this year. Lived streamed on March 5, 2022 at 10am on the Ridgewood Super Science Saturday website www.supersciencesaturday.org. It can also be viewed on the RPS district website and Pios 33.   Really wonderful and exciting lineup of programs this year. It is based on traveling across the United States to visit some wildlife centers, marine labs and there will also be videos made by the RHS students. Dolphin research center in Florida;  Henry Doorly Zoo and Aquarium in Omaha, Nebraska; Butterfly research in New Jersey, NASA Scientists, Ice sheets melting and climate change; Otters visit and a Rocket Launch.

School Updates from Dr. Oates:

• One School One Book: The Wild Robot. Big success! School wide art created by the children and Mrs. Stankiewicz up by the library. Each student made their own little robot and they were all then connected to create four larger robots. They are all unique, personalized and interesting! Check it out on the 2nd floor! The children are really showing joy and eagerness in the building process and design thinking. Today is our closing event with the movie Wall-E and popcorn from the donated popcorn machine from Dad’s Night! 
• Book of the Month: Jabari Jumps by Gaia Cornwall. Read aloud about having courage and doing something that is hard, and overcoming fears. 
• Food Drive is on until the end of the month: Collecting comfort food this month. Macaroni and cheese, mashed potatoes, ect. Souper Bowl Drive was a big success! Mrs. Stankiewicz created a 3-D model (Can-struction) of a Lighthouse using the soup cans to celebrate their successful soup drive. Thank you to the HSA for the soup donations to Somerville staff! Thank you Chestnut Deli for supporting Somerville! 
• Covid Updates: Everyone is talking about the Mask Mandate expiration. The Governor did declare that as of March 7th masks will be optional. Ridgewood will be making their announcement shortly that we will have a mask optional policy. We are now navigating what that is going to look like. Dr. Oates will be working with the staff and all the children on the social/emotional component of this optional transition. There will be a TEAM Somerville assembly the week before the mask optional transition. This assembly will have skits to demonstrate possible social/emotional situations that the children could feel and how to process these feelings and how to support one another. How to address feelings with a friend. What are comfortable questions vs. uncomfortable questions to ask a friend and how to process this. Having open conversations at home and in school and developing EQ so that the children know how to have respect for others feelings and decisions. 
• Kate Finnegan is at testing training Dr. Oates speaks on this: “New Year, New You” theme with the children. Earning your keep, making great choices. Fun activity planned for next Thursday, March 3rd. Each child will be getting their own Superhero cape to decorate, and will participate in a “Cape Out”. All the kids will be leaving school wearing their capes. Definitely a photo opportunity! We are so proud of their personal progress in this new year with social/emotional growth.  
• Black History Month. Teachers had a range of lessons in their classrooms. In addition, there was an assembly sponsored by Dad’s Night on February 7th, Patrick Hunter STEAM ambassador, engineer and artist. He spoke on Design Thinking and the children in 4th and 5th grade classes had a STEAM, Superhero, Sneakers Challenge with Mr. Hunter. The slideshow showed snippets of the day yet so much more was witnessed in the small group collaboration, and the way the kids pre-planned, collaborated, delegated tasks, and created. 
• March: Ordinary People do Extraordinary Things: Book Series by Brad Meltzer. Books are based on the extraordinary accomplishments these people had brought to the world, yet begins with their childhood story of being a typical or ordinary kid with their own ordinary circumstances and how their journey led them to greatness. The school bought all the books from this series from the Curious Reader in Glen Rock, fabulous book store. Each grade will focus on 4-5 people and their stories. 
• Kindergarten Registration ended and we have 46 incoming kindergarteners. We will have 3 nice sections of Kindergarten in September.  

Past Events: We had our Virtual Bingo night. Our Lunar New Year celebration. Parents came into school to present and teachers created lessons on the Lunar New Year. Thank you to Rachel and to all who helped make this a special event. We are definitely encouraging parents to reach out to their child’s teacher if there is a custom, tradition, work related sharing, cultural event in your family, etc. We are really excited to open our doors to those “shares”. The 5th grade Winter concert was fabulous! The Patrick Hunter assembly was great! 

• Link-It Testing students in grades 2-5 have all now taken Link-it tests twice by this time in the school year. Link-it reports are not being sent home because it is really not intended to be a parent communication tool. It is for the district and the school to help teachers and principals assess students and to gather information to support the needs of the students. They are to guide use in our instruction and how to make modifications to support students moving forward. The state tests in the spring, NJSLA for grades 3-5 is intended for both parents to monitor for student growth and for the school to monitor for student growth, and also some information around our teaching practices. As a district we don’t use the state testing to look at individual children, it is more of a Macro look at our school and to see if there are particular areas in which we need to support the curriculum with more reinforcement.  Link-it is more student driven. General scoring to compare meeting benchmarks were shared for grades 2-5. We are seeing great growth across all of the grades. The benchmarks do shift as well. This is why some results stay the same even when the children have demonstrated growth.
• Ms. Fischettii speaks on Link-It.: The children are becoming acclimated with online testing which is great. There are also several online resources for the teachers to use for instruction to model the thinking process allowed with the students. Allowing teachers to demonstrate to students how to approach a question, what to do if they are unsure of the process to solve a problem, what kinds of questions can they expect, and handling time management when testing. The data is amazing! Teachers can sort by skill set, topics, and different style of questions. Also timing of children and their pacing can be seen. Ms. Fischetti also spoke to the Patrick Hunter assembly and Design Thinking afternoon. Key takeaways from the teachers were the messages that were given through this assembly. Messages such as understanding perspective, things aren’t always what they seem to be from your perspective, part of life is examining and thinking and being really thoughtful, the idea of bringing in more voices, including more people’s thinking, to enrich the lives of everybody. The afternoon was so well planned by Mrs.Stankiewicz. The children worked together with raw materials and had to really think about their specific superhero and why or how these certain materials would be properly used to support the needs of their individual superhero. Thank you to the parent volunteers who helped in the classroom for this event. Questions were circulating the room such as “What is your purpose? How can you make your vision come to life?” There were groups working through disagreements and how they worked through these disagreements. 

