Winthrop students head back to school on Wednesday
By Adam Swift
Winthrop students and families only have a few days left to finish their back-to-school shopping.
The first day of school for students is Wednesday, August 28, with teachers heading back to school for two professional development days before the doors open to students on Monday, August 26.
Students will have two full days of classes before a long weekend with no school on Friday, August 30 and Monday, Sept. 2 for Labor Day.
For those looking ahead to next summer, the last day of the 2024-25 school year is currently slated for a half day on Thursday, June 12.
At Monday night’s school committee meeting, Superintendent of Schools Lisa Howard said there are a multitude of things that happen during those first two professional development days of the year for teachers.
“One of the things we do is the trainings that teachers are required to have,” she said.
On the 27th, Howard said all the staff meet at the Shapiro theater and listen to her speak about the upcoming school year during the morning and then staff return to their home schools for building-based meetings by group.
“On Wednesday, the students come back, students in kindergarten through grade 12, so a little change this year,” said Howard. “Preschoolers typically started on the first day, so we always had pre-K through 12 starting the first day, everybody came at once. This year, we decided to switch it up a little bit and have the preschool teachers working within the kindergarten on the first two days of school.”
Howard said the preschool teachers had many of the students who are going into kindergarten, and that they could help ease the transition on the first few days of school.
“When students move into kindergarten, as we all know, it is a scary experience for them,” said Howard. “We felt the time would be useful, not only for the students to feel more comfortable in seeing familiar faces so they have their new teacher and there is a preschool teacher that they are familiar with, but also being able to share information beyond what we have shared at the end of this school year.”
The pre-K students will start classes on the day after Labor Day with their parents on the first day.
“The other reasoning behind that is that with the little ones, the four-year-olds, who aren’t yet age eligible for kindergarten and are in our preschool, it is a huge transition to leave your parent or your adult who is taking care of you during the day and going into preschool,” said Howard. “Where we start before Labor Day, the pre-K kids if they started with K through 12, they would come for a couple of hours on Wednesday, and then they would come for a little more time on Thursday, and then be off for (four days) and then come back with no adult on the following day. We felt that that stretch in between … you almost have to start that transition all over again.”