Author Archives: LEPTO Admin

First Grade Pumpkin Project!

Our wonderful first grade team put together a fun hands-on project for all our first graders, including our DLA class, with sugar pumpkins provided by the PTO.  Students were asked to create a book report about their favorite book, and decorate a pumpkin character to go with it.  The results were truly adorable and we are all so impressed with these talented kids!

A big thanks to our DLA parents who helped get pumpkins to the students at home, and to our teachers for coming up with such a cute idea!

The PTO would love to help facilitate more hands-on projects like these that can be offered to both our DLA and hybrid kids, so if you have any ideas or suggestions, please send them to secretary@lepto.org anytime, or bring them to our PTO meeting!

FORJ Updates: November 2020

Last week, Newton Public Schools hosted the Raising Anti-racist Kids webinar, as part of Overdue: Confronting Race and Racism in Newton, a city-wide read and series of events and conversations on race and racism.  If you missed it, the webinar discussion was livestreamed and recorded by NewTV and the recording is available for watching here: https://vimeo.com/472296943.

The Overdue Series (http://www.newtonma.gov/gov/mayor/initiatives/overdue.asp) will continue on Tuesday, November 17, 2020 at 6:30 pm with Richard Rothstein, author of The Color of Law: A Forgotten History of How Our Government Segregated America.

Author Richard Rothstein argues with exacting precision and fascinating insight how segregation in America is the byproduct of explicit government policies at the local, state and federal levels.   Join us for a virtual session with Mr. Rothstein moderated by Urban Planning Professional and writer, Beya Jimenez.

Following the session, Shelby Robinson, Myrtle Baptist Church historian, will share the history of how the construction of the Mass Pike devastated Newton’s historic African American neighborhood that was known as “The Village” and displaced its residents.  City Councilor, Deb Crossley, who is Chair of the Zoning and Planning Committee, will then give an overview of Newton’s zoning reform planning process.  Attendees will come away with a deeper understanding of the systemic issues that contribute to housing inequities, particularly as Newton engages in a comprehensive review of its zoning codes.

Please register here: https://newtonfreelibrary.libcal.com/event/7087081 or RSVP HERE

FORJ (Families Organizing for Racial Justice) is a coalition of school-aged families in Newton coming together to teach our children – and ourselves — how to stand up for racial equality. Our Lincoln-Eliot FORJ contact is parent Lanni Isenberg: lanni_harris@yahoo.com.

Principal / PTO Update 10.25.20

Dear families,

We are celebrating our socially distanced Fall Festival all this week — scroll down for more details, and we wish you all a happy fall!

This is also the week of our virtual Back to School / Curriculum Nights for both our hybrid and DLA families.  We’ll miss having you all in the building with us for this event, but we are looking forward to seeing you online.

Back to School Night for our hybrid students will take place on Wednesday, October 28th:

K-2 will meet from 5:30-6:15pm
Grades 3-5 will meet from 6:15-7:00pm

You should be receiving a link and more information from your classroom teachers.

DLA Curriculum Night:

The DLA staff is looking forward to connecting with families through a curriculum night presentation.  Your child(ren)’s teachers will be sending the needed Zoom links.

Kindergarten and 1st grade: 10/27 from 7:00pm – 7:30pm 

2nd Grade and 3rd Grade: 10/28 from 7:00pm – 7:30pm

4th Grade and 5th Grade: 10/29 from 7:00pm to 7:30pm

*Due to conflicts, some teachers need to adjust the date of their event.  You will hear directly from them if your student’s Curriculum Night will be a different night.

Also, don’t forget that on Election Day, November 3, we will switch our Tuesday and Wednesday schedules.  Tuesday will be distance learning, a half day following the Wednesday schedule.  Wednesday, November 4, will be an in-person day for Cohort A.  The Tuesday and Wednesday schedules that week will also be switched for all DLA students.

Looking forward, we are starting to think about fall parent-teacher conferences and wanted to give you some dates to save.  You will receive more information from your child’s teacher re: scheduling a conference time as we near the dates.

“In-Person” Virtual Fall Conference

Wed, Dec 2       1:15-3:15

Mon,  Dec 7      2:00-3:15

Wed, Dec 9       1:15-3:15

Thurs, Dec. 10 2:00-3:15

Have a great week!

Principal Morrissey & the PTO

Fall Festival: All This Week!

Happy fall, everyone!  While we can’t all be together for our usual fall festival — dancing and showing off our costumes and crossing our fingers for the teacher treat raffles — we still want to celebrate the season and our community in a safe, socially distanced way, and we hope you can join us!

