Hello Miller Families!

Our hearts are so full as we conclude such an AMAZING week at Miller Elementary! We loved filling our school with all families at Meet and Greet and of course, our first 3 days of preschool and kindergarten were simply the BEST! I'm sure you had a lot of emotions preparing to send your little ones off to us each day with tears in your eyes, but I want to let you know that the smiles, laughs, and giggles in our halls were contagious! These young children did a great job learning new routines at school and we are so very proud of them!

Each week, you can expect to find important information about what is happening in our school, some photos we have captured throughout the week, and some tips and tricks to help you learn more about our philosophies for teaching young children to meet their social, emotional, and academic needs.

Please make sure you see that we will no longer use our parent pick-up lane but rather you will need to park and walk up to our doors for drop-off and pick-up. We will be outside showing families where to park. We suggest allowing preschool families to drop off first and then kindergarten by adhering to our time frame windows.

Kindergarten Reminder:

Next Friday we begin our Fall Assessment Days on Friday, August 25th, and Monday, August 28th.

Friday, August 25th - Kindergarten KRA-R Assessment Days - Kindergarten Students Whose Last Name Begins with A-L Attend School (M-Z Does not attend school this day)

Monday, August 28th - Kindergarten KRA-R Assessment Days - Kindergarten Students Whose Last Name Begins with M-Z Attend School (A-L Does not attend school this day)

I hope you have a wonderful weekend and we can't wait to see all your children back on Monday!

Go GREENMEN!

Maria Goodman

Miller Elementary Principal

330-954-2189

Email mgoodman@aurora-schools.org

STARTING ON MONDAY, AUGUST 21st, car riders must park their car and walk their child to our main doors or the preschool entrance. Please see the important reminders below about our arrival windows and which doors to drop your child at each day.

Preschool Arrival and Dismissal Times:

AM Preschool Arrival 8:45-8:50 & AM Preschool Dismissal 11:30 - Lower Prescchol Doors - Door 3

PM Preschool Arrival 12:45-12:50 & PM Preschool Dismissal 3:20 - Upper Main Doors - Door 2

Kindergarten Arrival and Dismissal Times

Upper Main Door Entrance - Door 2

Full Day Kindergarten: Arrival 8:55-9:05 and Dismissal 3:25-3:35

AM 1/2 Day Kindergarten: Arrival 8:55-9:05 & Dismissal 11:40-11:50

PM 1/2 Day Kindergarten: Arrival 12:45-12:50 & Dismissal 3:25-3:35

Please try to stick to these windows of time in order to smoothly get all children in and out of our building with adult support.

As students begin their educational journey, there are some state-mandated checkpoints and assessments to ensure that we are monitoring your child's growth and development. To accomplish these activities, it's best if we bring small groups of children to school to work on these various assessments.

All K-5 (NOT PRESCHOOL) will students by participating in the Fall Assessment Days on Friday, August 25th, and Monday, August 28th.

Friday, August 25th - Kindergarten KRA-R Assessment Days - Kindergarten Students Whose Last Name Begins with A-L Attend School (M-Z Does not attend school this day)

Monday, August 28th - Kindergarten KRA-R Assessment Days - Kindergarten Students Whose Last Name Begins with M-Z Attend School (A-L Does not attend school this day)

In addition to our assessment days, we will be completing many of our kindergarten assessments during our normal school day. These screening assessments are required by the State of Ohio and they provide us with information to better know your child and to kickstart the school year to best meet their needs. We wanted to share what assessments they will be participating in and the expected dates so you know what is happening at school.

The dates listed below show the various windows of time we will be conducting assessments.

AIMS Web Benchmarking - A 3-minute kindergarten universal screener to check your child's incoming knowledge of letters, sounds, and phonemic awareness. (August 23rd & 24th)

Speech & Language Screening - Kindergarten Students (Week of August 29th)

Your child will work one-on-one with one of our speech and language pathologists to conduct a speech and language screener.

