November 12,
2013
Dear Parents
and Guardians,
One year ago
today, I was in Washington DC to receive Hull High School's National Blue
Ribbon of Excellence. I was so proud to
be a part of Hull High School that day and I still am today. Our students are still accomplishing great
things. Did you read about Christian
Fuda's art? How about Kevin DeCoste
being named a National Merit Scholarship Commended Student? How about the 14 students named by the
College Board as AP Scholars? Last week
I listened to the cast of Shrek: The
Musical singing the finale and I was blown away. Come into the office and look at the Freedom
Tree created by Ms. Held's and Mr. Fuller's classes. These are just a few of the great things
happening at Hull High School. Listed below
are some more great things and also ideas to help you know more about what is
going on here at our school.
Report Cards
For the
first time, most of you received your student's report card electronically on
the Aspen system. This is a huge step
forward for our school, as it allows you to receive report cards faster and in a
less expensive and more environmentally-friendly way. This is also how you will receive progress
reports. Hopefully you have been
monitoring your student's progress this year on Aspen and so the grades on the
report card should not have come as a surprise.
However, if you have any concerns about your child's progress or grades,
please do not hesitate to contact the teacher.
Parent Communication
We strongly
encourage you to follow our blog, like us on facebook and/or follow us on
twitter. The use of these electronic
mediums will be the primary way that we will communicate information to
families. You may also have noticed that
the daily announcements given to students are also posted on Aspen. We will also continue to use Connect Ed phone
calls to inform you when your student is marked absent and of special events
here at HHS. Never before have we been
able to communicate with parents so quickly and efficiently and we sincerely
hope that you avail yourselves of the communication tools. If you have any suggestions for other ways
that we can communicate with families, please do not hesitate to email those
suggestions to me.
School Council
We had our
first School Council meeting last month and our second meeting is scheduled for
Monday, December 8th at 6 PM in the library. Your elected representatives are: Brian
Lanner, Michelle Proude, Anna Karski, Annemarie Dunn and Bill Tramontana. However, all parents are invited to join us
at any meeting and share your concerns, help us look at new ways to improve our
school and to have a say on matters that affect your student. I hope to see you there.
Parent/Teacher Conferences
Just
a reminder that Parent/Teacher Conferences will be held on Wednesday, November
13th from 1:20PM to
3:10PM and Monday, November 18th from
5:30PM to 8:30PM. To set up appointments please email Fran Troy at ftroy@town.hull.ma.us. In your email please let Fran know which day
you would like to book appointments and which teachers you would like to
meet. If you do not have access to email, please call Fran at
781-925-3000 x1112. Requests for appointments will be handled in the order
in which they are received. Please take
advantage of this opportunity to meet with your student’s teachers.
Scores
As you may
have read in The Hull Times a few
weeks ago, last year saw a dip in our MCAS and SAT scores. Please know that this is something that I and
all members of our faculty and staff take very seriously. We have been "crunching the
numbers" and examining the data to implement new strategies to get these
scores back up to where they belong.
Some things that we have already started are:
·
SAT
Questions of the Day being used as activators in math and English classes;
·
SAT
vocabulary being taught in all sophomore, junior and senior English classes;
·
A
mini-SAT prep course being created by our guidance counselors to help teach
juniors how to take the SAT;
·
Aligning
our curriculum to the new Massachusetts standards in math and English;
·
Examining
our students' areas of strengths and weaknesses on the MCAS and adjusting
instruction to target those weaknesses, and;
·
Providing
additional support to those students who did not do well on previous MCAS
exams.
As I said to
the Hull School Committee, I strongly believe that this decrease in scores is
an aberration and NOT the start of a trend, as our MCAS and SAT scores have
been steadily climbing over the past 8 years.
I do however take any dip seriously and am committed to doing what we
can to get our scores where they need to be.
On a bright note, I was talking to a friend who is a mathematics teacher
in a neighboring community and I told her that 66% of our students scored
Advanced on the 10th grade mathematics MCAS. Her response was, “WOW! That’s a lot better than we did!”
Thank you,
as always, for your continued support of our school and all of its curricular
and co-curricular programs. I wish you
and your family a wonderful Thanksgiving and a joyous start to the holiday
season.
Sincerely,
Michael F.
Devine
Principal
Hull High
School
