Congratulate your graduate in South’s only print newspaper!

Our special section devoted to the Class of 2021 will be distributed to seniors
and their families at graduation on June 10. We would like to include your tribute to your  child’s graduation from Newton South. Click here for instructions.

Here is an updated version of the May/June events calendar (events will be added as confirmed…and added to the Newton South webpage calendar, as well): May/June Calendar

• The transportation department is still finalizing exact bus schedules and times for 6/21 and 6/22 but both days will be early releases (with a dismissal most likely sometime around 11:30). 
• Monday, 6/21: Here is more information on the purpose and schedule of the day:
• The purpose of this day is for students who need to submit makeup work and/or meet with teachers to receive additional support to finish the year in a positive way.
• If a student has multiple teachers that they need to check in with, they should follow the “priority hours” schedule below to know when in that time period to meet with each teacher. Student meetings with teachers can happen either in-person (teachers who are in-person will let students know what room to report to) or on the teacher’s zoom link. 
• If a student only has one subject area to make up work in or one teacher to check in with, the student and teacher can arrange a time to meet outside of the “priority hours”, i.e. anytime from 9:15am to 11:30am.

Here is the schedule for 6/21 (also linked here)

9:15am – 10:00am     Math and History priority hours

10:00am – 10:45am    Science and English priority hours

10:45am – 11:30am    World Language, Fine & Performing Arts, Family & Consumer Science, Business, Wellness priority hours

• Tuesday, 6/22: As is tradition at South, the final day on 6/22 will have all A – G blocks meet for shorter periods of time for students to have one last opportunity to see/interact with their teachers and peers.

Please note: Testing is now MANDATORY for all high school students participating in athletics or extracurricular activities. 

 It’s a quick process to enroll:

• Complete the opt-in in Aspen through the PARENT/FAMILY ACCOUNT (here’s the link!). 

• Students then create an account at JCM (do it here!) enter your NPS email, select “Forgot Password prompt”, follow the email verification process, log in and the QR Code will appear. You can then take a picture of your QR code and you will use that same code every week that you test.

1. 1. For the first time you are going to test, you can either go to the main office to pick up a test kit, or come to the faculty dining room at the times listed further down in the email below.
   2. If step b. above is too confusing or you get stuck, as long as your parent/guardian completed step a. above, you can just show up to the South testing center on the designated days (more info below) and a staff member will give you a test kit with instructions and we will also gladly give you your QR code that you will need each week when you come to test (taking a picture of the QR code with your phone is a common strategy that works since most students always have their phone with them).

Pool Testing Schedule for the week of May 24th:

• Monday, May 24th: The testing center will be open from 10:45am – 1:00pm in the Faculty Dining Room located next to the cafeteria in the hallway near the lecture hall—AVAILABLE FOR ALL IN-BUILDING STUDENTS
• Tuesday, May 25th: The testing center will be open from 10:45am – 1:00pm in the Faculty Dining Room …located next to the cafeteria in the hallway near the lecture hall—AVAILABLE FOR ALL IN-BUILDING STUDENTS
• Tuesday, May 25th: The testing center will be open from 3:15 to 4:30pm in the Faculty Dining Room…located next to the cafeteria in the hallway near the lecture hall–designed for students who are distance learning who are involved in extracurricular activities regularly at South

As a way to incentivize participation in the pool testing program, we have purchased Dunkin’ gift cards that we have then placed into random test kits. When students come to submit a test and pick up another test for the following week, they may be among the lucky winners who pick up a kit that contains a gift card. Another reason to SIGN UP FOR TESTING IF YOU HAVEN’T ALREADY!

If you have any questions, please see this NPS page: https://www.newton.k12.ma.us/Page/3826 or if you can’t find your answer there, please reach out to me and I will see if I can help or point you in the right direction. Thank you!

Reminder: Due to the state’s requirement of a full five day a week return to learning for students who CHOOSE IN PERSON LEARNING (students can still choose to remain remote/distance through the rest of this school year) our Wednesday schedules will no longer have a combination synchronous and asynchronous blocks beginning that day. Here are the schedules for the remaining Wednesdays,  including lunch times: Wednesdays. 

Here is a link to the end of the year Block Schedule (updated, 5/21) 

A few reminder items to note:

• There are no traditional final exams this year in June that count towards a final grade. Instead, classes will have new content being taught through June 11th with the week of 6/14 FULL SCHOOL DAYS for course review and wrap up. Teachers will share out more specifically what the last days will look like as we get closer to the end of the school year.
• Note the special schedule for graduation. IF we do need to move graduation to 6/11 due to rain, please know that 6/10 would become a full day with the same blocks but longer, until 3:55pm….and if we do need 6/11 for a rain date, the schedule would look like this: 
  • E3 9:15 – 9:40
  • F3 9:50 – 10:15
  • G3 10:25 – 10:50
  • Flex 11:00 – 11:25 

With an early dismissal on 11:30 and the ceremonies at the same time as they are currently scheduled on 6/10.

We of course, will make the call if we have to move to the rain date as early as  possible as we are aware of the disruption that schedule changes cause to students and families.

Note the Step Up day schedule with one scheduled class in the morning from 9:15 to 10:25….with Step Up Day activities with the middle schoolers from 11:45am – 1:15pm…and then two more REMOTE classes in the afternoon. We know that this is NOT an ideal schedule for anyone but with all schools across the district needing to have Step Up day activities and the real challenges with coordinating our bus schedules, this is the schedule that the district has agreed will work for this event for the two high schools. *Please note that there was an error on the original Step Up Day schedule that indicated the day ended at 3:55pm for South students. That has been corrected to indicate the  accurate block schedules for F & G blocks with the end of the day at 3:15pm….as is typical of Wednesdays throughout the year.

Term 3 Comments/Progress Reports are now posted on Aspen. Please note: Seniors will not receive midterm comments. Senior Q4 and final grades will be posted on 6/4.

Published reports can be found on the initial page of the parent portal under the “published reports” widget. 

A reminder that we amended our comments list to reflect the educational model that we are working in this year. Here is a list of the comments that teachers could choose from for context purposes: 

Midterm Comments

If you have specific questions about any comments, please reach out to your (your child’s) teacher.

It was a very unusual year for the Newton South Math Team with all the practices and competitions held online. Nevertheless, many Newton South students participated in a number of math tournaments and achieved very good results.

The team finished 3rd in the Greater Boston Mathematics League placing high in each of the four meets. It qualified for Massachusetts State Math Meet and New England Championship Math Meet, although both were cancelled.

The team got a great score in Purple Comet Math Meet and placed 2nd in New England in the large high school division. Well done!

Several Newton South students did well in AMC competitions and were invited to take the AIME exam. Congratulations to this year’s AIME qualifiers: Elena Baskakova, Vivek Vallurupalli, Ethan Pang, Audrey Wei, Joshua Guo. Elena also participated in MAML High School Contest and placed 25 out of 438 overall, being second best 9th grader in the competition. She also placed in the top 10% in the John Hopkins Math Tournament.

Big thanks to the team captains Aidan Leonard, Benson Lu and Matthew Yao and math team advisor Mr. Petrizzi for leading the team and organizing many fun activities.