Thank you Mrs. Fischetti for joining us today! 

There will be one more Link-it assessment period at the end of May, after our state testing. State testing will be the week of May 9th. 

HSA Updates:

• • BINGO Night was on January 21st on Zoom. It was a lot of fun! Thank you to all who participated! 
  • Souper Bowl, Lunar New Year HSA “No Cook” events were all successful! Thank you to the families who participated. 
  • February is Reading Marathon month: Ben and Jerry’s free ice cream coupon to be submitted online by the end of the month. 
  • Food Drive donations this month: comfort food collecting until the end of the month. 
  • Art Contest through the Ridgewood Community Program called Tic Toc this month for our 5th graders..Look to our HSA website for more details. 
  • Teacher Appreciation Breakfast was this morning, February 18th for teachers of 2nd and 3rd graders.  Thank you to everyone who contributes to the Teacher Appreciation breakfasts! We always get such a nice spread for the teachers and they are very appreciative. Thank you for the gluten free muffins!! 
  • Science Fair March 4th. Each participant will receive a medal for their hard work, time and for their presentations at the Science Fair. Also, the class with the most participants will earn a popsicle party given by the HSA. Deadline for sign ups is March 1st. March 5th is Super Science Saturday. (Live Streamed. See information above)

• Dad’s Night is March 11th and 12th at BF Middle School. 

• March 18th “Make your Own Pizza Night” hosted by Francesca’s in town. This will be our Somerville HSA No Cook fundraiser for the month.  Look to the website for more information on this fun community builder and fundraiser! 
• March 23rd Teacher Drop. Teacher’s are recognized with a small token in their mailboxes to let them know that we are thinking of them, and appreciate them! 
• Boosterthon: Our largest fundraiser: April 7, 2022.

 It will begin March 29th- April 7th. The children will raise money by asking for donations to parents, family, friends to fund HSA projects. The money we raise this year is going towards a *NEW HVAC SYSTEM for the GYM*. The HSA will be joining with the Dad’s Night organization to fund this HVAC system. Very exciting news! There will be prizes and t-shirts given to the kids during the week of the fun run. We are looking to see if any local business would like to be our T-shirt sponsor. Their logo or name will be printed on the shirt. We can have several sponsors. Please contact Claudia Fortunato or Christine Lear if you have a business that would like to sponsor this event!   On April 7th we will have our Boosterthon Fun Run! The children will be running by grade level on the field behind Somerville school with a DJ and tunnel run through. It is a really fun day at Somerville! Stay tuned for further information. We are collecting T-Shirt designs for the Fun Run Tshirt. They can be emailed to somervilleschoolhsa@gmail.com or submitted to the office. 

• ATTENTION ALL PARENTS: HSA is a great way to be a part of your child’s experience here at Somerville and to give back with your time and creative ideas. The 2022-2023 HSA board is open to anyone who would like to be involved. Please contact Alison Brown, the HSA Nominating Chair with your intentions to seek this great opportunity! 
• The Wizards Game has been rescheduled to March 30th and 31st. Wednesday and Thursday night. Keep eyes open for the ticket purchase date, time and link to purchase tickets for this fun event!

• 5th grade activities are being planned and the 5th grade Yearbook is being created. To all parents, remember to capture moments here at Somerville school during any school event and save them for the 5th grade Yearbook. To 5th grade parents, please continue to submit your photos to the yearbook link that was sent out.  Please make sure you use the correct tags and names for the photos to help the process move along in a timely fashion. 
• Somerville Children’s Theater (SCT): Peter Pan is coming to Somerville Children’s Theater! Tickets will go on sale the week of March 8th! We have 2 casts this year performing in 2 shows per cast, so a total of 4 shows as options to attend. The show dates are March 25, 2022 at 7:30pm (Cast A), March 26, 2022 at 12:00pm (Cast B), March 26, 2022 at 4pm (Cast A) and then March 26th at 7:30pm (Cast B). Feel free to buy tickets for both Cast A and Cast B shows for your children to support their friends, siblings’ friends, book buddies, safety patrol friends, and 4th and 5th grade Somerville neighbors! We continue to thank the SCT parents this year for their time, hard work and collaboration with our Parent Producers and Directors to make this all happen! 

Thank you to all who attended today’s meeting in person, for those who joined us on our Zoom call. Thank you Dr. Oates, and Ms. Fischetti for your updates and meeting with us today.

Next Meeting: March 18th at 9am in the old Music Room and with a Zoom option.