Cardinal Connections

CVVA will have a monthly materials pick-up for the rest of the year. This will be organized by the CVVA teacher, Mrs. Kroll.

• Classroom Observations will begin next week if this is your year to be evaluated.
• There is no need to stress out about this process. This is not a time for me to say, "I got you!" This is about teaching and learning for both you and me.
• Remember, I will only be there for 15 minutes to observe your instruction.
• You will need to submit your lesson plans 24 hours before your observation.
• You will receive three "noticing & wondering" statements in PIVOT. These statements will be related to your three areas of focus.
• PIVOT will send you an email letting you know the statements are available.
• You will need to log into PIVOT and respond to the statements promptly (within 24-72 hours).
• Once you respond to the "noticing & wondering" statements, you will receive a feedback paragraph in PIVOT. Feedback statements will affirm successful practices and make suggestions for improvement or "coaching points."
• After your first observation, a meeting is not required, but please feel free to let me know if you have any questions, concerns, etc.

Here is a message from Becky Koch:

Hello ALL,

The SACC room is currently desperately in need of help. If you have the room in your schedule to work more hours and would like to, please contact me immediately. The shifts I have available weekly are as follows:

Tuesday/Thursday 7-9 AM

Wednesday 4-6 PM

Every other Friday 7-9AM

If you are willing and able to work any of those shifts or know someone who is, please get in touch with me. Thank you!

We just wanted you to know that we will be pulling students for their Fastbridge Computer testing next week. We will pull on both A and B days during your MTSS time slot on the updated schedule. If you have any questions

please let us know.

Students will be gone for 30-60 mins depending on how long it takes for them to do the computer test.

Thanks for your support and understanding 🙂

PTO purchased items for the students' Halloween bags:

• 360 Halloween Goodie Bags and Orange Kraft Bags
• Assorted Jolly Rancher Candies
• Assorted Twizzler Candies
• Mini Charm Pops
• Halloween Stickers
• Obtained a donation from DiBella's Subs for a Free Kids Meal, which includes- A 5-inch sub, chocolate chip cookies, a juice box, and applesauce. (Didn't receive in enough time to get these in the students' Halloween bags. Will deliver them to teachers to pass out to the students.)

PTO also purchased 30 cases of water for our students. You received the first of a few deliveries on Friday.

If you have a family that will not send their child to school during hybrid learning, let them know that their child will miss out on essential and crucial instruction. Staying home will prevent their child from learning from a teacher. If you are unable to convince the family that hybrid is safe, here are some talking points.

If a family has requested CVVA and is refusing to send their child to school until they get CVVA, here are some talking points:

• We cannot guarantee spots in CVVA but will review the list periodically. We will prioritize based on student health needs and immediate family health needs first.
• The waiting list is lengthy. It could be weeks or months before a spot is available.
• There are no options at this point- hybrid is the only offering by the district
• If a family says they will not send their child, we will mark the student absent (excused or unexcused) on the days they are supposed to be in school and provide absent work available upon request. A teacher can send work to the office (or electronically) for family pick up after a series of consecutive absences, but the teacher will not provide supporting instruction for the practice work. Make it clear that the work is an extension of the lessons taught in class and the student will miss crucial instruction. Teacher instruction occurs in the classroom on the days the family is choosing not to send the child.
• For the day the student is not supposed to be in school, the day will be marked as a 2WC.
• Work that is requested can be returned to the school and will be reviewed by the teacher. If work is completed it will be graded and posted in the online gradebook (pupil accounting requirement), the attendance code will remain a 2WC (two way communication). This could counts as “present” code.
• This scenario poses an issue for the student that cannot be corrected by the teacher or school. The student will miss out on valuable instruction.
• It is recommended that a family send a student to school in the hybrid model. This will ensure instruction, support, and appropriate progress monitoring.

If a family still chooses to keep their child home for an extended period of time, Please let Nella know, we will keep track of the students who take this approach. If there are many students, I will let Marina know and Don will produce a letter for those families.

If you have a student that is quarantined, remember that the student should be marked EXCUSED for the quarantine period but in the note section of PowerSchool the code HD should be listed. HD reminds us that the absence is a health department requirement and does not violate the personal information of the student.

Halloween is such a huge event for Elementary that I don't want us to miss out on it. To make sure that both groups of students can participate, we that it would be a great idea to have it on the two half-days that are coming up (a teacher at Shawnee suggested this idea)

Halloween will be scheduled on October 23rd, a Scheduled B-day, and then again on October 30th, a Schedule A day. This will make it equal/fair to both groups.

Costumes will be okay to wear all day. However, they still must wear masks. This gives all students the opportunity to participate in wearing their costumes, but it will only be for a half-day. 9:00 - 11:55 am.

Please post this information on your Schoology page, and I will communicate this in my Cardinal Connections.

Hi Everyone!

