Dear Parent/Guardian:

I want to extend a big “Welcome Back to School” to all of our students and their families.  I am extremely excited to be here as prinicpal of H.A. Hanlon Elementary.   

This year we will highlight many character traits, including but not limited to, respect, trustworthiness, and responsibilities.  These “pillars of character” are considered by many as the foundational skills that students need to learn while in school to be successful in the workplace.  Therefore, as it our goal to help mold H.A. Hanlon students to be the best that they can be when they leave our school, we place a great deal of effort in these areas.  We have a tremendously strong and knowledgeable faculty and staff at H.A. Hanlon Elementary School and we look forward to partnering with parents to reach academic and social goals for our students together!

As many of you know, New York State has adopted new Common Core Learning Standards for English Language Arts and Math which are shared with almost all of the 50 states. We are excited and happy to announce that all of our students will be receiving their third year of instruction that is directly aligned to these new Common Core Learning Standards. Additionally, we will continue to meet these standards by utilizing the Reading Street curriculum and Math in Focus curriculum - The Singapore Math Approach.

To go hand-in-hand with these new standards, we will continue to utilize our standards based report card which will be given out three times during the school year for grades Pre-K-6^th.  Students will be given a 1, 2, 3 or 4 (1-beginning, 2-developing, 3-proficient, 4-excels) for grades instead of a percentage grade which will align with the New York State Education Department’s Levels for the testing program.      

As always, please keep this newsletter handy each month so you can follow along with the monthly events and any additions/deletions to the Hanlon calendar.   I look forward to seeing all of you at our annual Meet and Greet night on September 8th at 6:30PM.  Thank you for your support and cooperation. 

Sincerely,

Mr. Francischelli