* Mini Pumpkin Display!

We hope everyone had a chance to pick up a mini pumpkin from 93 Gardner St.; if you didn’t, or if you would like to keep decorating, we have several left, so please stop by and pick them up from the porch anytime.  (Here’s our Pinterest page of ideas again, if you need it!)

Once your pumpkins are decorated, we’d love for you to add them to our outdoor display so everyone can come by to admire them.  Tables will be set up in the overhang area from Monday (10/26) at 12:30pm through Friday (10/30) at 3pm.  Drop off your pumpkin whenever you can and pick them up again at the end of the week!

We would also love for you to share your pumpkins, costumes, and anything else that’s making you happy this fall on our fall festival Flipgrid:  https://flipgrid.com/605f8702 — just sign in with your NPS student email and upload a short (no more than 30 seconds) video to share with everyone!

* Fall Festival Activity Bags!

When you stop by to see the pumpkins, you’re invited to pick up an activity bag for each of your kids — they’ll be set out in the overhang all week.  The bags each contain a fall-themed bookmark craft kit, a piece of candy, and a printout of our scavenger hunt for your family to do together!

* Lincoln-Eliot Fall Scavenger Hunt!

Go for an adventure around the outside of our school and see how many of these questions you can answer!  Then, if you’d like to, come back here and fill out this Google form with your guesses:

https://forms.gle/KiGAEYhQh8MLYFSv9

Everyone who fills out the form by Monday, November 2, will be entered in a raffle to win a $50 gift card from a local bookstore — and don’t worry, you don’t have to get all the questions right in order to win!  (If you can’t make it to the school to do the hunt, you can still enter the raffle — just fill out the form with your email address and feel free to guess some of the answers if you’d like to!)

As a reminder, while you’re on school grounds, please observe all the current rules: wear a mask at all times, stay six feet apart from others, and wash your hands / use hand sanitizer in between touching anything.

We hope this gives everyone a fun, safe way to connect with the school and each other — we really miss seeing you all!  Thank you to the volunteers who helped make this happen!  Have a wonderful week, everyone!

Principal / PTO Update 10.18.20

Dear families,

We hope you are all doing well and enjoying the fall weather — we encourage everyone to spend as much time as possible outdoors before winter sends us all inside again!  It’s been great to have the tents up at Lincoln-Eliot; if you’ve walked by during school hours, you may have seen some of our teachers and scholars out there, doing storytime in the fresh air.  We hope our DLA friends are going outside during the lunch and movement breaks, too — while you’re at home, try having a picnic on your front steps, looking for different shapes of fall leaves, or taking a walk around the block before you come back to your computers.

We’re looking forward to our socially distanced fall festival week (Oct. 26-30), and we hope everyone has a chance to pick up your mini pumpkins (see the next post for more details).

And don’t forget that Lincoln Eliot’s virtual Back to School Night for our hybrid students will take place on Wednesday, October 28th:

K-2 will meet from 5:30-6:15pm
Grades 3-5 will meet from 6:15-7:00pm

Classroom teachers will send out more information and meeting links closer to the date, and more information about DLA Curriculum Nights will be coming soon.

And as always, if you have any community-building suggestions, or any questions for the PTO, please submit them here:

Ideas/Feedback Submission Form

Thanks very much, and have a great week!

Principal Morrissey & the PTO

Fall Festival: Pick Up Your Mini Pumpkins!

Plans are underway for our socially distanced fall festival, which we are hoping to celebrate with an outdoor display and activities the week of October 26-30th.  Creative ideas are still very welcome — please email them to secretary@lepto.org anytime!

For starters, we hope many of you have had a chance to stop by 93 Gardner St. (right next to the school) to pick up your mini pumpkins this weekend!  If you haven’t, they will still be out on the porch for the rest of the week; or if you need help getting them, please let us know (at president@lepto.org) and we’d love to help figure out a way to get them to you.

Once you have your pumpkins, we encourage your kids to decorate them in their own unique way — here’s a Pinterest page of ideas if you need help getting started!

And then we would love for you to share your pumpkins with us in two ways:

  1. Add a short (30-second) video of the decorated pumpkin and/or your kids in costume to our Flipgrid at https://flipgrid.com/605f8702 (please use your child’s student gmail to sign in, as a safety precaution)
  2. Bring your pumpkins to the school the week of October 26-30 for a festive display in the overhang area.  (And then pick them up again at the end of the week!)

More details coming soon!  Thank you so much to everyone who’s been working on making this happen!

