Update on Elementary Class Placement

by Marc J. Smith, principal – Forestdale PreK-2 and Trish Hill, principal – Oak Ridge Grade 3-6

As we approach the end of July and head into August, many parents and students are likely starting to think about next school year. In considering things like school supplies, first day outfits, and squeezing in a couple more “family fun days”, parents and students are also likely starting to wonder about next year’s teacher.

The placement process began in earnest last spring with a lot of input and hard work by our classroom teachers. Once this initial work was completed, the leadership team began the work of reading though the parent input forms, assigning teachers and working with a wide variety of student services teams in order to work through fine tuning the class lists. Next, we began work to incorporate families new to Sandwich into our class rosters.

The last step in the process involves “scheduling” the students into their new homerooms in our student information system. This is a tedious, but necessary, process that takes a few days to complete. Following this work is one or two days of double checking to make sure everything is accurate.

This summer we ran into a slight complication in the last two steps. We have state required reporting that must occur each summer based upon data collected from the previous school year. The data has to be presented to the state reflective of your organization during the school year that just ended (2014-2015 school year in this case). As a result, we cannot “move” the students into their new schools until after this report is submitted. The report needs to be completed by August 10th. Once completed, the students can be “moved” to their new schools in the database and then assigned to their new classes.

We are anticipating that we will have the class lists ready for public release by the end of the day on August 14th. We plan to post an alphabetical student list on the main entrance doors of each school (Oak Ridge and Forestdale) that will indicate the child’s teacher for next year. We will send an email blast to confirm this during the week of August 10th.

We want to assure everyone that this small delay in the class lists has not affected any other aspect of our summer work and we are currently right on schedule for opening in September.

Thank you for your patience and understanding and we look forward to see everyone at Forestdale and Oak Ridge!