2011-Annual Town Report - Granby, MA

September as well. The culmination of their efforts was on
display at the annual Winter Concert held at East Meadow in
December. Thank you to Mr. Williams for all of the hard work
that he puts in with the students of East Meadow to make events
such as this happen.
The Granby PTO continues to be great assistance to the
students and staff of East Meadow School. Through their
fundraising efforts they are able to offer assistance to East
Meadow and also support many family events throughout the
year. Through their contributions each student receives an
assignment book and a parent teacher communication folder. The
PTO also coordinated the School Pak Supply Kits for parents
who opted to purchase them for their children. The PTO also
helped classroom teachers purchase supplies for their classrooms.
We at East Meadow appreciate all that the PTO has done and
continues to do for the students and staff at East Meadow.
Our very popular ASAP program continued to grow in 2011.
There were three separate sessions that students could sign up for
throughout the school year. This financially self sufficient
program continues to attract new and exciting activities for
students led by teachers or parents. There is truly something for
everyone.
The annual Parents’ Night was a tremendous success in 2011.
Parents of East Meadow students come to school to be informed
about the programming at East Meadow. At this night the parents
were afforded the opportunity to meet all staff members. The
parents gathered in the cafetorium to meet with the principal and
after that they were able to meet with classroom teachers and
specialists. They will hear about classroom expectations and
curriculum goals for their students for the upcoming school year.
It was also a great opportunity for the parents of the fourth
graders to familiarize themselves and become more at ease with
East Meadow. The parents also had an opportunity to meet with
teachers during our Parent/Teacher conferences. I am pleased to
report that we had well over 90% participation during these
conferences.
One of the things that I am most proud of as the principal of
East Meadow is the fact that so many of our students and staff
members have made it a priority to assist those around us that
need our help. As a school East Meadow has had several
fundraisers to assist a student from Granby who has some major
medical issues this year, with all of the proceeds going directly to
the family. A group of sixth graders also decided that they
wanted to start a clothing drive to help the less fortunate.
I would like to thank the citizens of Granby for your support of
the school budget and to the parents for your support and cooperation
each and every school day. I am looking forward to
working with all of you to help our students reach their maximum
potential.
Sincerely,
Lou Tirsch, Principal
WEST STREET SCHOOL
Our educational responsibility for 300 students in preschool to
grade 3 is to provide the children with lifelong skills and
knowledge in reading, language arts, math, science, social
studies, art, music, physical education, library, and computer
skills. We provide the foundation upon which the students’
education grows. Our dedicated, highly qualified, and certified
teachers and staff work collaboratively within our professional
learning community so that our Granby students can become
positive and productive citizens.
We had a few changes in staff assignments and welcomed new
staff members in September. Staff who changed assignments
included Mrs. Gilda Sanchez, now teaching second grade; Mrs.
Lisa White, now our kindergarten SPED and ELL teacher; Mrs.
Caroline Bohnet, now our kindergarten/first grade
paraprofessional; and Mrs. Lisa Smigiel, now teaching PE in our
school as well as in East Meadow School. Ms. Tara Weinberg
joined our staff as preschool teacher when Mrs. Susan Rhoads
left our district. Mrs. Jessica Regan joined our staff as the ABA
teacher and Mrs. Jodi Pfeifer joined our staff as our
behavior/autism consultant when Ms. Gayle Alexander left our
district. Mrs. Maureen Lempke and Mrs. Michelle Lawson joined
our staff as paraprofessionals. Ms. Sheena Wehr was one of our
ELL teachers until Mrs. Jamie Lewinski returned from a
maternity leave.
In order to monitor our students’ reading skills to help us reach
one of our No Child Left Behind goals that all children are
proficient in reading by grade three on their reading MCAS test,
we used several formative assessment tools. They included the
D.I.B.E.L.S. (Dynamic Indicators of Basic Early Literacy Skills),
G.R.A.D.E. (Group Reading Assessment and Diagnostic
Evaluation), and the Benchmark Assessment System. Thanks to
the generosity of the Granby PTO, all of our teachers have now
received professional training to administer the Benchmark
Assessment System. These assessments provide our teachers with
data to determine the reading needs of students, to select students
who need additional instructional support, and to provide the
necessary instruction so that all students will have adequate skills
for reading comprehension by the end of third grade. Because
there is a strong correlation between reading and writing, we also
assess the students’ writing two times a year.
Our Title I, RTI (Response to Intervention), and Special
Education programs continue to provide quality academic
support for students with educational needs. Mrs. Janice Gould
and Mrs. Kathy Beresky provided quality reading supplemental
instruction for Title I students and students under our RTI
program with assistance from our paraprofessionals. We are also
fortunate to have volunteers that routinely assist our students and
staff during the year.
The Western Massachusetts Masonic Learning Center
Foundation continued to support the training of volunteer
teachers from Granby and surrounding communities in the Orton-
Gillingham approach of clinical reading remediation for students
with dyslexia at West Street School. Mrs. Cheryl Curtis and Ms.
Heidi Poulin became the Initial Level Trainers in Granby. There
are several students from each of our district schools who were
identified and received individual Orten-Gillingham lessons this
year, and our students benefit in their classrooms from the many
WSS teachers who have been trained and used many of the O.G.
techniques in their classrooms. Our spelling program is also
O.G.-based.
In addition to the English Language Arts MCAS test given to
the grade three students in the spring, grade 3 students also took
the Mathematics MCAS test. We continued to use the updated
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