Upcoming FORJ Events

This coming Tuesday, October 20 from 5:00 to 7:00 p.m., join the Newton Police Reform Task Force to learn from Dr. Mahzarin R. Banaji, author of Blindspot: Hidden Biases of Good People.  Dr. Banaji will give a presentation on implicit bias and be accompanied by Task Force members Judge Sonja Spears and City of Cambridge Police Department Deputy Superintendent Robert Lowe.  Register here for the program, a part of the Overdue: Confronting Race & Racism in Newton series.

The following week, on Wednesday, October 28 at 6:30 pm, the Task Force will host an open meeting to hear from you about community experiences with and thoughts about the Newton Police Department.  For more information and to access the Zoom link, please visit the Task Force’s Information on Meetings and Public Input webpage.


Raising Antiracist Kids
Thursday October 27th 7-8pm
Hosted by the Newton Public Library
Cosponsored by FORJ, The Harmony Foundation, & the Newton Human Rights Commission

Join us for the first in a multi-part educational series on being an anti-racist. This program is part of Overdue: Confronting Race and Racism in Newton, a city-wide read and series of events and conversations on race and racism. The panelists will be:

  • Ellie Axe, Director, Story Starters
  • Michele Leong, Newton North High School Office of Human Rights
  • Kathy Lopes, Director of Diversity, Equity and Inclusion, Newton Public Schools
  • Dr. Henry Turner, Principal, Newton North High School
  • Dr. David A. Fleishman, Superintendent of Schools will moderate

Register here.  An email with a link for the webinar will be sent out prior to the event.


Housing Inequities with special guest Richard Rothstein
Wednesday, November 17th 6:30pm-8pm
Richard Rothstein, author of The Color of Law, A Forgotten History of How Our Government Segregated America, argues with exacting precision and fascinating insight how segregation in America is the byproduct of explicit government policies at the local, state and federal levels.  Join us for a virtual session with Mr. Rothstein.  The talk will be followed by a panel discussion moderated by FORJ, the program cosponsor.  Attendees will come away with a deeper understanding of the systemic issues that contribute to housing inequities, particularly as Newton engages in a comprehensive review of its zoning codes.
RSVP HERE

Principal / PTO Update 10.11.20

Dear families,

It was wonderful to see so many of you in attendance at our PTO meeting over Zoom last Tuesday!  We are grateful to be part of such a warm and supportive community here at Lincoln-Eliot.

A reminder that there is no school tomorrow: Monday, October 12.

Lincoln Eliot’s virtual Back to School Night for our hybrid students will take place on Wednesday, October 28th:

K-2 will meet from 5:30-6:15pm
Grades 3-5 will meet from 6:15-7:00pm

Classroom teachers will send out more information and meeting links closer to the date.

Also, as noted in the superintendent’s letter this week:

On Election Day, November 3, we will switch our Tuesday and Wednesday schedules.  Tuesday will be distance learning, following the Wednesday schedule.  Wednesday, November 4, will be an in-person day for Cohort A.

Playground Access

The playgrounds at our schools are tremendous resources, not only for our students, but also for the Newton community.  Given the current hybrid schedule, we know families may want to use the playground during the school day, on their distance-learning days or if they participate in the Distance Learning Academy.  However, in consultation with the Newton Health and Human Services Department and the Newton Parks, Recreation, and Culture Department, we have made the difficult decision to limit playground access during school hours to only those students attending in-person school that day.  This decision was made to limit contact across cohort groups and mitigate risk factors.  Please do not enter the school playgrounds between 8:00 a.m. and 3:30 p.m.  Playgrounds are open after school hours and on any day school is not in session.

And finally, please note that there was an error in some previous communication: Once your student has received their flu immunization, please send the documentation to our school nurse, Kristen Thibodeau, at thibodeauk@newton.k12.ma.us — whether you are a hybrid or DLA Lincoln-Eliot family!

Thanks very much, and we hope you’re all having a great long weekend!

Principal Morrissey & the PTO

October 2020 PTO Meeting Recap

Thank you so much to everyone who joined us for our PTO meeting via Zoom on Tuesday, October 6th — it was wonderful to see so many friends and new faces!

If you missed the PTO meeting, you can review the minutes and slides at these links:

October 2020 PTO Meeting Minutes

October 2020 PTO Meeting Slideshow

As we mentioned, we’re looking for any ideas to help build connections throughout our community, especially between our hybrid and DLA kids, so please reach out anytime to president@lepto.org or secretary@lepto.org with suggestions or any questions.