WHITMAN — A Whitman man is once again facing child pornography charges after a nearly five-month investigation led by federal officials with the Department of Homeland Security and Whitman Police Detective Joseph Bombardier.

Matthew Kulikowski, 37, of 52 Priscilla Road, Whitman was charged in U.S. District Court Sept. 10 on a federal criminal complaint based on the investigation which began April 2018 in relation to his alleged dissemination, possession and  receiving of child pornographic material.

A former guard at Norfolk state prison, Kulikowski was taken into custody last week following the execution of the federal search warrant in which agents seized evidence that he allegedly was knowingly in possession of the obscene images. He was charged with one count of each: receipt of child pornography and possession of the same.

In an obtained affidavit supporting the criminal complaints against Kulikowski, a special agent with Homeland Security documented materials retrieved after a search warrant was served for the premise of Kulikowski’s residence. According to the special agent, Kulikowski’s  tracking data placed him at the Whitman residence where the IP address matched a tablet device that had been flagged by investigators. The device reportedly contained 100 images of young children. The tablet was reportedly found inside a bookshelf of his bedroom.

Kulikowski had been required to wear a GPS tracking device and was on probation at the time of the Sept. 10 arrest for open cases from Plymouth District Court dating back to February of 2015.

Kulikowski’s 2015 charges in Plymouth Superior Court were: four charges of posing a child in a sexual way, one count each of possession of pornographic material, purchasing, disseminating obscene material of a minor, one count of indecent acts on a child under age 14, two counts of enticement of a child under age 16 and breaking and entering in the daytime.

The most recent charges stem from the five-month investigation, which began on  April 6, 2018 when a flagged account through the Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP) and Canadian Police Centre for Missing and Exploited Children indicated a person using an account lovepreteengirl through an online chat via Kik App had transmitted child pornography.

According to the federal document, the special agent, who viewed the photographs that triggered the Kik report, offered his witness account in his probable cause statements that the materials did depict prepubescent girls under age 14 with visibly exposed genitalia. The Kik interactive app is a Canadian based company in Waterloo Ontario that owns Kik Messenger. Kik Messenger, commonly called Kik, is a freeware instant messaging mobile app from the Canadian company Kik Interactive, available free of charge on iOS and Android operating systems. The application is used to send and receive images, videos and other content and is usually available free for various tablet and mobile devices, according to their website.

The company’s safety information regarding usage and parental information is listed on the Kik’s website.

“Kik’s Safety Advisory Board is currently made up of four experts in the fields of child development, child exploitation and trafficking, criminology, cyber bullying, privacy and security,” Kik website data.

In published reports the Kik Application has been named in numerous incidents of enticement in minors.

Users of the application can often ‘hide’ their name in a false account and are not required to use their real name to set up an account. However IP addresses, and increased law enforcement specializing in cyber protection throughout the US and Canada are increasingly vigilant against the exploitation of children.

On April 6, 2018 Kik reported that user lovepreteengirl_rac sent apparent child pornographic material to another user from an IP address that was linked to Kulikowski.

The September 10 morning search warrant was issued on suspected child pornography tied to the distribution of such material.

Massachusetts State Police and Homeland Security agents along with Detective Joseph Bombardier interviewed and retrieved supporting evidence of the findings on cellular devices and a tablet which was seized at the home.

It was concluded that Kulikowski knowingly possessed child pornography and had proposed to intentionally transport the materials in his possession.

DA Timothy J. Cruz’s Office did not respond to requests for comment.

HANSON – At 3:22 p.m., on July 5, 2018, temperatures hit a daily high of 94 degrees, 28 minutes into a major four-hour firefighting effort at the former JJ’s Pub, 16 Liberty St., according to a State Police report at Plymouth District Court and unofficial climate data collected by the National Weather Service. That Thursday was among the hottest days of the summer.

Prosecutors allege that the three-alarm fire was intentionally set by Alfred C. Russo, 75, of Bourne. Russo was arrested at his Buzzards Bay home by Massachusetts State Police Wednesday, Aug. 29, according to a statement from the office of Plymouth County District Attorney Timothy J. Cruz. He was transported to Plymouth District Court and arraigned on three charges: one count of burning of a dwelling and two counts of arson causing injuries to a firefighter.

Russo was a 26-year veteran of the Boston Fire Department, joining in 1969 and retiring as a firefighter assigned to the Marine Unit in 1995.

