Dear Cooke Families,
Welcome Back!
We are looking forward to a great year at Cooke School. You probably noticed the new logo and name – we are now called Cooke School and Institute. You received an Email from our advancement team highlighting the exciting changes and colorful new logo.
We’ve had some additional changes too–we added new staff, new positions, and new programs to enhance your child’s school experience. Take a moment to read about all the new additions and some important information about upcoming events.
I will reach out often. I hope you all have an amazing school year!
Dr. Francis Tabone
Cooke Head of School
Interested in fresh, local, and organic produce for only $9/week?! Want to get your produce delivered to you at work! What a deal! This Friday, September 15th is the registration and payment deadline for this year’s CSA.
This CSA is hosted by Cooke students, for Cooke families and the SoHo neighborhood!
Click here for Information Packet and Click here to Register.
Join Today!
See you at the picnic! September 16th from 12:00 to 3:00 pm, we’ll host our annual picnic with food and fun for the entire family. All families, siblings, grandparents, aunts, etc. are welcome and it is a great day to meet other Cooke Families. See you there!
Parent School Association (PSA). Thank you Larissa Baczyk for staying on for an extra year as president. She and the team of representatives from each site are tireless in supporting Cooke events. This year is especially important as we celebrate the big 30!
The first of four PSA meetings takes place Tuesday Oct. 24th from 6pm to 8pm and as always we have food and child care. We will feature guest speakers and take care of internal business. When you have a child at Cooke you are automatically in the PSA. Make sure to stay tuned for updates and information regarding these meetings.
Announcing Mr. Jesse Green our new assistant head of the Grammar School! Mr. Green has been here at Cooke for many years in teaching and administrative capacities. He continues to bring amazing insight and programming into the community. We are fortunate to have Mr. Green at the helm.
We have added new positions to the grammar school to ensure a comprehensive therapeutic experience for our youngest students. K/1 and 1/2 classes each have a speech and language provider and occupational therapist dedicated to the needs of that class.
That means for our two youngest classes, all students will have daily speech and occupational therapy services. By integrating these providers in the class we can meet the needs of students with intense attention and integration into the class curriculum.
We engaged in a very comprehensive review of our adaptive skills programming from K through 21.
The findings?
We needed more staff support to ensure that our high school students were regularly and appropriately engaged in adaptive skills classrooms across all grades. Thus, we added a new occupational therapist and an adaptive skills specialist/teacher to help reduce the caseloads and make sure there was more intensity in the focus of student services.
To ensure community inclusion of all students, SKILLs program has close relationships to many Universities and outside programs. We have been working to increase the number of classes our student may take at St. John’s University and are currently working on a plan that will have students earn a completion certificate from St. Johns.
Students will continue at Brooklyn Conservatory of Music as well as School of Visual Arts. This year we have found two local schools providing culinary classes and physical fitness classes. Students will have more choices than ever in developing their course load at SKILLs.
I am happy to announce the addition of a full time Technology teacher! We have needed this for a while as tech continues to be an essential skill and necessity for life. All students will be developing those skills across the year.
Reminders…
Sign up for the New Online Calendar!
(see below for the instructions. It’s quick and easy!)
How to Access the Parent Page …
1-Go to Website www.cookeschool.org/parent
2-Choose login: Parent (menu is on top right corner if using computer.
If using mobile device, scroll to bottom of page.)
3-Choose one of the 3 simple options to log-in
A-“Google” icon (simplest route if you already have a gmail account)
B- Facebook (uses FB identity to verify)
C-Create a user account with your email and a personal password
set by you
4-Follow steps as directed from options A, B, and C above
5-Voila! You are in! Your browser should remember your login info so that you won’t have to re-enter it.
#WeLoveCooke
Our Mission
Cooke School envisions a world in which all people with special needs are included as valued members of their communities, leading independent and purposeful lives.