September 22, 2025
Dear Families,
Please welcome Gary Ross.
Our superintendent has assigned Gary to CPE1. Gary has served as an assistant principal in several schools around our district, most recently nearby at Mosaic Preperatory Academy.
Our district offers extra help to schools like ours that are too small to pay for assistant principals on their own. Donna was the first person to fill that role. Now that Donna has retired, Gary has shifted over to CPE1.
Gary will be learning more about the school in the coming weeks. Please introduce yourself when you see him around the school.
Café Comunitario – Friday at 8:30
This year’s first café comunitario will take place this Friday morning at 8:30 in CPE1’s library. Vengan todos.
Once per month, we host community coffees in our school library. We sit together in a circle to share one conversation. Families invite each other’s perspectives about learning at CPE1 and raising children in our community.
We take turns each month speaking primarily in Spanish or English. This month is a café comunitario. You do not need to have grown up speaking Spanish or speak fluently. Todos pueden participar.
Screeners Begin
This is the time of year when we begin screeners – quick assessments required by our school system to determine which students might need more support. Schools are required to give these screeners once in fall, once in winter, and once in spring.
Since I wrote a lot about screeners last September, we have had many new families join our school. Depending on when your child began at CPE1, these next few paragraphs will sound familiar or be all-new information.
Screeners are supposed to be quick checks that schools give the way a doctor might check your temperature and blood pressure. A fever or elevated blood pressure won’t tell the doctor why a body is under stress, only to investigate and diagnose further.
Our district’s screeners are Acadience for grades K-2, and iReady for grades 3-5. Acadience and iReady both assess reading and math.
Children take Acadience one-on-one with an adult. Depending on the grade and time of year, Acadience takes five to eight minutes.
Students in grades 3-5 take iReady on laptops. iReady has no time limit; it takes most students between 60 and 90 minutes, split up over two days.
Historically, some CPE1 families have had concerns about standardized assessments, and have asked the school not to give these assessments to their child. While we will honor all requests, I encourage K-2 families to have their child participate in Acadience. Acadience has a quick pace, and the one-on-one format makes it comfortable for most children. This spot-check of early literacy skills adds onto the deeper, more open-ended ways teachers assess children when they read together.
See Peggy on the Big Screen
Many years ago, Peggy Pettitt arrived at CPE1 through a grant to bring storytelling to children. The grant expired, but the school never let Peggy go. Later this fall, Peggy will begin another year of telling stories once a week in each class.
Peggy tells stories based on what teachers share about what is bubbling up in children’s lives, such as new babies at home or disagreements on the playground. Depending on how children respond or add their own details, Peggy artfully improvises new directions for a planned tale.
Such storytelling requires polished acting skills. At this year’s New York Film Festival, you can see CPE1’s beloved storyteller early in her acting career.
Next week, the festival will have three showings of Black Girl. Ossie Davis directed this 1972 film, which features Leslie Uggums, Brock Peters, and Ruby Dee, and stars none other than Peggy Pettitt.
This film may not be suitable for young children, but it’s a great opportunity for other members of our community to appreciate one of our own.