Represented by attorney Edward Wells, Russo appeared before Judge James M. Sullivan and pleaded not guilty to the charges, according to court documents. Although the Commonwealth asked for $15,000 bail, Sullivan released him with a GPS monitoring ankle bracelet on personal recognizance, disappointing Hanson Fire Chief Jerome Thompson Jr.

Sullivan is first justice of Plymouth District Court, according to the court’s website.

Chief’s Outrage

Thompson took to his personal Twitter account to express his displeasure Wednesday evening, which was widely reported by area news media.

“This guy put two of my firefighters in the hospital. Several firefighters and public at risk and stripped our neighboring communities of their firefighting assets and gets out on personal recognizance with an ankle bracelet. Very disappointing to say the least,” tweeted Thompson. “Law Enforcement worked diligently on this case. The District Attorney asked for $15,000 bail. Very disappointed with the Judge,” he continues.

Speaking to the Express Monday morning, he said, “I was very pleased with the law enforcement effort…I’m not a judge. I’m not a prosecutor, but I think some of the circumstances warranted that he be held.”

Thompson added, “I don’t usually speak out. But this stripped firefighting resources from other towns, involved road closures, and we had to cut the power, which also affected businesses. … I think it’s very disturbing, if he is guilty, that he is a former firefighter.”

Russo denies all allegations.

The fire, which Thompson said nearly reached four alarms, totally destroyed the approximately five-year abandoned commercial property adjacent to the intersections of Liberty Street and East and West Washington Streets. Investigators deemed it to be an estimated $400,000 loss, according to court documents.

It sent two firefighters, Lieutenant Sherilyn Mullin and Timothy Royer, to area hospitals with heat-related injuries. Both had to miss some work due to their injuries, according to court documents.

An Express photographer was also hospitalized for heat-related illness after covering the incident.

The fire took some time to extinguish, due to the full involvement of the structure, according to the statement from the district attorney, and many towns and the state responded or provided station coverage for Hanson during the incident, according to Thompson.

The response included personnel and equipment from Abington, East Bridgewater, Halifax, Hanover, Kingston, Pembroke, Rockland, Whitman, as well as the Whitman Community Emergency Response Team and the Department of Fire Services Rehab Unit from Middleboro.

In a police interview, the owner of the Hanson property, identified as Patricia Harrison, of Bourne, says she and the defendant, Russo, a friend, were together at her home when she received a call from her real estate agent about the fire. Harrison’s longtime boyfriend, Wayne Cummings, says he was out walking the dog when he received word of the fire from Harrison.

Yet, both Harrison and Cummings identified Russo’s Jeep, in Hanson, when shown it in later interviews from cameras across from JJ’s Pub at times proximate to the fire, according to the State Police report.

Video Evidence

Video surveillance from Dandel Construction Corporation was used to identify a party parking a vehicle on the side of the building, who then entered through a door and remained inside for nearly eight minutes, according to the report. The party then exited, entered a vehicle and drove away. About six minutes after the party exits the structure, smoke is visible venting from the roof, it continues. Less than nine minutes later, fire is visible out of a side window.

When investigators went to meet Russo at his home in Bourne two weeks after the incident, police say he, “spontaneously stated that he was driving his Jeep in Hanson on the day of the fire.”

Russo, who was then taken for a voluntary interview at the Bourne Police Department, stated that he had been in Hanson on the day of the fire for a cookout at Cummings’ sister’s house, but didn’t end up attending because he didn’t feel well, according to the report.

He freely admitted to driving to the JJ’s Pub property, purportedly to move a generator, but said he never went inside, according to police.

Russo spoke at length to the Express, reached on his cellphone Monday afternoon, saying that he was “shocked” and “sickened” by the fire.

“Do you want something to print?” he asked as he chuckled. “I’m proclaiming my innocence.”

His statements echoed those that he made to the police. He said that he was in Hanson primarily to attend a cookout, but that he had taken a medication for his acid reflux since he was not feeling well.

He then said he went to the JJ’s Pub property to move a generator behind the building with his trailer, at the request of Cummings, the second reason he was in Hanson that day.

Russo denied going inside the pub and said his presence there before the fire was just a coincidence.

“It’s a bad coincidence, but some coincidences are just coincidences,” he said. “When I left that building it wasn’t burning.”

Good Reputation

“I have a good reputation with the fire department, why in God’s name would I set that fire? It doesn’t make sense.” Russo said. “Everything that they have is circumstantial. … I was at the wrong place at the wrong time.”

