Prepping to Return to School!

FROM PRINCIPAL BLAND – Greetings Parents and Community Members!
As the hot summer days continue, I’ve been back at work after a nice two-week break, ready to pick back up with all of the to-do items on my list! Our Main Campus summer renovation is coming along nicely with old carpet pulled out of the classrooms and shiny new tile in its place! We also were able to replace the carpet and tile in our main office! Our school colors are now brighter than ever as you see them everywhere you walk around the building. I can’t wait to see and share the final product: a beautiful big Morris Brandon logo laid right into our Main Campus lobby entrance! The Primary Campus is getting a brand new HVAC system as well! I am also happy to say that we are 100% complete with hiring for all of our vacancies for the 19/20 school year! New faces will be seen in grade level teachers, DLI, Special Ed., paraprofessionals, music, and cafeteria monitors. Please be sure to give them a warm Morris Brandon welcome when you see them! I’m excited about our newly revamped schedule allowing for common planning for all teachers every day, intervention and acceleration blocks for all students every day, and a major increase in Specials time (PE/ Art/ Music) as well as French in its own 45 minute block of time.

See below for some 19/20 scheduling highlights:

– All students have now been placed in a homeroom based on teacher and parent input forms. This means that all students are with a teacher that will support their learning style best! Homeroom rosters will be available to all parents via the parent portal on 8/5, prior to Celebration of Learning on 8/8.

– This school year we will be on a 6 day, A/B rotation. The 6 day rotation will be for specials and A/B rotation will be for French. Meaning, a typical day could be 1A, 2B, 3A, or 4B. If it sounds confusing, DON’T WORRY! Your teachers will explain thoroughly during Celebration of Learning and Back to School night!

– Moving from an 8 day specials rotation in 18/19 (with French included) to a 6 day rotation in 19/20 (French excluded) means our students will have nearly 8 more classes of PE, Art and Music!

– Moving French out of our specials block to an A/B rotation means that our students will get nearly triple the amount of French they received last year for grades 1-5!

– And lastly, with French occurring every other day, students will receive 45 minutes of an intervention or acceleration block every other day. Remember, all grade levels now have one full-time gifted teacher allotted to their grade to help with acceleration (not just for gifted eligible students) as well as two full time intervention teachers, one at each campus!

The good news is that none of this affects the instructional goals or minutes allotted each day for math, science, ELA, reading, and social studies. We are continuing our focus around ELA and writing with our second year of implementation of Wit and Wisdom! We also can’t wait to continue with Eureka math. All students will continue to have support through a new math assessment program entitled Affirm (more info to come) and we will continue to utilize MyLexia for everyone! I am also extremely proud to say that the 18/19 Georgia Milestone Assessment results have been released and we can now share that for the first time in 5 years, our school showed growth in ELA!! This is because of the hard work, dedication, and collaboration of our faculty and staff from Kindergarten to 5th grade. Oh yea, we also continued to grow in math 🙂

At Brandon, we are committed to providing the best academic and social/emotional learning environment for our students and that can’t happen without the amazing support of our unbelievable teachers, staff and of course parents like you!

I look forward to seeing everyone at Celebration of Learning on 8/8 from 9-11 am. Attached to this Beemail you will see the agenda for both campuses and can also find it HERE. We made time for parents who may need to travel to both campuses to meet multiple teachers. Remember, we will open both gyms as a holding area at 8:30am. Be sure to stop by to get your spirit wear, learn about our after school programs and maybe even meet a special guest!

Can’t wait to see you soon!
j