schools

(Editor’s note: This is an edited version of an article by Mark Wyatt, 66th Air Base Group Public Affairs, that was posted on the Hanscom Air Force Base website. It is republished here by permission.)

Officials held a ribbon-cutting ceremony this week to mark the completion of the $37 million, 80,000-square-foot multistory Hanscom Primary School. The school replaces a 1950s-era primary school with contemporary learning space.

Becky McFall, Lincoln’s superintendent of schools, called the facility “the most incredible primary school learning environment I have ever seen in my 35 years in education.”

“The opening of the Hanscom Middle School, and now the Hanscom Primary School, has reinforced the concept that a building is so much more than bricks and mortar; it is a catalyst for change and a launchpad into the future of education,” McFall said.

The ceremony included comments from Jon House, the military and veterans liaison for U.S. Rep. Katherine Clark, who represents Lincoln and other nearby towns. “By opening this primary school on base, it ensures the sacrifices our service members make are rewarded with the best possible education for their children,” he said on behalf of Clark. “It is my belief that Hanscom is one of the best military bases in the country, and the opening of a brand-new school within the bounds of that base only reinforces that belief.”

“The Hanscom Primary School represents our vision for an environment that engages students in their learning, develops students who are problem-solvers and critical thinkers and assists children in developing the ability to collaborate and to create caring relationships,” McFall said.

The building’s design fully integrates the primary school with the new Hanscom Middle School, which opened in 2016. It incorporates “21st century school” concepts such as learning neighborhoods, central hubs surrounded by learning studios, flex labs, an information center annex, commons area for dining and social networking, therapy rooms, teacher work areas, counseling areas, storage, administrative offices and other required areas for a fully  functioning facility.

Like the 85,000-square-foot middle school, the new primary school includes indoor and outdoor learning spaces and features that are environmentally friendly, including photovoltaic panels, rainwater harvesting, solar hot water, high-performance HVAC, and energy-efficient lighting systems.

Both of Hanscom’s schools are built and supported entirely by the federal government and are operated via contract by the Lincoln Public School system. The Department of Defense Education Activity required that the Hanscom schools meet educational standards outlined on its 21st Century Learning website.

The new Hanscom schools were designed by EwingCole, which is partnering with Symmes, Maini and McKee Associates (SMMA) in designing the renovated Lincoln School, which recently took delivery of the portable classrooms that had been used at Hanscom Primary.

“A world of possibilities awaits our school family this year in this new school,” said Hanscom Middle School Principal Julie Vincentsen, who served as emcee for the ceremony. Staff members from the offices of U.S. Sens. Elizabeth Warren and Ed Markey, U.S. Rep. Seth Moulton, as well as local and state representatives, also attended the ribbon-cutting.

Students at Lincoln-Sudbury Regional High School will be able to get another half an hour of sleep in the mornings starting in fall 2020.

The LSRHS and Sudbury School Committees voted unanimously on June 11 to change their school day start times, with the high school day set to begin at 8:25 a.m. instead of the current 7:50 a.m. Sudbury elementary and middle schools will start at 7:55 a.m. and 8:30 a.m, respectively. In the coming academic year, administrators will work on an implementation pan, including schedule revisions and setting school day end times.

“The vote is not an end — it’s really a beginning,” said Carole Kasper, a Lincoln member of the L-S School Committee and its Start Time Subcommittee.

The move is based on recent research showing that the circadian rhythms of children’s bodies shift as they enter adolescence around age 12, resulting in naturally later times for falling asleep and waking up. Teens have trouble falling asleep before 11 p.m., meaning that the early start time results in chronic sleep deprivation and other resulting problems.

“Based on the experience of districts across Massachusetts and the country, we expect our students will benefit from this change. Across both districts, we expect middle and high school students will have improved cognition, physical and emotional health, and academic performance, as well as fewer injuries, risky and impulsive behaviors, and absenteeism and tardiness,” the subcommittee said in a May 29 presentation.

Experts present their data and arguments in a four-minute video that was shown at a June 10 public forum (the segment begins at the 6:28 mark). This and other videos came about as a result of the National Conference on Adolescent Sleep, Health, and School Start Times held in Washington in April 2017.

If the current schedule structure remains as is, the end of the high school day would move from the current 2:40 p.m. to 3:14 p.m. The current three-year teacher contract signed in 2018 included flexibility to change the start time as long as the school day length remains at six hours and 49 minutes.

The school day ending time will affect after-school activities including sports. L-S athletic teams play in the Dual County League (DCL). League members Acton-Boxborough, Concord-Carlisle, and Weston have already moved to later start times in the school day, and Wayland will do so in the next year. Sixteen other Massachusetts school districts have done the same.

