Principal: Sarah McLaughlin
Assistant Principal: Maura Bradley
Mission: We at the Frost are committed to preparing all students to successfully master the content skills necessary to graduate from high school and beyond, by providing a standards-based, rigorous instructional program focused on academic achievement and the development of 21st century skills, accompanied by a comprehensive system of supports, all of which are monitored and assessed regularly to ensure accountability to all stakeholders.
The student population at Frost Elementary School looks somewhat different from the district as a whole. There are smaller proportions of students whose first language is not English, English language learners, students with disabilities, high needs students, and economically disadvantaged students.
In 2014 and 2015, the February Acceleration Academies focused primarily on ELA and the April Academies focused on math. Being invited to one Academy did not preclude students from being invited to the second in a given year. In other words, in the 2013-14 and 2014-15 school years, some students participated in one of the two Academies, some participated in both, and some did not participate in either. In 2016 (the 2015-16 school year), the district decided to dedicate the February Academy to English language learners, and held the ELA and math Academies concurrently in April.
At the Frost, the principal and assistant principal have become a seamless tag-team; one supervises the February Academy; another the April Academy, but both are deeply engaged in the planning and implementation of the Academies in their building. As Principal Sarah McLaughlin told us: “I take a fairly active role because I'm pretty invested in the success of it, and I don't want to have it feel that I have passed off this responsibility to someone else as if it's not an important piece of our work."
McLaughlin told us that the Academies teachers come with a strong repertoire of instructional practices as well as unique strengths in addressing the need of students who may be harder to reach. "They believe every student can absolutely achieve and come with that starting on Monday morning and work as hard as possible through the entire week," she said.
An Academies teacher at the Frost emphasized the importance of small class size. "Having a classroom of 12 just gives you so many opportunities to work with each student and figure out what is standing in their way of success or what areas they’re excelling at and can be pushed even further," she said.
A Frost student in one of our focus groups said, “[In regular classes], my teacher always has to pause because people aren’t behaving. In small groups, nobody’s misbehaving, so there’s no pausing and you can get your work done real fast.”
