School buses will be rolling again next week. Classes begin Wednesday, Aug. 29, as the town shifts back into its school-year schedule. The biggest effect is on students, parents, and teachers, of course. But the opening of school also affects everyone who drives through the town center at pickup and drop-off times, who stops at the General around lunchtime or midafternoon, or who visits the library after school. There’s more hustle and bustle, and the tempo of life seems to pick up again for Harvard’s 1,100 students and for the town as a whole.
Changes at Bromfield
Returning students will find some changes with the new school year. For Bromfield students who drive to school, one big change will be the assigned, numbered parking spaces. Bromfield Principal Scott Hoffman said the new system was necessary to prevent overcrowding and “creative parking” in the school lot.
Students who want to apply for a parking place must fill out the forms that were recently sent, Hoffman said. The school is currently numbering all the parking spaces and will send students their assigned numbers when that process is complete.
Familiar faces, new psychologist
Students at Hildreth Elementary School will see all familiar faces among teachers and administrators this fall, as there were no retirements or departures last year. At the Bromfield School the one new face will be Christina Petkus, the school psychologist.
Bromfield’s sole new hire this year, Christina Petkus. (Courtesy photo)
Petkus comes to Harvard after three years as part of a team of school counselors at Lexington High School, which has more than three times as many students as Bromfield. She told the Press in a telephone interview that she is looking forward to having more diverse responsibilities and a broader role here in a smaller school.
While she was growing up, Petkus said, her family lived in many different countries because her father was a diplomat. While in college and graduate school, her summer jobs included work in Brussels, Belgium, and Sao Paulo, Brazil.
Petkus graduated from Cabrini College in Radnor, Pennsylvania, with a major in psychology and a minor in sociology. She then earned an Educational Specialist degree from Tufts University, where her field was school psychology. She has also worked for several years with the Wakefield Public Schools doing testing, counseling, and behavioral support.
Bromfield will also offer two new classes in social studies—Pop Culture, taught by Matt Lynde and Kristin McManus, and Advanced Placement U.S. Government and Politics, taught by Kate Keane. Hoffman said that planning for the government course has been in the works for quite a while, but its addition now fits well with Massachusetts’ new state standards requiring more coverage of civics and related topics.
The AP government course will be a full-year course and will cover the same material usually taught in an introductory college-level American Government course, beginning with the Constitution and the debates among those who framed it. In an email to the Press, Keane said the course will also “ study each of the three branches of the federal government and their interactions, then move on to civil rights and civil liberties, political ideologies, and political participation.” Students will analyze primary sources including selections from “The Federalist Papers” and Martin Luther King Jr.’s “Letter from a Birmingham Jail.” Supreme Court cases and current events will also figure in the class. Keane wrote, “One element … that I am particularly excited about is the requirement for students to complete a civics project that puts their newly acquired knowledge to use.” The project will come near the end of the school year, after the AP exam is over. “I am very much looking forward to helping students research and take action on issues that are meaningful to them,” Keane concluded.
The Press received more information about the new Pop Culture course too late to include in this edition.
