Back to School Information 2024-25

School Materials
Find each grade's Materials List below. 

• 6th Grade Materials
  
• 7th Grade Materials
  
• 8th Grade Materials
  

If any family needs help acquiring any materials, please reach out to our family liaison: Obi Carrion.

Schedule Changes
A reminder that length of our day has changed! The school day now starts at 8:45AM and ends at 3:15PM. On Wednesdays, the school day ends at 2:45PM. 

At VLUS, we have made some changes to our daily schedule: 

• Students will start each day in Advisory, with a slightly longer Advisory block happening on Wednesday mornings. 
  
• Classes at VLUS are 50 minutes long and students will have their four Core classes (ELA, MATH, SCIENCE, SOCIAL STUDIES) each day. 
  
• Students will still have their Art/Health, PE, World Language, and Music classes throughout the week.  
  
• Students will continue to have a 40 minute block for lunch and recess.
  
• In addition, students will now have a 40 minute FLEX block each day. This block will be an opportunity for students to have time for:
  
  • Special Education services
    
  • Math/Literacy Intervention
    
  • Music pull-outs
    
  • Structured Independent Reading 
    
  • Individual iReady work
    
  • Check-ins with teachers and counselors
    
• All students will have Community and Connection time on Wednesday mornings either through our Affinity/Alliance spaces or in Circles with their classmates
  

Staffing Update
There are a few new additions to the VLUS team:

Katherine Roe joins us as our new school psychologist. She comes to us from Boston Public Schools.

Lance Dottin will be our new PE teacher. Lance has taught in CPS for several years and we are excited to have him as part of our team.

Neil Pischner will be our French teacher, coming to us from RAUC where he taught French for the previous five years. 

Katie Kup, a Special Educator working as part of the 7th grade team, also comes to us from RAUC where she taught for a number of years. 

Eliza Bowes joins our SEI team as an ESL teacher, having previously taught in BPS.

Abbie Green will return to VLUS throughout the fall as our long-term substitute in Health as Ms. Bowman remains out on maternity leave. 

Lastly, we are finalizing plans to have a Drama teacher take over for Ms. Smart, who is out on maternity leave through the fall and early winter. Congratulations to her and her family!

Revised Phone Policy
At VLUS, students may not use their phones or other electronic devices throughout the school day. 

There is an abundance of research that points to the negative impacts of phone usage and middle school-aged students. This includes impacts on mental health, sleep patterns, social connections and relationships, attentional and executive functioning, and academic performance. 

We strongly encourage families to not send their students to schools with phones, smart watches, headphones, tablets, etc. 

If a student does bring a device to school, they will be directed to keep them in their lockers throughout the day, starting at 8:45AM and ending when school gets out at 3:15PM (2:45PM on Wednesdays).

Students who are caught using their phones, headphones, watches, etc., during the day will have those devices brought to the main office where they will be locked up. Students will be able to collect their device at the end of the following day. Students who continue to struggle with following these expectations may be asked to keep their devices at home for the rest of the school year. 

Recording Student Conflicts and /or Distributing Recordings of Student Conflicts: Conflicts between students happen. The biggest obstacle in settling conflicts quickly is the recording and distribution of these moments to large swaths of the school. It increases tension and often sets up the expectation for retaliation. Students who have recorded these conflicts and/or disseminated said recordings will receive significant consequences up to and including potential suspension from school. 

Revised Chromebook Policy
This year, we are moving to a new, 1:1 system for Chromebooks. All students will be assigned a Chromebook and that will be their device to use throughout the school day and at home, when needed. 

Students will only be assigned a device once their Acceptable Use Policy (AUP) form has been completed and signed by them and their family.  8th Grade students with signed AUP forms will be assigned computers by the end of September. 7th graders will follow later in the fall and 6th graders will be assigned their devices after that. This rollout will allow us to ensure that expectations and systems are in place for students to be the most successful with these CPS-issued computers. 

Device chargers will remain at school, ensuring that devices will be charged and ready to be used during the school day. Chromebooks carry a multi-hour charge and so devices brought home for homework usage should not require a charger at home. 

