Dear Burr District Elementary Families,

Welcome back to our school! I was so excited to see the smiling faces and waving hands as I boarded each bus the first day of school to greet your children. The school gets kind of lonely over the summer without them around.

We’ve had a few changes over the summer and several new faces around the school. In first grade, we hired Melissa Dowd, who was our reading teacher last year and taught in a primary grade in Region 4 before that. Laura Lenahan joins us as a third grade teacher after teaching third grade at KES last year. As you may have heard, Mrs. DeAngelo has taken the year to be with her new son, and while we will miss her this year, I am very excited to have Kim Parkington to work with our special education students in the upper grades. She comes to us with experience from Branford and LEARN, our regional education center. Also new to our staff are Jane Novarro who will work with our third and fourth grade students and soon a new custodian. We are in the process of finalizing our speech and language pathologist hire.

A few minutes ago, I just finished assisting our maintenance staff to unload our new kindergarten playground! We are so excited to have a beautiful new structure and swings on which our students can play. A special thank you to the parents who have worked so hard and donated time and money to help this to become a reality. I’ll try to keep you updated on when it has been installed so you can stop by and see it if you would like.

Speaking of stopping by, if you have, you probably noticed our new security procedure. All of our doors are locked throughout the day. If you need to enter the building, please ring the doorbell to the left of the front door and smile at the camera right inside the window. A member of our office staff will greet you, ask you your name and why you are here, and then remotely release the door right next to the doorbell so you can enter. Please understand we still want to be the open and inviting school that you all remember, but keep everyone safe as well. I hope that many of you will be telling our secretaries that you are here to volunteer, since we can’t keep doing the great job we are without you.

I could go on and on with all the exciting things going on here at BES, but I don’t want to overwhelm you all at once. You should get your parent handbook today if you don’t have it already. Please look over it carefully, as it provides very important information. Please join us Tuesday at 6:00 for our open house. Children are invited and I will introduce our new staff members and formally welcome all of you to a new year at 7:00 in the cafeteria.

Eric Larson, Principal