Russo blamed the fire on spontaneous combustion from trash and oily rags inside the building, stating how hot it had been the week of the fire.

“It’s also a problematic location,” he said, adding that there had been a recent arson nearby.

When questioned on the subject, he said that he had never seen a case of spontaneous combustion in his 26-year career as a Boston firefighter, but that special investigators, not firefighters make that determination.

The lead investigator on the case was Massachusetts State Police Trooper Thomas Berteletti, a detective from the Fire and Explosion Investigation Section attached to the Massachusetts State Fire Marshal’s office.

Fire investigations are, “witness-driven and multi-jurisdictional. … Specially trained Massachusetts State Police detectives have functioned as State Fire Marshal investigators for more than 50 years,” according to the Massachusetts Department of Fire Services.

“By law, the local fire department is responsible for determining the origin and cause of each fire or explosion in its jurisdiction. The Massachusetts State Fire Marshal is mandated to investigate the cause and circumstances of fires and explosions where local fire authorities are unable to determine the cause, where a violation of law exists, or when the fire or explosion is classified as suspicious or incendiary in nature,” according to their webpage.

Fire’s Cause

The cause of the JJ’s Pub fire was preliminarily determined to be, “open flame to combustible material,” according to court documents as well as, “either ignited in multiple locations or…the fire was accelerated by the use of an ignitable liquid or heavy concentration of combustibles throughout the interior.”

The Massachusetts State Police Fire and Explosion Investigation Section, Hanson Police and Hanson Fire Departments investigated, and the investigation is ongoing, said the district attorney’s office.

“Arson fires have a certain look to them. And they bulldozed that building. I don’t know why they did that. Also, why would someone set a fire in the middle of the day? That’s not something an arsonist would do,” Russo declared.

He is scheduled to be in court Monday, Oct. 15, for a probable cause hearing.

Harrison and Cummings could not be reached for comment.

HANSON — They met flying model airplanes.

Army National Guard Pilot Scott Landis, 34, of Hanson who was killed in a plane crash at the Cranland Airport last Friday, got involved in aviation through model aircraft, his lifelong schoolmate and best friend Scott Proulx said this week.

“I never continued on to fly real airplanes but have maintained a relationship with many area pilots,” said Proulx, a Hanson resident who lived at Cranland Airport for three years as a young boy.

Proulx spoke on behalf of the Landis family in a written statement this week.

“The family is doing as can be expected following a tragedy of this magnitude,” he said. “There is a tremendous amount of grief and sorrow. We are all devastated at the sudden loss of Scott Landis. He left this earth far too soon. Scott was a tremendous person and meant a great deal to many, many people.”

The Hanson community has felt a wave of emotion as residents learned of Scott Landis’ tragic death.

According to a statement from State Rep. Josh S. Cutler, D-Duxbury,  the town is preparing to pay its respects to Scott Landis, a pilot who was serving in the 126th Aviation Battalion deployed as part of U.N. Peace Keeping Force in Kosovo.

A wake will be held from 4 to 8 p.m., Thursday, Aug. 30 at the Sullivan Funeral Home, 3 Maquan St., Hanson.

He was due to return to Kosovo next week before his untimely death.

Scott Landis and his brother Patrick, who was also critically injured, were in flight planning to scatter the ashes of their father Richard Landis, 70, of Hanson who passed away from cancer two weeks ago. Landis was home on leave for his father’s funeral.

Patrick Landis, 29, remains Monday in a medically induced coma, a family spokesman said. He was airlifted to Tufts Medical Center in Boston by medical helicopter following the crash Friday Aug. 24  and remains in intensive care.

Scott Landis, alongside his friend and military colleague Anthony (Tony) Celia, was also a Whitman-Hanson graduate, was known to exhibit his flying with a bit of humor as he hovered over his hometown with the Army Black Hawk aircraft to alert his loved ones that he was home — flying a little lower to “make some noise” and let everyone know he was here, Landis said as he shared stories with campers and friends at DARE camp in 2016 taking photos and educating those attending about the chopper.

Landis’ aunt, Marie Conway Real, of Hanson, has started a GoFund me page to assist the family. In a recent update she expressed ongoing care following the accident for Patrick. He is paralyzed from the waist down among numerous other injuries. Real is the sister of Donna Landis who just lost her husband of 40 years.