Kindergarten Readiness Assessment (KRA-R) - Kindergarten Students (Aug. 25th & 28th)

This assessment looks at your child’s readiness for engaging with instruction aligned to the kindergarten standards. These assessments are completed through observation in the classroom and via an interactive assessment on an iPad. Here are the skills that are checked:

• Social Foundations- including social and emotional development
• Mathematics
• Language and Literacy
• Physical Well-being and Motor Development

Vision & Hearing Screening - All Kindergarten Students (Month of September & October)

Our school nurse will conduct a vision and hearing screening on all students.

Ohio English Language Proficiency Screener - (Week of September 5th) -

Students whose families speak a 2nd language in the home as reported in Final Forms will take a language proficiency screener. This assessment is given by Mrs. Levey or Mrs. Flannery our English Learner educators.

We will communicate any results that require follow-up or reach out to you if we have any further questions. We are looking forward to getting to know your child a bit more!

We are working really hard to streamline communication so we can be as efficient as possible when getting your child home safely and reporting attendance. To do that, we are adopting an electronic reporting system that all PK-5 families will use this upcoming year!

If you want to change your child's transportation in any way, please scan the QR code below or click the button below to fill out our Google form. This can be done from any device and your reply will be sent immediately to our secretary, Mrs. Wolf.

Also, if your child is absent, instead of calling us, you can also use this code to report the absence and the reason for the absence. We are working really hard to reduce the amount of phone calls, emails, or notes that we receive. We ask that you reserve those modes of communication for emergencies only. Thank you in advance for your help and let us know if you have any questions at all!

If you need an alternative bus stop, we also have attached the transportation forms to change buses.

Our full-day kindergarteners will be enjoying lunch here at school! Please remember to pack a lunch or look at our weekly lunch menu to determine your child's choice each day. It's helpful if you have this conversation each morning so they too understand what they will be eating for the day.

You will have the option to add money to your child's lunch account either by sending in cash or a check in a clearly labeled envelope to school, or you can add money to your child's account using their lunch code and meal-pay-plus. You will receive this special code at Meet and Greet.

Lunch for the 2023-2024 school year will cost $3.30 and milk only will be $0.50.

August

• Monday, 8/21 - All Preschool and Kindergarten Attend School

Kindergarten Only

• Friday, 8/25 - Getting to Know You Days- KRA-Kindergarten Assessments - Students Whose Last Name Begins with A-L (M-Z Do not attend school this day)
• Monday 8/28 - Getting to Know You Days - KRA-Kindergarten Assessments - Students Whose Last Name Begins with M-Z (A-L Do not attend school this day)

September

• Monday, 9/04 - NO SCHOOL (Labor Day)

Hello Miller! It has been such a treat to welcome your capable, adorable and kind Kindergarten and Preschool students to our wonderful school! I am honored to introduce myself as the school counselor. I am available to support students and families with needs in social emotional learning, academics and believe it or not- career exploration. Focusing on student strengths and learning about careers that help our community would be an example of how the career standard is covered in Kindergarten.

The 23-24 school year will be my nineteenth year in education. I have spent the previous years working as a classroom teacher, middle school counselor, and an elementary school counselor. Helping students is what I love to do! When I am not at school, you can usually find me at a sporting event for one of my three children: Dominic (12), Daniel (10) and Elle (10). We live right around the corner in Hudson with my husband, Brian and goldendoodle, Lila.

I encourage and welcome open-communication. During the school day, I provide individual counseling, small group counseling and classroom guidance lessons. Classroom guidance topics will be shared as they are introduced in this newsletter. Should your child be recommended for a small group or individual counseling, I would notify you in order to obtain your consent. Initially, I will ensure that all students continue to transition from summer break to their school day with ease.

This school year, I will be at Miller three days each week. Those days will typically be Monday, Wednesday and Thursday. When I am not at Miller, I’ll be very close at Leighton Elementary working with the third, fourth and fifth graders.

Next week will be a longer one for your child, so I thought it would be beneficial to share a resource this Separation Anxiety.pdf should your child experience any uncertainty when getting on the bus or out of the car. While I know it’s useful, my hope is that you can simply file this resource and not have to utilize it!

