Pittsfield Elementary School

Next school year will be “The Year of the Book” at PES. Our school is one of two elementary schools in New Hampshire to win a Children’s Literacy Foundation (CLiF) “Year of the Book” grant award for the 2012-13 school year.  The grant will bring $20,000 of resources to PES, including 2,000 books for individual students and families, funds for the school library and the town library, special programming for students, and teacher mini-grant funds for reading work. 

The focus of our work at PES will be improving school-family literacy connections and bumping up the volume of children’s reading in and out of school. Library Coordinator Susan Kinney will be the grant coordinator. The Josiah Carpenter Library will also be working with our school in this exciting grant.  Any parents who would like to help organize are encouraged to call the school and ask for Ms. Kinney or Mr. Kilmister.

Parents, we need your help. On Monday, April 16, when you come to school for parent teacher conferences, we would like you to complete an on-line survey about your impressions of PES and your family’s habits and routines around school.

All survey takers who complete the survey by April 20 will be entered in a raffle for a $100 and $50 Visa debit card!  If you are not able to take the survey in school, please call the school and we’ll send you a copy. 

About the School Community Index Survey and Raffle at Pittsfield Elementary School

Research shows that children are more successful when parents are engaged in the academic development of the child. To assist us in improving student achievement through parental engagement we are asking every family to complete an online Family-School- Community survey. This survey designed to help the school learn more about itself and bring focus to planning for improvement in the area of family engagement. We are looking for 100% participation! (more…)

Parents, we need your help.  Please listen for a call from me this weekend about an important survey, the School Community Index, which will be available on Monday during parent-teacher conferences between 8:00 a.m. and 7:00 p.m.. The data from the anonymous survey—a version of which will also be given to teachers—will help us build stronger partnerships between school and home.

All survey takers who complete the survey by April 20 will be entered in a raffle for a $100 and $50 Visa debit card!  If you are not able to take the survey in school, please call the school and we’ll send you a copy. 

Doug Kilmister

PES Principal

Pittsfield Elementary School has been awarded $2,700 by the New England Dairy & Food Council for the Fuel Up to Play 60 initiative. Pittsfield Elementary School was selected from hundreds of schools across the country that applied for funding to help them jumpstart and sustain healthy nutrition and physical activity improvements. (more…)

One of the Pittsfield School District’s goals is for our high school graduates to “develop and activate an informed, realistic, and ambitious plan for college and career.” The elementary years are not too early to start children thinking about their adult futures. At PES we promote discussion and goal setting connected to career and college. We even make a college visit to UNH with the sixth grade each spring. Parents play a huge role, of course, in shaping their children’s career choices. The following article from “Report to Parents” is reproduced with permission from the National Association of Elementary School Principals.

Doug Kilmister

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The Pittsfield Schools is contracting with an automated messaging system, Alert Now, to improve communication to families. The system will allow the superintendent and the building principals to send out voice messages to parent’s phones about school closing and events.

Administrators will be receiving training on how to use the system next month. Then the technology department will be synching the Alert Now data base with the schools’ information systems. Parents will be able to choose which phone numbers they would like the system to contact. Look for more information in the coming weeks.

National leaders seem to agree on few things these days, but one proposition they pretty much all support, is that schools must prepare all children for post secondary education at the college level. (more…)

The biggest contribution to a child’s success in school is the quality of his or her teacher. We are pleased to welcome and introduce to you several new teachers and staff members this fall.

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Report cards are issued to students today. Along with them an additional report, the NWEA Student Progress Report, will be included in the report card envelope. For most grade levels parents will receive a two-page report. Kindergarten parents will receive a one-page report.

The reports show individual student results for the Measures of Academic Progress, computer adaptive tests from the Northwest Evaluation Association. PES students take these computer-adaptive tests in the fall and spring of each school year. The tests aid teachers in getting an academic profile of their class and help identify students who may need extra support.

The NWEA Student Progress Report graphically presents individual student’s progress over time. It compares each student’s growth to other students in Pittsfield and to a national norm. For many students, three years of growth data are displayed. The reports also highlight areas of strength and weakness.

Last fall at the November Parent-Teacher Conferences, teachers reviewed a version of these reports with parents. After taking the tests in the fall, students set personal goals related to reading and math. The spring test is one measure of students’ success in reaching their goals.

We hope that the assessment results and student goals will give parents valuable information about their children. Please contact Mr. Kilmister if you have questions about the reports.

Kydstop, our partners at the Concord Family YMCA, has run our afterschool and vacation camps for the past five years. In order to ensure that the afterschool program will run here at PES, Kydstop needs families to sign up this week. Without enough families enrolled, the fall program may not run. If at least14 paying families enroll, the program will be able to run
next school year. Please see the attached flyer and send in your registration and check by June 24 to reserve your child’s spot.

Kydstop, which had been funded in part by a federal grant for five years, is now relying on fees for its operating costs. The program is applying to be a licensed state provider, which means that families that receive state aid may be eligible for reduced fees. Kydstop will also offer limited scholarships for families enrolled in the program.