Dr. Tara Beams, Superintendent
WELCOME BACK 2023-2024
A Message from Dr. Beams
Dear Henry Hudson Tri-District Community!
I am so excited to welcome our students, staff, and families back for the 2023-2024 school year. I hope that your summer vacations were relaxing, filled with adventures, good health and a lot of joy and laughter. The opportunity to recharge and refuel our minds and bodies over the summer is necessary so that we can return to school ready to learn, grow and explore as you navigate your educational journey.
Exciting Changes for this Year
At HHRS, we are committed to finding programs, classes, clubs, and other avenues to truly ignite students’ passions. This means that the faculty and staff are in a continuous cycle of improvement and enhancement, which has been recognized as part of our most recent accreditation by the Middle States Association. This year, we are continuing to enhance our middle school students’ experience through the introduction of more electives, such as our popular Television Production classes and new and expanded opportunities in the arts, eSports, and athletics. We have added new courses to our STEAM academy, including a Sophomore engineering course, and will have a wide range of staff teaching courses to diversify the students’ learning. Finally, we continue to add to our AP offerings with AP Music Theory and AP Human Geography, which will now be offered as early as freshman year as an introduction to the rigor and expectations of Advanced Placement.
At AHES and HES, our administrative team and staff are fully committed to ensuring that all of our students are learning and acquiring the skills, strategies, and understanding needed to chart a successful educational path to middle school and through high school graduation. After a year of deep analysis of student data including academic, social, and emotional data provided by multiple measures and conversations with staff members at all grade levels, we understand that our teachers need the time to deliver high-quality, differentiated instruction and our students need time to apply the skills that they learn daily in a meaningful way. In addition, we continue to renew our commitment to social - emotional learning and making sure that our school community is a safe, inclusive, and nurturing environment. To that end, this year, we have made some modifications to our master schedule, which prioritizes our academic subject areas and ensures our students have a well-rounded and diverse offering of related arts classes. In all grades, SEL lessons delivered by our guidance counselor will be a part of our eight related arts periods weekly. In grades 3-6, we will increase math minutes to ensure that our curricula is being delivered and our students are engaging with the learning with the appropriate level of rigor. In addition, in grades 3-6, students will have social studies and science every day preparing them for the academic stamina they will need in middle and high school. In grades K-2, math will remain 60 minutes, which is appropriate for this developmental level, and social studies and science will still be split between the marking periods, however, the periods are extended to allow for more application. Our K-2 students will also have a designated block of Fundations, which provides them with the essential phonics, spelling, and handwriting skills needed for success in literacy.
Our staff is also engaging in continuous improvement, development, and growth. We will implement instructional coaches in all three Tri-District schools to help provide daily support, coaching, and collaboration for our staff to ensure they are planning and developing lessons to help reach all students and ensure learning. We have embarked on a true, year-long implementation of professional learning communities, where our teachers will learn with each other and use their collective expertise, talents, and experience to help discover strategies that will engage our students.
We are really looking forward to the incredible opportunities that this new school year will bring to your students and I cannot wait to see all that our students will accomplish with the guidance of our incredible staff. I wish you nothing but the best for the 2023-2024 school year!
As always, stay healthy, stay safe, and stay KIND!
With gratitude,
Dr. Tara Beams
Superintendent of Schools
Dr. Tara Beams, Superintendent