Please don’t hesitate to contact me at any time. I look forward to an excellent school year!

Mrs. Lindsey Ambrosia

School Counselor

330.562.6199, ext. 5414

During school hours, some children require the administration of medication (both over-the-counter or prescription). In order for our school nurse to administer any medication, we must have a signed doctor's note on file.

It is important that any child who will need us to administer or store a rescue medication has this form completed. Since it can take some time to get these from a doctor's office, please print the attached form (found below) and have this completed at your earliest convenience. This will help when we reach out to families in the coming weeks to discuss any medical needs for your child.

Additionally, we will collect any immunization and medical forms from families at our upcoming Meet and Greet on Tuesday, August 15th.

If you have any questions, please feel free to email me mgoodman@aurora-schools.org or our school nurse Jackie Pawlowski at jpawlowski@aurora-schools.org.

This is a friendly reminder that we have sent out tuition reminders to any families that have an upcoming payment due on September 1st.

Our total tuition cost for preschool is $2000 and full-day kindergarten is $2500. Many families have paid the initial down payment and we will be collecting the next set of fees on September 1st and the final payment will be due on January 15th.

Hello Miller Families!

Welcome to the 2023-24 School Year!! My name is Jen Borman and I am the Aurora Elementary PTO VP for Miller this year. This is my second year in this position and I am excited to get this school year started.

The Aurora Elementary PTO (AEPTO) is a non-profit Parent Teacher Organization that supports our schools, students, teachers, and staff. The AEPTO does a lot during the school year including family fun nights, teacher appreciation events, book fairs, field trips, head room parents, class parties, and so much more! A perk of being a member is getting the volunteer sign ups first! Dues are only $15 and go directly to supporting our students and staff. We also have many fundraising opportunities that are minimal effort, including flower sales and monthly partnerships with local restaurants.

Signing up is easy! Please visit our website at https://auroraelementarypto.org/ and click on "Become a Member" in the top right corner. You must sign up each year. Sign up by Friday, August 25 and be entered into our raffle to win a $25 Target gift card.

Each week, I will include AEPTO information in Mrs. Goodman's newsletter. I also send out weekly updates to AEPTO members through our online Schoolze system. My AEPTO weekly updates are where you'll find the sign ups for volunteer opportunities, like classroom parties!

Below are my updates for this week.

1. Our FIRST AEPTO meeting is Thursday, September 7 at 6:30pm at the Aurora Inn & Conference Center (30 Shawnee Trail). Please join us for appetizers and to discuss the upcoming school year. We hope to see many new and returning members!!

2. Class shirts are now available to order online using the link below. These shirts are optional. Your child's teacher may ask that your child wear this shirt on special days. Deadline to order is September 8th! Shirts will be delivered to the classroom about 2-3 weeks after the deadline.

https://rdpsports.com/product-category/aurora/aurora-class-shirts

3. If you ordered a Class of 2036 shirt during kindergarten registration and were not able to pick it up during Meet & Greet, I will be sending those home from school sometime next week. Unfortunately, these shirts are no longer available to order.

4. Fall is around the corner, which means it is almost time for our popular Mumkins fundraiser! This fundraiser starts on August 23 and more information will be sent out soon!

Important Upcoming Dates

8/23 - Mumkins fundraiser starts

9/4 - Labor Day, no school

9/7 - AEPTO Kickoff Meeting 6:30pm @ Aurora Inn & Conference Center (30 Shawnee Trail)

9/6 - Mumkins sale ends

9/13 - Miller Picture Day

9/17 - Mumkins pick up (Aurora Board of Education Office)

If you have any questions, please let me know!

Maria Goodman

mgoodman@aurora-schools.org

Principal

Vicki Wolf

vwolf@aurora-schools.org

Secretary

Email: mgoodman@aurora-schools.org
Website: aurora-schools.org
Location: 646 S Chillicothe Rd, Aurora, OH 44202, USA
Phone: 330-562-6199