We will continue to use CPS firewall and security software, ensuring that CPS devices are used only for academic purposes. In addition, we will be employing school-wide usage of GoGuardian, a software system that allows teachers to set specific parameters for computer usage in their classrooms. 

VLUS School Council
The VLUS School Council is a joint leadership body made up of VLUS families, staff, and administration. We meet monthly  and all meetings are open to all families and staff. Topics rotate throughout the year and will include topics such as our School Improvement Plan, academic and social/emotional data, budget and staffing, academic programming, and othes. In addition, we always have time at our meetings to discuss current issues at VLUS and in the district. 

All meetings are in person and we typically host them at either CRLS or at the Cambridge Library-Main Branch so that they are easily accessible for all families. 

Meeting dates: TBD

School Council Members:
Carroll McGill (Co-Chair), parent of an 8th grader
Vivian Pales, parent of an 8th grader
Jared Cosulich, parent of a 7th grader
Maritza Soto, parent of a 7th grader
Oksana Deinak, VLUS Spanish Teacher and parent of a 7th grader
Obi Carrion, VLUS Family Liaison
Daniel Coplon-Newfield (Co-Chair), VLUS Principal

SY24-25 Calendar of Events
Below are important dates for the upcoming school year:

• Wednesday, August 28--Back to School Welcome Event; 3:00-5:00 PM at VLUS
  
• Tuesday, September 3--First Day of School!
  
• Thursday, September 26--Back to School Night; 5:30-8:00 PM at VLUS
  
• Monday, October 14--NO SCHOOL--Indigenous People's Day
  
• Friday, October 25--VLUS Picture Day
  
• Tuesday, November 5--NO SCHOOL--Election Day (Professional Development Day)
  
• Monday, November 11--NO SCHOOL--Veterans Day
  
• Wednesday, November 27--VLUS Day of Service--EARLY RELEASE DAY
  
• Monday, December 23--EARLY RELEASE DAY
  
• January TBD--Winter Arts Nights
  

New Building Updates
We could not be more excited about our NEW SCHOOL building that is scheduled to open in September, 2025! Our team has begun the complicated work to plan our transition back to West Cambridge and you will certainly hear more about this during the spring as the move gets closer. 

Summer Reading
Middle school students are encouraged to read for at least 20 minutes each day or 2.5 hours a week during the summer and record their reading on a reading log. 

Students are expected to read 5 books, with one being a CPS required book from the short list below. We will discuss these books in ELA class during the first few weeks of school.

• Students can log their reading here (Print or Copy Doc). 
  
• For more book recommendations, check out the CPS Summer Choice Book Presentation here.
• Find books online here at Sora.
  

Incoming Grade 6 
Coming of Age

• One Crazy Summer, Rita Williams-Garcia 
  
• Clean Getaway, Nic Stone 
  
• The First Rule of Punk, Celia C. Perez 
  
• Fish in a Tree, Lynda Mullaly Hunt 
  
• Once Upon an Eid, S. K. Ali and Aisha Saeed 
  
• To Night Owl From Dogfish, Holly Goldberg Sloan and Meg Wolitzer 
  

Incoming Grade 7 
Belonging

• Other Words for Home, Jasmine Warga 
  
• Outcasts United, Warren St. John  
  
• *You Bring the Distant Near, Mitali Perkins  
  
• Inside Out and Back Again, Thanhhà Lai
  
• Two Roads, Joseph Bruchac
  
• Enrique’s Journey (Young Adult Adaptation): The True Story of a Boy Determined to Reunite with His Mother, Sonia Nazario 

Incoming Grade 8 
How does power influence human behavior?

• Black Brother, Black Brother, Jewell Parker Rhodes 
  
• The Book Thief, Markus Zusak 
  
• A Good Kind of Trouble, Lisa Moore Ramee 
  
• Stamped: Racism, Antiracism, and You, Jason Reynolds 
  
• *Divergent, Veronica Roth
  
• Aristotle and Dante Discover the Universe, Benjamin Alire Sáenz
  
• *The Hate U Give, Angie Thomas