About Our School

Email Sign Up & Distribution Lists
Bishop has several email lists. The primary ones are used for for school-related communications, discussions/chats/etc., lists by grade and lists by class.

Sending Bishop related emails and access rights:

1. Staff and parents who are signed up on the Bishop email lists will have access to post to Bishop_News.
2. There will be specific individuals who will have privileges to the email list-PTO, Pennant, Enrichment, Theatre group etc. This is determined by the Principal and PTO.
3. For the time being, and until otherwise noted, the Principal will serve as moderator for all posts.
   

Bishop_News:
BishopParents@arlington.k12.ma.us, our former school email list was migrated to Bishop_News@public.arlington.k12.ma.us - everyone that was on the Bishop Parents list was automatically included in Bishop_News. This list will have the same function as our former Bishop Parents list. It will be the most important line of communication for school announcements, both from the Principal and the PTO board. All parents on the list are able to post, but posts will be moderated, meaning that your message will need to be approved by the Principal, before going out to the Bishop_News list. This will ensure acceptable content, and eliminate any potential spam. Please restrict posts to school related announcements only.

ALL parents/guardians should be a part of the Bishop_News list. To save paper, many announcements will ONLY be sent electronically. Please sign up for this list and forward this email to anyone you know that may not be signed up. Important information, announcements, newsletters, date reminders, etc will all be sent to this list. To subscribe to this list, please visit http://public.arlington.k12.ma.us/mailman/listinfo.

For the moment, at least, when you sign up for the Bishop_News mailing list, you will receive a confirmation message in your Inbox. You MUST reply to this message in order to confirm your subscription. Since Mr. Silvestri has been sending out weekly Principal News, if you have not gotten those, than you are not subscribed.

Bishop Talk:
We do still have Bishop Talk which is a private parent run group for any school related discussions. This is the place for conversations, questions, and debates.

You may subscribe to Bishop Talk list via yahoogroups (you do not need a yahoo id), or by sending a blank e-mail message to: BishopTalk-subscribe@yahoogroups.com. This is also a great list to be a part of, but not as vital as Bishop_News. Please consider joining both, for the most school related information.

Bishop PTO on Facebook
The PTO has a Facebook Group! If you are a regular Facebook user, click here and select "Like" to join. If you are already a member, please invite others to join. We can use this forum for more casual communication and sharing of ideas.

Email Lists by Grade and Classroom:
All email lists-community, class and grade levels are very important lines of communication for school announcements, from the principal, classroom, teachers and the PTO. The school district provides and supports these school wide email lists such as Bishop_News@public.arlington.k12.ma.us. The participation rate is quite high since presently we have approximately 324 students and their families represented on these lists. We have about 370 students in our school. In addition to the all school lists, when families register for the Bishop PTO Family Directories, if they provide an email address, they are automatically subscribed to email lists by grade and classroom.

The preferred way for parents to subscribe is to go to https://www.arlington.k12.ma.us/ptodirectory. This site lets you register for the directory, and as mentioned automatically subscribes you to the lists. Typically, these lists are run with access to posting by any member -- which would be the principal, teachers or parents who need to communicate with the community for school and PTO related matters. All parents on the list are able to post, but posts will be moderated, meaning that messages will need to be approved before going out to any list. This will ensure acceptable content, and eliminate any potential spam. We are awaiting additional clarification of APS policy for posting and moderation. Please restrict posts to school related announcements only. The addressing is slightly different this year for the lists. These lists are supported by the District, the Bishop PTO, and in particular by parent volunteer, Josh Lobel who deserves much credit for developing the lists.

Here are sample addresses of the grade and class lists:
BishopGrade5Parents@public.arlington.k12.ma.us or BishopWallParents@public.arlington.k12.ma.us

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