Good Afternoon Fantastic Families of the Perry K - 6,
We hope you and your family are doing well and that you are having an absolutely wonderful summer!! As we are now almost exactly a month away from the start of the school year, we wanted to reach out with a few quick updates:
Fall Return Updates:
Thursday, September 7th: First day of school for grades 1 - 6
Monday, September 11th: First day of school for K0, K1, K2
Boston Public Schools Calendar: please see the BPS Calendar here.
Arrival begins at 9:15 AM each morning, and Dismissal begins at 4:00 PM.
Additional Key Upcoming Dates:
K0, K1, and K2 Welcome Session: Friday, September 8th at 9:45 AM in the Perry Schoolyard
Perry Fall Family Open House: Thursday, October 5th at 4:30 PM
Before/ After School 23 - 24:
If interested in signing your child up for before/ after school programming, please take a few minutes to fill out this interest form: Perry Before/ After School Interest Form. For any additional questions, please reach out directly to Ms. Bonnie (our outstanding school secretary and before/ after school director) at bwalsh3@bostonpublicschools.org.
Team Updates:
As we enter the 2023 - 24 school year, we are excited to announce three exceptional new additions to the Perry Team who will be joining us this fall! Please join me in welcoming them to the Perry Community!
Ms. Taylor Colombo will be joining the Perry Team as a part-time resource teacher. Ms. Colombo has served as a special education teacher for the past seven years within the ABA Program at the Curley K - 8 School in Jamaica Plain. Prior to her time at the Curley, Ms. Colombo was a teacher and case manager at the New England Center for Children. Ms. Colombo possesses a license in Severe Disabilities, Moderate Disabilities, and ESL. Ms. Colombo is a graduate of Union College (where she captained the women’s soccer team) and has a Masters of Science in Education from Simmons College.
Mr. Yusuef Mohammed will be joining the Perry Team as a social worker in the 2023 - 24 school year. Mr. Mohammed is currently a social work intern in the PATH Therapeutic Program at Snowden High School. Prior to embarking on a career in social work, Mr. Mohammed spent a number of years in IT – including serving as a data project coordinator at Dana Farber and then Verizon. Mr. Mohammed earned his BA at Denison University (Ohio) and possesses two Masters Degrees – one in Clinical Mental Health Counseling and one in School Adjustment Counseling. Mr. Mohammed is also a proud BPS graduate.
Ms. Sara Veliz-Brown will be serving as an ESL teacher on the Perry Team starting in September. Ms. Veliz-Brown has served for the past five years as a K1 teacher at the Paul A Dever Elementary School in Dorchester – playing an integral role in their ongoing turnaround work as a school community. She previously served for five years as a K1 instructional paraprofessional at the Dever. Ms. Veliz-Brown is a UMass-Boston graduate and earned a Masters in Education with a concentration in ESL from Northeastern University. Ms. Veliz-Brown is a fluent Spanish speaker.
We are also very excited to announce that Ms. Rose McNiff will be returning to the Perry Team in a new position as our K0 - K1 center-based classroom teacher. Ms. McNiff did an outstanding job last year in a long-term sub role in our K2 - Grade 1 intellectual disability classroom.
Perry Reads This Summer!!
We know it’s not easy to continue the momentum of reading during the summer (with all of the competing distractions)… but we hope that all families can get back into the habit (or continue the habit) of reading on a daily basis as we head through the final month of summer. Reading for just 20 minutes a day can make a huge difference in staving off “summer learning loss” and ensuring that your child continues to grow their reading skills. For returning families, please remember to make sure to encourage your child to finish the books we sent home for summer in June. Happy Summer Reading!!
Building Availability:
As a reminder, the Perry continues to be used by the Leahy - Holloran Community Center Summer Programming until August 22nd. We (as a staff) will have very limited access to the Perry until that time. For logistical questions, please reach out via email to Ms. Bonnie or myself, as we will not have access to the school phones during this time.
Uniform Information:
For information on The Perry uniform policy, please see Perry Uniform Expectations. If you need any assistance in acquiring uniforms, please reach out to our fantastic family coordinator, Ms. Sasha Canzater at scanzater@bostonpublicschools.org.
Transportation and Arrival/ Dismissal Information:
Bus assignments for the fall are typically sent out directly by BPS in late August, so please look for that as we approach the start of school. For families dropping off their students or walking to school, arrival and dismissal take place in our Schoolyard in the back of the school (along East 8th Street).
Enrollment Updates:
While we do have waitlists for most grades, we do continue to encourage families to register for seats for this upcoming school year. Additionally, we do currently have available seats in fifth and sixth grade. If you have any siblings, neighbors, friends, etc. who may be interested in joining the Perry upper grades, please let them know!! Registration at BPS Welcome Centers is currently ongoing.
If anybody has had a change of plans and their child is not planning to attend the Perry this fall, please let us know by contacting Ms. Bonnie at bwalsh3@bostonpublicschools.org. This will allow us to fill the spot off of our waitlists as soon as possible. Thank you very much!
There’s still a lot of time to enjoy the summer – we hope you are able to have a wonderful and relaxing time with family and friends over the next month. We look forward to welcoming everybody back in early September! We will be in touch next week with start-of-the-year welcome letters from teachers as well as supply lists, so please look out for those emails coming soon.
Thank you so very much for your incredible support of the Perry K - 6 Community!
Mr. Rollins