On behalf of the students, families, faculty and staff we wish you Happy Holiday's and a Happy New Year.  We thank you for your support this past year.  This past year GPA has successfully leveraged over $400,000 to provide our full service school model. These funds allow us to run programs for students and their families that address student's health, mental health, and physical development, as well as to provide programs that help close the opportunity and achievement gaps.  We could not do this work without the support of our donors, funders, volunteers and supporters.  From all of us at GPA, THANK YOU for your support!

Please mark your 2016 calendars for our Put Your Hands Up Event on April 28th at 5:30PM at Spangler Center in Harvard University.  We hope to see you there!

At Gardner Pilot Academy we have worked very hard to provide our students access to programs to support their academic, health, family and enrichment needs.  Students at GPA have collectively received over 400 services, largely due to GPA’s strong partnerships with over thirty non-profits, community organizations, and local universities.  In particular, the after-school programming adds 17.5 additional hours of learning for our students.  The success of this programming led GPA to earn “exemplary demonstration” status from the Department of Elementary and Secondary Education, the highest status awarded by the department.  We are grateful to our tremendous partner in providing after school care to our students, the YMCA of Greater Boston, and we applaud all of the staff, partners, families, and students who have worked so hard to make the program such a great success!

Gardner Pilot Academy extends a HUGE thank you to New Balance for transforming our outdoor playspace and beautifying the basement space. On Friday, June 12, hundreds of New Balance employees volunteered with City Year as a part of New Balance SparkStart Global Volunteer Week. Projects encourage a lifetime of movement among students & reinforce school values inspiring academic success & achievement! Photos and details from the event can be found here.

Congratulations to Mario Pineda who was recognized for his academic excellence as a Red Sox Scholar, which provides him a $10,000 scholarship for college!

In order to support our students and their families, GPA is very proud of our incredibly talented and driven faculty.  Teachers at GPA are leaders within the school, across the district and within the nation.  For a sampling of the kind of work that GPA faculty engage visit the Writing is Thinking blog.  This year GPA faculty are engaged in a year long instructional focus with Harvard University on planning and implementing lessons using the Universal Design for Learning Framework.   In addition, across our middle school we are implementing an innovative technology based intervention from the support of EdVestors.  We look forward to sharing the success of these two initiatives with all of you at the end of the year.

This past year GPA teachers have worked collaboratively to raise over $10,000 in funds to support our students using sources like Donors Choose and GoFundMe. We have projects on GoFundMe and Donors Choose that still need funding!  We are so grateful to all the donors who have supported our staff.