The movement toward later start times in Sudbury and L-S began in 2015 at a tri-district school committee meeting. A 2017 report by the LSHRS Sleep and School Time Subcommittee consisting of school committee members, teachers, administrators, and parents recommended changing morning bus schedules and creating a new subcommittee to investigate the operational issues involved.

By Alice Waugh

The Lincoln Public Schools said farewell to five teachers and other staff members who officially retired as of last week: administrative secretary Phyllis Custance of Hanscom Middle School; art teacher Donna Lubin of Hanscom Primary School; and kindergarten teacher Rebekah Eston Salemi, eighth-grade math teacher Susan Totten, custodian Bruce Gullotti, and instructional assistant Kathleen Xenakis of the Lincoln School. Below are a few reminiscences (Xenakis and Custance could not be reached for comment).

Phyllis Custance

A Lincoln resident who grew up and raised her own children in town, Custance worked in the Lincoln school system for an impressive 47 years, as Hanscom Middle School Principal Erich Ledebuhr explained at a recent School Committee meeting where members honored the retirees. She went to school in the little red schoolhouse that’s now the Masonic Lodge on Lincoln Road, then the Center School (now the town office building) for two years, and finally the new Smith School, where she was a member of the first class to graduate from that school.

Custance wore many hats in the Lincoln schools including bus monitor, teacher aide, Resource Room coordinator, and administrative secretary (the last starting in 1998). “Phyllis has been one of my first lines of defense. She has been a supporter, cheerleader, and sounding board, and has been there to offer advice or critique when needed… she has been a rock of support throughout my tenure, ” Ledebuhr said. She also built connections to many students over the years; “of course, there are a few she gets to know really well, as it seems she writes a late pass for them every day,” he joked.

Bruce Gullotti

A self-described jack of all trades (carpenter, painter, handyman., etc.), Gullotti started working in Lincoln 19 years ago and said simply, “I like helping people.” One of the ways he’s helped over the years is using his talent for finding lost belongings at the school, including a diamond stud earring and even a hearing aid piece (“eight teachers were on the playground looking but I found it inside five minutes,” he said proudly).

Gullotti will also be remembered for the miniature Zen gardens he made and gave away to students and others, including Superintendent of Schools Becky McFall (“When she first came here, I made one for her because I knew it would be a stressful job,” he said). When giving the garden to kids, he told them they were a free gift but asked them to pay it forward.

“It’s been a great place to work. A lot of people just went out of their way to be nice,” he said. “If you want to teach your children anything at all, you teach them a work ethic and love. Everything else seems to fall in place.”

Donna Lubin

Lubin taught for 32 years at Hanscom Primary School, where the student turnover rate is very high because of parents’ military assignments — some kids are there for only a few months. “I love being their teacher at Hanscom because I’ve been able to share art with thousands of children and their families — much more so than most teachers,” she said.

Not surprisingly, one of the things Lubin hopes to pursue in retirement is more artwork, including her drawings for #projecthappyway. On every single day in 2017, she did a freehand Sharpie drawing with the word “happy” in it. “I realized I needed to spread the happy,” she said. “Even when you’re really busy, make a happy picture.”

Becky Eston Salemi

Eston has been a kindergarten teacher for all but a few of the 39 years she’s worked in Lincoln. including 25 years in the same classroom. She’ll remember class walks to the deCordova Museum along the boardwalk fellow teacher Terry Green helped create, the Pinewood Derby (a race with wooden cars the kids built themselves), the Halloween costume parades and haunted house, “and many happy memories of young children just growing in front of my eyes,” said Eston, who will be the parade marshal at next next month’s July 4 parade..

Back in the early days of her career, kindergarten had a phase-in schedule starting with just five half-days a week for the first half of the school year, and computers in the classroom were unheard-of until fellow teacher Betty Bjork introduced a single Radio Shack TRS-80 for the entire school. In the early days, she recalled, kids could learn programming basics with Logo; ironically, this year kindergarteners year used screen-free coding materials provided through a Lincoln School Foundation grant to support the teaching of computational thinking.

“Because the technology is so much more viable, we can do so much more. It’s amazing to see what they can do” with computers, Eston said. “But at the heart of it, my hope is to keep kindergarten as a place where children play as they learn.”

Susan Totten

“Most of all, I’ve loved the young people I’ve worked with,” said Totten, who began her Lincoln teaching career in 1998. “I also love the craft of teaching, of working and watching the light on the faces of the students in front of me. As a teacher, one has to have a love of children, and the eighth-grade adolescents I’ve worked with have been wonderful. Lincoln and Boston students are fortunate here in Lincoln to be well supported, both by their families and the school community.”