Scott Landis, who was an established pilot, co-owned the plane, according to published reports. Although the investigation is open and ongoing, according to Plymouth County District Attorney Timothy Cruz’s office, witnesses reported the plane had only been in the air for a few minutes when a person on the ground reported hearing a sputter and stall of the engine. A dog walker found the downed plane alerting 911 from a bog area behind the Cranland Airport according to Cruz’s press release earlier in the week.

Celia who now lives in Carver and Scott Landis were both presented with awards of recognition for their service to town and country by Cruz.

Cruz acknowledged the passing of Chief Warrant Officer Landis on Twitter posting photo memories with the pilots from 2016.

“Our hearts are heavy after learning that Army/Nat’l Guard CW3 Scott Landis was killed in a plane crash in Hanson on Friday,” Cruz wrote. “On behalf of myself, the Sheriff, Police Chiefs and DARE Camp Staff, we would like to offer our deepest condolences to the Landis Family.”

Pegi Celia, who saw Landis grow up was overcome with grief Sunday. Her own three sons range in ages between the Landis sons. She said her son Anthony was unavailable for comment and he was emotionally supporting the Landis family — Scott’s widow Staci and toddler son  —over the weekend. She tearfully declined further comments only calling the crash “a tragedy” of her son’s longtime friend.

How to help

Donations to help the family of Scott Landis may be made through
https://www.gofundme.com/scott-staci-and-jack-landis
Donations for Patrick Landis may be made through
https://www.gofundme.com/support-patrick-landis.

Duval third-grade teacher Danielle Silva and members of her family sounded like they were having a lot of fun as Superintendent of Schools Jeffrey Szymaniak was guiding a tour through the building for five School Committee members and the media on Monday, Aug. 20.

The tour was meant to show what physical changes had been made to four of the district’s four schools — Conley, Duval, Indian Head and WHRHS — following the closure of Hanson’s Maquan Elementary School.

The laughter emanating from Silva’s classroom prompted a visit as she was working to prepare the room for the first day of school on Wednesday, Aug. 29.

“Come on in,” Silva called out to them. “We’ve been here since early, so they’re getting a little tired now,” she said of her son and daughter’s efforts.

As she spoke with the school officials, her kids were filling welcome back goodie bags for her new students and making name cards for desks as her mother in-law, a former teacher in the Bridgewater schools for 36 years, was creating a chart on a flip-pad at the classroom easel.

The goodie bags proved to be an interesting idea to the committee members.

“That’s wicked cool,” said School Committee member Fred Small, who chairs the facilities subcommittee.

“It’s like a little welcome, it has a little poem in it,” she said, explaining that one of her college roommates, now a teacher in Maryland uses the poem as a welcome gift. “‘Sharing is caring,’ is what I say. [The poem says] if they make a mistake it’s OK so you give them an eraser. [There’s] notepaper — stuff like that.”

Silva said she and her husband divide the shopping for their interests seasonally.

“He gets car parts,” she said. “He’s into cars and I’m obviously into school … so stuff comes in boxes for me, they come for him, it works out.”

Small was impressed that Silva’s children were in to help their mom.

“That’s what makes Whitman-Hanson what it is,” he said of Silva’s work. “We’re here and we’re seeing it.”

The tour began at Conley, where Facilities Director Ernest Sandland and Principal Karen Downey talked about the new security doors all three elementary schools were having installed as well as a new addition to Conley’s outdoor classroom, funded by the PAC and a new computer lab funded by the annual talent show.

Classrooms have been cleaned with five coats of wax applied to floors and SJ Services will be moving to hallways and cafeterias before school starts, according to Sandland.

The outdoor classroom will now include a freestanding structure with a corrugated roof to be used as a teaching space, Downey said.

“Everything that has to do with this outdoor classroom is done through our PAC,” she said. “Through our basket auction and our Fun Run we’ve been able to put all of these plants and tables. When we began this two or three years ago, there was nothing in here.”

Landscaping and donated materials have created a space where students can go outside and learn more. So far, “well over $50,000” has been raised and spent on the project, with the new wheelchair-accessible structure alone costing between $14,000 and $15,000 for materials. A mid-September completion is anticipated, weather permitting.

“Kids need to be outside and you can be inspired in a lot of different ways,” she said.

Inside, Downey said the computer lab is another point of pride for the school.

“This is our baby,” she said. “If the outdoor classroom was a spot that our PAC supported and paid for, this spot has a direct relation to our staff.”

