Dear Colleagues,
I hope everyone had a good week. It’s certainly a busy time with a new semester starting, grade-level transition events occurring, and elementary progress reports going home. Please know how much I appreciate your good work on all of these fronts.
I also know how challenging some of these extreme weather days have been in the past two weeks. I want to give my thanks to our custodians for all of their extra efforts to maintain our building systems. I want to give a special shout-out to our Transportation Director, Deane McGoldrick, for his tireless work in recent weeks to ensure that our buses and vans could operate despite the cold temperatures.
On Tuesday night, our School Committee will be voting to approve our FY20 Budget request. This is not the end of the process, but it does represent an important check-point on our path to the spring Town Meeting. Additionally, we will be presenting an update on the excellent work of our elementary educators to develop a new, standards-based report card that we hope to have in place during SY2019-2020. Thank you to Michael LaCava for leading this important effort.
Finally, I want to formally welcome our new METCO Director, Doreen Ward, to our team. Doreen began her work in Wellesley last week and has begun the process of getting to know our staff and community partners. I also want to thank Cynthia Russell, Grant Hightower, and Carla Lumley for their work to support the program during this leadership transition.
Thank you for all of your efforts and have a great weekend. Go Pats!
Best regards,
David
Calendar
2/05/19 – School Committee Meeting – 6:30 pm – Town Hall
2/18-2/22/19 – Winter Break – No School
2/26/19 – School Committee Meeting – 6:30 pm – Town Hall
Apply Now to enroll children of non-resident WTA members in WPS
Children of teachers or nurses residing outside of Wellesley shall be entitled to attend Wellesley Public Schools without charge for tuition on a space-available basis (Article 12, WTA Unit A Contract). If you are interested in this benefit for the 2019-20 school year, please click here to access the form. Once completed, please return the form, along with a letter of intent, to District Registrar Nancy Costigliola in Central Office in person or by email at registrar@wellesleyps.org. The application and letter of intent deadline is May 1, 2019.
Graduate Course Reimbursement
Course reimbursement funding of $30,000 is available to distribute in FY20 among qualified teachers. This funding is for graduate course work done as part of a master’s degree program to fulfill a teacher’s obligations for the Massachusetts Educators Professional License and for course work required to achieve the next stage of licensure culminating in a professional license and/or when a specialist teacher’s immediate supervisor, subject to the approval of the Assistant Superintendent, verifies that there are no further in-district courses available for recertification in that specialist’s field, that specialist may apply for tuition reimbursement. Any Unit A member for whom no DESE license exists, including but not limited to occupational and physical therapists, so long as that member maintains appropriate certification and/or licensure required to perform his or her duties, shall be eligible to apply for tuition reimbursement. To apply for this course reimbursement, please send, by no later June 3, 2019, the completed reimbursement form, along with evidence of your enrollment in an applicable master/doctoral degree program, name and description of the course, evidence of course cost (a billing statement), proof of payment (i.e. credit card statement, canceled check or receipt of payment), and transcript to Valerie Spruill, Administrative Assistant to the Director of Human Resources, spruillv@wellesleyps.org. You will be notified of the amount awarded to you some time prior to the first paycheck in September 2019. Please note: all information must be received by June 3, 2019 or you will be disqualified for reimbursement. All courses must have occurred in the summer of 2018, fall of 2018 and spring of 2019 and have been completed by June 3, 2019. Any courses taken prior to the summer of 2018 will not count for reimbursement.
Renewing Your Educator’s License?
Information about requirements to renew your educator license is available on the WPS website. Click here to go to the HR Licensure tab. When you apply for your license on the DESE website under ELAR, the DESE will send you an electronic communication about what is missing from your licensure file in order to renew. The HR licensure tab and your ELAR account are two tools to assist you with information about licensure renewal.
Insurance Benefits Information
Health and Dental Insurance Benefits information is handled by the Town Hall Benefits Office. Inquiries should be directed to Joanne Liburd at JLiburd@wellesleyma.gov or by calling 781-431-1019 extension 2244.
WPS Internal Job Postings on District Website
Please be aware that we added a new feature called “Internal Job Postings” under the Faculty tab of the District’s website. We will post all of our internal jobs under this website tab. Therefore, you will no longer see internal job postings in the bulletin. This new way of posting will allow us to post internal positions any day of the week.