Hello Brown Community!

The back-to-school picnic was a blast thanks to the picnic chairs Asma Ejaz, Katherine Biotti, and Ritika Singh. Thank you to all the volunteers who made the back-to-school picnic a success. Also, thank you to those volunteers, led by Karin Wood, who helped at Picture Day. We cannot do things without the support of our amazing volunteers!

Please note that this week, school is closed on September 23rd (Tuesday) and that there is Early Dismissal @11.20AM on September 25th (Thursday). 

Save the dates for in-person Principal Coffees @ 8.30AM at the Brown Library on 10/24, 1/16, 3/13 & 5/15.

The QR codes to preview student’s pictures will be available in 2-3 weeks. We will follow up soon with picture retake information.

We are still looking for volunteers!  We need a PTO Newsletter Co-Editor. This is an entirely remote position to rotate newsletter editing responsibilities on alternate weeks. To sign up, click here. We also need Team Parents/Guardians. These parents/guardians serve as a point of contact between team teachers and other parents/guardians; keeping other parents/guardians informed of and coordinating volunteers for team specific events. Being a team parent can be fully remote if you want! We are looking for 2 team parents/guardians for the green and indigo teams and one for the blue, emerald, and violet teams. To sign up, click here. Thanks to those that have already signed up!

Finally, we are moving along with our annual fundraising appeal.  We are 34% of the way to our goal. We greatly appreciate any donation. As a special thank you to early donors, we are giving out Brown car magnets! If you make a donation before Back-to-School night on October 9th (or have already made one), we will give you a car magnet. Find us at Back-to-School night or contact us at brownpto@brownpto.orgto get yours!

Thank you and have a great week!

The Brown PTO Team
brownpto@brownpto.org

A variety of after school enrichment clubs will be offered after school on Mondays, Tuesdays, Thursdays and Fridays 3:00 – 4:00 PM. Students can sign up by emailing the advisor of the club or showing up to the activity. Activities for the fall:

• Chess Club
• Magic the Gathering Club
• Model UN
• Knitting/Crocheting Club
• Metco Affinity/Allies Club
• CPAR Club (Critical Participatory Action Research
• Debate Club (with Oak Hill)
• Ultimate Frisbee
• PRIDE Club
• Dungeons and Dragons Club (starts in October)
• Garden Club

There is a student activities fee that families pay associated with school-sponsored extracurricular activities. The middle school student activity fee covers all school sponsored extracurricular activities within the middle schools not including athletics. The annual fee allows a student to participate in an unlimited number of after school enrichment activities. (Students involved in the drama programs will need to pay the drama activity fee.) All fees must be paid through My School Bucks. For fee payment waiver information, please click here.

The Brown PTO uses an online system, Membership Toolkit, for our online student directory. If you were at Brown or at one of Newton’s Feeder schools last year, all of your information from last year has been carried forward to this year.  We need you to review and update your information before the start of the upcoming year so our directory is complete.

• Go to https://brownpto.membershiptoolkit.com and click on the Register>>Login button
• If you do not have an account, you will be prompted to create one. Please use the email address that this email was sent to in order to avoid duplicate entries
• If you already have an account with Membership Toolkit for another school, you can use the same account. You will need to verify your email address via a link sent to your email to finalize the account creation process
• If you already have an account, or once you have created an account, please login (again using the email address that this email was sent to) and click on “My Account” in the Navigation
  • Complete/Update the Parent/Family and Student Information
  • Complete the Directory/Publish Preferences which allow you to determine what, if any information is published about your child/ family
• Once the Primary Account is set up, the Primary User can “invite” other email addresses to access his/her account.  This allows the Secondary User to have their own login information, but still have access to the family account.
• If you have a 2 household family, each household can have a separate account. Please note that this will mean that the child(ren) in that household will be listed twice in the family portion of the directory.
• Once these forms are complete, you will be given access to the online directory. The online version is secure and can only be accessed by authorized members of the Brown community.

Questions? – Please don’t hesitate to contact us at brownpto@brownpto.org.

Please note:  The Brown Directory is published by the PTO for the convenience of our families and faculty.  It is NOT an official school publication. Please do not include confidential information in the “Comments to Share with the School” section, since these comments are read by PTO volunteers.  If your contact details have changed, please also inform the school office and update your address and contact information in the Newton Public Schools Aspen Family Portal. If you have any questions, please contact brownpto@brownpto.org. Thank you.

For the safety of our children, any parent or guardian who plans to chaperone Brown students on a field trip or volunteer in school when students are present needs to complete CORI and SORI background checks. You may pick the forms up in the school office or download them using the following links:  CORI FORM, SORI FORM

SEPAC is a volunteer organization of parents of children with special needs (IEP or 504 Plan) from preschool through high school. Learn more at Newton, MA SEPAC – Special Education Parent Advisory Council.

Eliza Spauling is our new SEPAC Liaison and can be reached at brownpto@brownpto.org.

• Sept. 23, Tuesday: No School for Rosh Hashanah
• Sept. 25, Thursday: Early Release Day (kids leave at 11:20)
• Oct. 2, Thursday: No School for Yom Kippur
• Oct. 9, Thursday: Back to School Night 6:30PM

The Brown-Helping-Brown Fund, established in Spring of 2020, provides quick financial help to Brown Middle School families (usually within 24 hours) to address urgent and immediate needs.

Brown’s administration facilitate these requests with support from the PTO when possible. All communications are private and confidential. Our school’s administrators also help to connect families in need with additional outside resources. If you need help, please reach out to your child’s school counselor.

If you are able, please consider a donation to Brown MS’s Fund.

DONATE HERE and please specify the donation is for BHBF.

Please click on the  Community Notes Page for listings of events going on in Newton.