Proceeds from between three and five talent shows run by staff volunteers was used to transform the traditional computer lab’s rows of desks to a room where sectional tables on wheels can be used to teach and hold meetings in a variety of ways. It is served by a Chromebook cart for each grade and is adjacent to the school’s library.

“We wanted it to be a collaborative space, a space where you don’t have to just have a computer going but you could use the whiteboards and use the interactive board and tie into the library,” she said.

Duval School

At Duval, aside from the new security entrance and Silva’s work in setting up her classroom, School Committee members also examined the new space North River Collaborative will be using in a space for special needs programs that the YMCA program had used.

“It’s going to be a very nice classroom for them and they’ve got the playground out back,” Sandland said. Bathrooms for the children are in the hall nearby and there will be sinks in the classrooms.

The school’s Rinnai on-demand water heaters will also be the subject of the company test study on how they are used in a school district, according to Sandland. No other school district in Massachusetts uses on-demand water heaters, which save the district money on both water usage and energy.

“It’s going to show that, number one, we’re not wasting water,” he said of the study. “The hot water heaters we used to have, if I’m in here during a snowstorm, they’d be running. If nobody’s here, these units are not being used.”

Indian Head School

Perhaps no school entrance has changed as noticeably as Indian Head.

New security doors open into what had been the assistant principal’s office, where district IT Director Chad Peters was helping connect phone lines at the security window where visitors must check in. The former reception area is being used as an office for the school psychologist and the window will be covered by a shade.

Principal Jill Dore-Cotreau’s office has been finished and she was settling in on Monday.

The added population of pupils in kindergarten through grade two transferred over from Maquan demanded the addition of bathrooms to accommodate the younger children and provide sufficient privacy. Sinks feature motion-activated faucets.

The changes are also notable outside where a new playground — with a spongy rubberized ground surface — has been installed and parking has been adjusted to provide a blacktop play area with a basketball court for which portable backstops will be used that can be stored away for plowing in winter. The spongy playground surface is pitched to permit rainwater runoff, but also absorbs water and runs it off through the bottom, Sandland said.

The old basketball court is now a picnic area with green metal tables and seats.

A tree-shaped climbing apparatus was manufactured in Germany and the support pole is anchored in six feet of cement.

“This was six months in the planning with teachers and the community,” Sandland said. “We had a 12-foot fence here, but we ended up taking it down and cutting the pipes to reduce it to a six-foot fence. If we left that 12-foot fence it would have felt like a prison.”

W-H Regional High School

The moving of the Maquan preschool to the high school has created some dramatic changes inside and out at that school, too.

The new inner ring driveway for preschool parent drop-offs is almost complete, with the boulder unearthed during construction placed in the lawn as the school’s new “pride rock” as Szymaniak calls it. Lines were slated to be painted on the new driveway on Tuesday, Aug. 21 with sidewalk repairs to be finished Wednesday, Aug. 22.

Hanson Highway Department helped move the rock.

“We’re going to paint it,” Szymaniak said. “Different clubs and organizations are going to paint it as an expression of pride.”

Sandland said the rock also dictated where the driveway’s drainage system would be anchored.

Inside, work on the doors separating the preschool from the rest of the building was nearly complete. Card access doors will limit who is permitted into the preschool where identifying signage will be placed.

“If I had known there were so many I would have brought more brushes,” joked a worker varnishing cubbies in the preschool hallway.

Classrooms were ready for furnishings to be moved in and each room’s bathrooms — complete with the shortest toilet one has ever seen — as well as sinks and cabinets have been installed.

Outside the preschool area, a playground is still being worked on.

An alcove lined with trophy cases will be the preschool director’s office, with the trophies — some dating back to 1920 — to be put into storage or display in the athletics department.

Summing up

Sandland said the hardest part of the construction projects proved to be coordinating work schedules and available finances to the scheduling demands of the construction trades.

“It’s not a secret,” he said. “It’s a fact. We’re in a great economy and trying to get people to come out and give you prices in May, when we get the money approved, they’ve already got their work lined up for the summer.”

Once the physical work began the challenge shifted to cutting into wall slabs to install the doors without marring the high school building that has been a MSBA model school for new construction since it was built.

“Making it look like we didn’t cut the slabs,” he said.

And then there was that rock.

“That was just ridiculous,” Sandland said. “Where that rock was is where the catch basin is … so they had to go down further.”

