Clara Barton Open School

Reminder: Tuesday Night is Author Night, Inventors' Fair, and Used Book Fair Night

Don't miss these events at the school on Tuesday, March 29, 6-8 PM:

• Used Book Fair 6-8 PM on first floor hallway
• Student Author Night 6-7 PM in classrooms on
  the first and second floors
• Inventors’ Fair Show 7-8 PM in the commons

Enjoy written work from students in grades kindergarten through eighth grade. Check out inventions from students who have worked with Steve Jevning at Leonardo’s Basement. And find a great buy on a book you’ve always wanted to read at the used book fair. See you then!

Plant Sale Form Available Online

The annual plant sale is underway, and all Barton students have been given a supply of order forms. 

A copy of the order form is available here (in PDF format), and will continue to be available via the link under the heading "Annual Plant Sale" in the right-hand column of this site. 

The online form is useful if you want to quickly send a form to relatives and friends that live a little bit outside the immediate area.  You can direct them to this site to follow the link, or you can save the form to your computer and e-mail it to them.

Happy selling!

Parents United Issues Call for Action on State Budget Resolution

Legislative alert:

This is a critical time for Barton parents interested in influencing K-12 school funding and other education issues at the state legislature. 

This week Parents United Network issued a call for action to all parents who want to influence a critical vote on an amendment to the house budget bill this week.  Read the alert for all the details.

Reminder:

This is a good time for a reminder that the Director of the Parents United Network, Mary Cecconi, will be speaking in the Barton Commons on Tuesday, April 19, at 7:00 PM.  This is an excellent opportunity for Barton parents to get up to speed on all state education funding issues, and to learn how  parents can influence the school funding debate, which is sure to be going strong for several more weeks.  Mary was one of the speakers at the big education rally at the Capitol a few weeks ago.  Please mark your calendars now and watch for additional information about this event.

Barton Students Perform With Minnesota Sinfonia

On Monday, March 14, the Minnesota Sinfonia performed two concerts for Barton Students as part of their Music In The Schools program.  The program focused on history as seen through the music of the times including the civil war era (Copland’s A Lincoln Portrait), the effects of World War II (Shostakovich’s Great String Symphony), and the tie between Beethoven and Napoleon (Beethoven’s Eroica Symphony).  The Barton Camerata and Varsity strings led by Toyo Lang, and a chorus of third and fourth graders from Claire’s classroom led by Jay performed with the orchestra.  The concert also included crowd pleasing popular music from Disney’s Pirates of the Caribbean and Indiana Jones movies.  There were lots of applause and high fives for the orchestra and Conductor Jay Fishman after the concerts.

Barton Students Make Strong Showing in City-Wide Math Contest

On Saturday, March 12, sixth graders from schools across the city converged on North High School for the Minneapolis Public School’s Sixth Grade Math Competition.  Barton was well represented with 32 participants.  There were three hours of challenging individual and group problem solving that included fact drills, number sense, measurement, patterns, algebra, probability, geometry and more!  Then, a pizza lunch was gobbled up while the scores were tallied.  Jason, Jade, and Elliot were awarded ribbons in the individual categories.  Two Barton teams took home plaques and ribbons in the group categories.  The team of Mitchell, Jason, Aly and Josephine came in second in the team competition and overall.  Honorable mention honors for team and overall went to the team of John T., Maya, Max and Jade. 

Thank you to Launa for coordinating Barton’s participation in this program.  Special thanks to Barton parents including Tom Bailey, Karen Fassett-Carmen, Catherine Grant and Anne Sterner for coaching the students and many others who served as checkers, double checkers and recorders at the competition. 

Click here for additional photos from the event.  Click here (Download 6thGradeMath.pdf) to see samples of the contest problems.

Barton Speller Takes 2nd Place in Bee

Barton master speller Jade Cohen placed second in the Twin Cities Metro Spelling Bee last week.  Here's an article from the Star Tribune that mentions Jade's feat.  Congratulations!

Food in the News

Barton kids, parents, and food service staff are mentioned in a story about school lunches in the most recent Southwest Journal.