FAMILY NEWSLETTER November 2011
Hello to our DaVinci families!
Everyone’s continued to settle into our new home and we loved having our families visit with their students during the recent Family Goals Night Event! I hope you enjoyed learning more about your children’s teacher, classmates, curriculum and their new class space. Everyone’s been surprised how nicely the modulars have turned into great spaces for our classes for this year! Thanks for showing how much you care about your child and their education by attending the annual event. It means a lot to your child and their teacher to have you attend to help them set and follow through with their educational and personal goals in life. Please remember to get your child’s letter back to their teacher as those are special treasures to all students whether they are five or fourteen!
PICTURE RE-TAKES Tuesday, Nov. 8 at 9AM. If your child was not here on picture day, they will automatically have their picture taken. Contact the office if you’d like to receive a packet to order pictures. If you were not happy with the pictures already taken, the entire packet must be returned on picture day to give to the photographer in order to have re-takes taken without being charged.
FAMILY-TEACHER CONFERENCES Monday, Nov 21 (1-8PM) & Tues, Nov 22. (8AM-2PM)
This important event is new for us as we are changing our conference format – as per parent requests! There will be no school for students these two days in order to give families enough time to have a private conference with their child and teacher. These are required for each student and their family as they are important to their children’s education at DaVinci. Your teacher will contact you soon to sign up one family at a time to have their private, confidential 20 minute session to visit with their student and teacher – and to have their student show them their portfolio of work up to this date. New conferences will start for the teacher every 30 minutes so teachers have been asked to respect each sign up time and not go over the allotted scheduled time in order to meet with all families. If you want to talk with the teacher beyond this time, they will have request forms for follow-up conferencing time. We ask that you note we’re offering a wide variety of times to accommodate your family schedule. These dates have been announced since April 2011 and everyone’s schedules are packed during December; therefore I’m asking everyone to be flexible to find a time that fits Monday or Tuesday as we do not plan to re-schedule outside these dates. Your child’s teacher will be contacting you about your conferencing time soon. Enjoy!
THANKSGIVING BREAK: Wed, Nov. 23-Fri, Nov.25 Enjoy this long break with your children! We give our thanks to have such a great school, staff, students and parents as we look towards DaVinci’s positive future!
BIRTHDAYS & TREATS The students enjoy celebrating their own and others birthdays! We’d like to ask the adults to consider the following if you are making special plans that involve the school with birthdays:
· Have I asked the teacher in advance when would be a good time to bring birthday treats?
· Have I considered bringing healthy fun treats or asked if there are food allergies in the class?
· Have I considered the feelings of other students if my child is passing out invitations, but they aren’t inviting everyone? You may need to ask the teacher advice on this – depending on the age of the children.
We want it to be a special day, but these issues are important and affect the entire class.
VOLUNTEERS Every family is asked to volunteer as much as possible as it really helps the entire school, your child’s teacher and your children love to have you here! Field trips are high priority for our school, but teachers are not allowed to even walk to the library or greenbelt without a minimum of two additional volunteer adults helping them. Please offer your help whenever possible for field trips! If you haven’t turned in your All-School Volunteer form yet, there are extras in the office.
CHECKING IN & OUT – It’s all about safety! No matter where we are located, the safety of our students is always very important! None of our policies have changed, but I’ve noticed many adults being rather rude to our secretary as she politely reminds you about checking your student in and out of classes. Even though the policy may seem silly to you, each has been carefully developed to make our location as safe as possible for our children. I know everyone feels this is important! To be sure everyone knows how this process works at our school, please review the following:
1. No one may go into any room in the school until they’ve checked into the office to sign in and receive a visitor’s badge. For our safety records, we also need you to sign back out with the office before you leave. If anyone sees an adult without a badge, they are required to report you and I have been known to call in the police when we could not identify the person. We take safety seriously!
2. If your child arrives to school after the class has gone into their room, an adult must check them into the office to get a tardy pass and walk the child to their teacher’s door.
3. If you need to check your child out or in for appointments, the same check in and out procedure is necessary.
ATTENDANCE Of course we know how important being in school is for our students to learn – especially with our hands-on educational philosophy! Did you also know that our school’s financing depends almost totally on the students’ attendance? It’s the pretty much the only way we receive funding from the state of Idaho as a charter school. We hope you will take advantage of the days off of school for trips and appointments. If you must have your child leave early, please try to wait until after 1PM as this is the cut-off time to receive funding with our school’s schedule. Thanks for helping with this!
BOYS & GIRLS CLUB SCHEDULES will be closing at 6PM on November 3 and 4.
DRIVING AROUND THE SCHOOL & DAY CARE Wow! Some people seem to have some challenges with patience when dropping off and picking up students! This is the best method we have found, but I’m open to suggestions! Both Tater Tots Day Care and DaVinci have become very concerned regarding some of the impatience and driving in our “circle”. The owner of the day care and DaVinci are teaming up to remind everyone to drive the same direction at all times (counter clockwise), slowly and watch for people. The entire “circle” has children in it. We are trying to get speed bumps and arrows added – in addition to the GC police plan to swing through more often since some people still aren’t following good safety.
COMMUNITY CIRCLES 10:00-10:30AM on Wednesdays. You are always invited – just check in at the office. Nov.2 is Pat’s class’s turn to facilitate the program, Nov. 9 is Elizabeth’s kinders, and Nov. 16 is Wren’s.
FACILITY UPDATE We are continuing to work towards a financial package which we hope will be accepted soon to finance building a new school. Our board treasurer, Tim Richey, our attorney, Bud Yost, and I met with Dave Evans Construction and the bankers this last week to finalize the presentation for the bank’s board. Keep thinking positive!
Please see the attached letter and the web site for the new building funding campaign which the board and parents have started! Let’s start getting that thermometer to rise!
BOX TOPS FUND RAISER Our bookkeeper, Michele Roth, has been keeping track of the money raised by bringing in your box tops and soup labels to the box on Secretary Jeanna’s desk! It’s starting to build, so please remember to get those in! What an easy way to help out!
I love to hear your ideas and listen to your questions or concerns, so remember to contact me at any time! Have a wonderful season of thanks!
Cindy Hoovel, Administrator
DaVinci Charter School
377-0011 or cindy.hoovel@gardencityschool.org
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