If you were unable to make these two keynote speakers this week, I highly recommend you look up some of their work and check it out. It’s vital to any effort of creating an environment that serves all students.
PTO Update
- Lunch with the board – On Thursday 9/2 our PTO Board (which consists of almost all new members) will be hosting us for lunch after our Storyline training. This will be a great opportunity to put some names with faces and get to know them.
- Budget – We drafted a budget for the upcoming giving campaign to be shared at the first general meeting on 9/15. Some things to note;
- There is a significant rollover from last year. The board decided to apply a portion of this each year for the next 4 to 5 years.
- The cost for 4/5 Boot Camp is under the Priority 2 category as an enrichment experience. To accommodate this expense we needed to do some trimming of other items in all 3 priority categories, however, we were able to retain decent amounts for most all line items.
- The “School supplies” ask has been removed to be consistent with the district language, however, there is a line that describes “supplementing school supply funds for teachers” somewhere in the campaign language.
- There is a line item “Class Funds – Storyline” for $9,000 (or $600 per classroom teacher) that will be released to our study body accounts for each of you later in the fall. This is essentially your supplies and storyline funds combined into one. Everyone started with $200, so you can expect a total of $800 this year. This can be applied to supplies or storyline needs for your individual classrooms.
- There is still a line item for Storyline Planning & Development that will support 3 full days of release time for each classroom teacher. (I am not holding my breath on the sub situation, but I am hopeful we can return to utilizing these release days to help you get the time needed.)
- Rather than fund the coffee pod supply for the Keurig, the board will be attempting and hoping to provide one Kambucha pony keg each month. (We will be on our own for coffee.) This is not currently supported by the usual $400 cost, but the board will be exploring some ways to stretch this over the year. Ashley also has some good ideas on how we can keep this treat going.
Change of plans: We learned this week that ParentVue will not be available on Wednesday to share the class assignments with families, so we are going to ask for your help with reaching out to your families. We will provide a “form letter” for you to tailor to your own voice to send to families via Synergy welcoming them to the class on Wednesday afternoon (Ideally everyone sends at 4:00).
Arrival/Dismissal: One topic of discussion for leadership was the arrival and dismissal of students each day.
- Morning: We would like to move away from lining up in the morning before going in and there seems to be a consensus that teachers would like to greet students at their classroom. Heidi and I will open the Harmon and Nashville gates at 7:30 and students can enter the campus. Breakfast will be available at that time for students buying breakfast and the cafeteria door will be open for them. At 7:35 (first bell) our two back doors will be opened and students can start to enter the building to go to class. We will need two adults monitoring those doors. The bus arrives at 7:35 and we will have an adult bring those students in through the front door. At 7:45 (2nd bell) the doors and gates will be closed. Students arriving after we lock up will need to come through the office. (The one caveat is we will likely do a different plan for Kindergarten only for the first 3 days.)
- Afternoon: For dismissal, we plan to have K-1 parents encouraged to collect outside the southwest corner of the playground fence(by the 4-square cts) using the Nashville gate and we will encourage the parents and students of the upper grades to use the Harmon gate. We can put some signs out over the fence to help group the classes accordingly until we get the routine established.
Recess Exchanges: We will likely need to have students line up for teachers to meet after each recess, otherwise the exchange of incoming and outgoing students could get pretty chaotic. I am open to suggestions, but I don’t think we want a large group of students to all crowd the doors with or without an outgoing group. Reach out to me if you think you have a good idea that works for everyone.
New EA: Please join me in welcoming Doug Hermanson as one of our new EAs. Doug was an EA for Lava Ridge last year and he is looking forward to joining our team.
Volunteers: we are still limited to 1 volunteer per classroom each day. If we have a need for more then we can go through an approval process to request. For outdoor activities, we are not concerned about limits, so events like milage club will run as in the past.
Changes to COVID Protocols: Social distancing is no longer required. Masks are a personal choice. Cleaning supplies are still available at stations in the halls, but teachers are not required to provide any specific cleaning routines. Contract tracing will only be used in rare cases. If a person does test positive they do isolate for 5 days. The 6-10 day masking and eating separately is still in place.
Lunch: We will go back to using the cafeteria for lunch. Lunches are no longer free to students and we will go back to the process of using the computer for tracking the student (and staff) lunches. Kimberly and I met this week to discuss our entry plan for the students and we think we have a solid system. I fully expect this process to be slower in the first couple of weeks, but it will get more efficient with a little more repetition.
Fall Culmination Planning: Linked here is the form for inputting your requests for dates, locations, etc. We will leave this open until 9/17 (unless we have everyone entered sooner) before making the final decisions, so please hold off on communicating to parents until we sync everything and we give the final approval. The gym is already in high demand from outside users, so we need to get our own events planned and blocked out on the calendar.
District Kick-Off: Alandra is challenging us all to show our spirit and pride. Please wear any Highland swag on Wednesday. Casual Friday just got moved to Wednesday!
Key Links:
Week Preview: Please note the changes compared to the earlier version.
- Monday 8/29
- New Teacher Orientation
- Tuesday 8/30
- District-Wide Literacy Training or Work/Flex day if you completed training already
- Wednesday 8/31 – !Wear Highland Swag! –
- Breakfast will be provided.
- Virtual District Kick Off 8:00-10:00
- 10:00-12:00 Building Inservice
- Remember to send your welcome email to your families at 4:00pm.
- Thursday 9/1 (Since we are staying late for the ICS, please feel free to slide your hours and come in a little later.)
- 10:00-12:30 Building Inservice
- 10:00-11:00 Nurse’s Training
- 11:00-12:30 Storyline Team Training
- 12:30-1:00 Lunch w/ PTO (Lunch is provided)
- Ice Cream Social 3:00-5:00
- 10:00-12:30 Building Inservice
- Friday 9/2
- Work Day – Classrooms
- Monday 9/5
- Labor Day
- Tuesday 9/6
- Work Day – Classrooms / Flex day
- Wednesday 9/7
- First Day of School
- Full Day – No SIW