Tropic Isles teachers deliver for students
School bells rang again on Monday to start the new school year. But before that, teachers and administration at Tropic Isles Elementary School took a walk.
About 25 to 30 teachers and administrators from the school went door to door in the Tropic Isles neighborhood Thursday to deliver school supplies and meet more than 30 of their students, some of whom have had issues in the past.
They called it “Operation Knock, Knock” because the students identified have had attendance issues and wanted to encourage them to be at school.
Robert Mazzoli, first-year principal at the school, said it was a way to do some outreach for parents and students just before the year started.
“We wanted to reach out to families throughout the community. We identified some children to reach out to and we had many of our teachers, support staff, myself and others go out and knock on their doors and deliver the supplies to the families,” Mazzoli said.
Mazzoli said the families they reached were happy and, in some cases, really made their day, especially since they didn’t expect the visit.
“We caught them by surprise, but we wanted to reach out to them, welcome them back to school and encourage them to be in school every day,” Mazzoli said. “We told them we look forward to having them back and first day of school.”
Mazzoli said the idea was to promote attendance and to give a select number of students a warm welcome back and to encourage them to be at school on time,” Mazzoli said.
The school got some supplies with the help of some veterans groups and other organizations. Mazzoli got his specialists, guidance counselor and others to organize bags of supplies.
This was all part of a busy and productive week before school at Tropic Isles, which feature “Operation Knock, Knock” and Friday’s open house, which nearly 1,000 people attended.
Mazzoli said he is “building a roadmap for success” at Tropic Isles in an attempt to improve the school from a “C” to an “A.”
“We are going to go hard at work to prioritize what we need to do to get back to an A school,” Mazzoli said.