HANSON — Paving crews were at work on part of the parking lot as another work crew was installing new playground equipment outside, while work continued on the new security entrance and her office had just been finished inside, as new Indian Head Elementary School Principal Jill Dore-Cotreau worked in a conference room Thursday, Aug. 9.

Things may still look a bit jumbled, but Dore-Cotreau said, real progress is being made at the school most directly changed by the closing of the Maquan School across the street.

She has been meeting with parents and students and added that classrooms are finished with teachers already coming in to get them ready for the first day of school on Wednesday, Aug. 29. That means the annual open house will go on as usual on Tuesday evening, Aug. 28. A kindergarten pot luck is also planned for Thursday, Aug. 23.

Concerns about the completion work for classrooms had raised concerns earlier in the year that the annual open house would have to be delayed. Work crews have earned Dore-Cotreau’s kudos, however, for getting renovations done quickly to allow teachers to gain access to their classrooms beginning Aug. 1 to prepare for the open house.

This is an educator who values the team approach to educating the youngest students as well as keeping them safe in school.

Born in Peabody, her family — which moved a lot due to her father’s business demands — moved to upstate New York when she was a year old. When she was 7, they moved to Connecticut where she attended Sandy Hook Elementary School. At 14, the family moved to North Carolina, where Dore-Cotreau graduated high school and then earned a bachelor’s in elementary education and music from the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill.

She moved to Junction City, Ky., in 1995 where she taught grade five in the rural community, and “absolutely loved it.”

“It’s funny, because my student teaching was in kindergarten and second grade and I was [thinking], ‘I don’t know about this fifth-grade thing,” she recalled. “But I loved it, I loved the kids.”

Four years later, she transferred to Perryville, Ky., — within the same school district — to teach kindergarten for a year, before the opportunity to do literacy coaching developed.

“I had always loved reading and writing so I moved into that role and was a literacy coach there for five years and then I came back to Massachusetts,” she said.

Dore-Cotreau was most recently a literacy coach and then assistant principal in South Elementary School in Plymouth for eight years, and then to an elementary curriculum lead in ELA/social studies in Barnstable before seeking the principal’s position at Indian Head. She is married with three children, ages 20, 17 and 9. She holds two master’s degrees in elementary education and instructional leadership from Eastern Kentucky University.

Q: What spurred your interest in a career in education?

A: “Ever since I was at Sandy Hook Elementary in second grade [she knew it was what she wanted to do]. I remember I was riding in the backseat of our little station wagon, and said to my mom, ‘I really want to be a teacher.’ She was like, ‘OK.’ I thought it would be really neat to grade papers. I wanted to get out that red pen, I thought that would be really fun. I have an older sister and she and I played school a lot. Ever since that day — and it was along time ago — that was always what I wanted to do.

“When I went into college, I thought I wanted to be a music teacher, but as I got into the program, that certification is K-12 and I really didn’t feel good about working with older kids. I really liked the younger kids, I’ve worked in a day care and I’ve always liked little kids.”

Q: And yet, you went from student-teaching little people to teaching fifth grade.

A: “I was a little intimidated at first and, of course, I’m really short, so I was thinking, ‘These kids are going to be my height.’ But I still talk to those kids who are now in their 30’s. It’s pretty neat. … That town [I started in] was very rural and I had a lot of troubled kids in my class, and it was very challenging, but I connected with them really well. In fact, the Friday before Mother’s Day, they had a surprise party for me. A bunch of them brought gifts and said, ‘You’re kind of like our mom, because we don’t all have one.’ It was the neatest, most rewarding thing. That was the year I knew this was for me. This is what I want to do.”

Q: How important is a teacher as a role model for at-risk kids?

A: “I think it’s harder [for some kids] than it was when I started. A lot of kids don’t have both parents and they don’t have the role models — and we’re in a troubled world — so I think kids really need us to show them even basic manners and how to handle situations and problem-solve when they are having problems. They need that because sometimes they don’t have the best role models.”

Q: What was it about the elementary experience that hooked you?

A: “For me, I connect with the older elementary-aged kids the most because I’m really silly and goofy and they get it. But when I first started, I had worked in a day care and absolutely loved it. I’ve always loved kids, I babysat a lot when I was younger and just felt connected to them.”

Q: What brought you to W-H?

