Students/Families

Welcome to Ottoson!

 

The annual School Handbook is the best quick overview of how the Ottoson school day works and what programs and policies are in place.  This is distributed to all students at the beginning of the year attached to their Agenda notebook.

 

 

You should never hesitate in contacting your child's teachers if your have any concerns or questions.  You should also take the time to meet your child's teachers at the beginning of the school year, taking advantage of the Fall Open House and the Parent-Teacher Conferences.  

 

All staff at Ottoson use official school email addresses, which you can find in the All School Directory.  The School Counseling Department (Formerly Guidance) also has an overview page.

 

 

Parents and guardians can contribute to their children's education in many ways. One significant way is to become involved in school community, and the best way to start is to join GO PTO (Gibbs and Ottoson Parent Teacher Organization). You are also welcome to come to any of the GO PTO meetings. The meetings are open to all interested. More details here.

 

You can read general information on the role of school councils in Arlington and read about GO PTO.

 

 

Ottoson and the Arlington School District use two tools to send parents school notices by email.  Please see our Ottoson News Email Guide to sign up or for more information.

 

 

Parents may access the PowerSchool Parent Portal to see information about their student's status at Ottoson. Teachers input information on attendance, homework, test scores, final grades, etc. as their time allows. Students and Parents both have access to your own student's data; but students use a different login name.

 

Read an overview about how the PowerSchool Portal works, and then login to PowerSchool Portal at: https://aps.powerschool.com/public/

 

In order to access the portal, an ID and password is required. These are mailed via paper mail at the start of the school year, on two separate pages: one for your Parent ID, and one for Student ID. If help is needed logging in, please contact Marie Bassett in the Ottoson office: 781-316-3744 / [email protected] .

 

 

The Arlington school district uses a private deployment of Google Apps for Education (GAfE) called Spyponders.  Every Ottoson student will get an email address @spyponders.com.  Many teachers post information and homework in GAfE, and in many cases, students submit work straight from their iPad securely to the teacher.

 

The Arlington school IT department maintains the secure Spyponders system, which is not normally accessible from the internet. Teachers work directly with your students to get them setup or get them login help.