A: “It was actually this craziness,” she said gesturing to the building around her and the renovations. “I wanted to be a principal and I was looking around for jobs and saw this opening come up. I did research to determine the situation and I felt this was a perfect time to come in, because everything’s new to everybody and, yes, I’m new but the staff is newly together, even though they’ve been in the district. It’s a fresh start for everybody, so I felt this could be a really cool time to start a new school — even though Indian Head’s been here, it’s all new because we’re merging. It’s challenging, to say the least, but I thought that was the perfect place to start because we’re all starting new.”

Q: There are a lot of changes in the schools for the coming year.

A: “It’s almost like a new district in a lot of ways. We have a new superintendent, a new assistant superintendent, and almost all of the principals are new, as well. … I feel like I’m part of the new team and Jeff and George have been working to bring us together as a team and make us all connect and work together, which I love.”

Q: Hanson parents have been very concerned about some of those changes. How are you communicating about that with them?

A: “I haven’t talked to a ton of parents. I’ve already connected with the PTO and we had a meeting the second week that I was here and we’ve been talking about the events for the year. They are awesome. I came from a school with a great PTA but I was amazed at some of the things that the PTO is doing. I [also] had a principal’s meet-and-greet Monday [Aug. 6]. We met with some parents and children and had some goodies for them.”

Q: Where does the traditional open house sit right now?

A: “We’re keeping the open house the same. The teachers were worried about having their rooms ready and, honestly, they did a great job — the rooms are ready for the teachers and they are already setting up. We just felt it was important for the kids, especially with the newness of the situation, that they’re able to see the school and see their teachers. We think it’s going to lower the anxiety for the kids and the families – and I think it helps the teachers, too, to make that contact before the school year starts.”

Q: How important is it to have an active PTO supporting the school?
A: “I think they are essential to keeping the community running. It sounds like they have a lot of activities that bring in money, but they are also doing a lot of free things — the fun run, which the kids love and get pledges to do their laps; the October Monster Mash for Halloween and a Sweetheart Dance. They are bringing in a science program for the spring. They’re trying to find ways to help us. They are doing a cookout for the open house and a kindergarten pot luck for Aug. 23. All the kindergartners can come and they are told what color T-shirt to wear so they can know, ‘I have a red T-shirt on, you do, too, that means you’re in my class.’ A magic show and pizza will be provided and we’re asking families to bring some things. It’s a nice way for the kids to come and feel a bit more comfortable and then they can come to open house, but they’ve already been here.

“The PTO president emails me all the time with ideas and questions. They have a Facebook page and added me into that so I can post things to communicate with families. They’ll ask me [about questions posted] so they can respond to it, so it’s a nice communication already.”

Q: What is your favorite part of the school day?

A: “I like it when the kids arrive, being out there to greet them. It gives you a read if someone comes in and they’re upset, so you can make that connection so we can figure out what’s going on or let the teacher know, so they can work with that.

“I also like to do a “citizen of the month” or “star of the month” and have those kids come in and have lunch with me. I used to do that as an assistant principal and — especially as an assistant principal, where you are dealing with behavior steps — it’s a nice, positive way to interact with the kids and reward them for positive behaviors.”

Q: How will you go about putting your stamp on the school?

A: “My philosophy is that I’m all about team. I’m here to make this new team kind of gel and I’m the resource if they’re going to need something, if they need help. If they need to run something by me, if they need to vent, whatever it is, I’m here to provide them whatever they need to help things run smoothly. I want to establish this atmosphere of we’re all in this together, we are a team. We help each other, we build each other up and are there when somebody else needs us. It’s all about community.”

Q: What’s the biggest challenge facing elementary school principals?

A: “Security is a reality to me. A friend of mine, who was a year behind me in at Sandy Hook Elementary School, was the one who reached out to me [that day] and asked if I had the news on. I said no because I was at work … It’s a reality that these things are happening and it seems to be happening more and more, so safety is definitely one of my hugest things. … I love the new check-in system. I think it’s going to be wonderful. Parents and/or visitors can come in the first doors and we have a window where the secretary sits [to determine if the person will be buzzed through security doors]. If they are let in the building, they get a badge.”

Q: What is the most important thing for families should do over the summer to make sure students are prepared for the first day of school?

A: “I think reading with their kids every night, and talking about what they read, that keeps the kids’ minds intact, it keeps them thinking. A lot of times you see kids’ reading scores drop over the summer, but if they keep reading and are engaged all the time, they don’t lose as much over the summer. And giving them experiences — sometimes learn more from doing.”