A few of us have been chatting about Halloween, and we thought it would be cute if we were all a football team. Kindergarten, first and third, are going to order the black jerseys. We plan to put Cardinals (ALL caps) on the front and our names in the red. We were thinking of using our room numbers for the number. Anyone without a room number could pick a higher number. If you are interested, here is the link! We are ordering ours today, so we get it in time! I hope you join us!

Attached is a pic of what it will look like!

Jersey (All capital letters in red...CARDINALS on the front and last name, ex. KOWALSKI on the back with your room number, ex. 12: https://amzn.to/3jJf1nw

Socks (ordering red): https://amzn.to/3df1jGy

On Oct. 29th, ECSE will have their in-person Halloween parties during their AM (9:00 - 11:38) and PM (1:06 - 3:44) class times. Students can wear their costumes and will spend the day doing fun Halloween-themed activities. Please make sure your child is wearing a comfortable costume that is easy to remove if they need to use the bathroom or need to be changed. The PTO will also be supplying goodie bags for each student to take home. Students are still required to wear their face masks as well, and parents/guardians will not be permitted to bring in treats or attend the party.

On Oct. 30th, ECSE will also be having a virtual Halloween party. Students will get the chance to sing and dance to fun Halloween songs, play virtual Halloween games, and watch a fun Halloween movie from 9:30 am - 11:00 am.

Reminder: Parents are not allowed to send in donated items, edible, and non-edible to the class.

October 16, 2020

Dear CVE Families,

We will be celebrating Halloween on Friday, October 23rd, for the “B” students and Friday, October 30th, for the “A” students, which are also half days of school with dismissal at 11:55. We will not have a Halloween parade this year, but each classroom will celebrate in their classrooms. Unfortunately, NO volunteers will be allowed ☹.

PTO will be providing an individual wrapped bag of treats (peanut-free, gluten, and dairy-free) for each student...our CVVA friends too. On Monday, October 26, a pick-up of curriculum materials and Halloween goodies are being planned. More about that excitement from your CVVA/Clinton Valley teacher. NO goodies/treats from home allowed. The bag of PTO goodies will be quarantined for 48 hours before distribution.

Please remember that costumes should be of a non-violent, friendly theme. Absolutely NO masks (except for the required facial coverings…perhaps be creative with that ‘mask’?) OR knives, weapons, blood, heavy make-up, etc. A great deal of effort is put forth at Clinton Valley to teach children to deal with problems in a non-violent way and remembering our “Cardinal Pledge” of respect, responsibility, safety, and kindness. Please help your child plan a costume appropriate for school. Students should wear their costumes to school because it is a half-day of school. There will be no need to change during the school day.

Thank you again for your continued support, cooperation, and fun too!!!

It is extremely important that everyone follows the Recess Schedule to maintain social distancing with other classes.

Hello SACC parents!

Please note that registration for the CVE SACC program is now available online. The registration fee is $20 per child and the hourly rate is now $5 per hour. Please be as specific as possible with your students SACC schedule as we will be closely monitoring ratios at this time.

There may be need for a waitlist if a section is full. Parents will be entering the building only to sign in their students at the SACC doors and student temperatures will be taken at that time. MASKS ARE REQUIRED for entry.

As always, if you have an outstanding balance from last school year, that must be paid in full in order to gain access to the program.

The SACC program will begin at CVE Monday 10/26/20. Please contact Becky Koch at rkoch@cvs.k12.mi.us with any questions or concerns.

Good morning everyone,

We’ve had a lot happening in technology and many of you have had questions, so I thought I would send you some updates.

• The Board of Education approved the purchase of 3,000 laptops to help families during remote learning back in September. Those have started to arrive, but they need to be tagged, inventoried, and imaged. It will still be a few weeks before we can get them out to families.

• When those computers are ready for checkout we will distribute those centrally to people who are on the original laptop list or the wait list.
• Families who may need laptops but never requested one can still add their name at https://www.surveymonkey.com/r/BVYBG57

  CVS Computer Checkout Waitlist Survey

  Web survey powered by SurveyMonkey.com. Create your own online survey now with SurveyMonkey's expert certified FREE templates.

  www.surveymonkey.com

  .
• We receive additional requests daily, it is unlikely that these 3,000 will cover every request at this time.
• For families in emergency situations, we continue to refurbish and distribute old teacher laptops. If you have a family that needs to be prioritized, please send their name and contact information to Joan Peirce who has been helping us make this happen.

• On September 21st, the Board of Education voted to begin a 1:1 computer program. Today we ordered an additional 9,300 laptops that will arrive in your buildings in the next 4-7 weeks. They will be taken to your media center when delivered. Don’t worry, we will keep you up to date on shipping details when they are available.

• Students will begin retuning to classrooms next week. Staff will need to be prepared for less student computer access than they are used to. Almost every laptop district-wide has been checked out to students for remote learning. During hybrid learning classrooms should not count on access to laptops.
• Student checkout laptops do not work onsite. There s a long technical explanation, but just trust me for now.
• We will not be collecting the checkout laptops at this time. Most students will still need them for at home days on the hybrid schedule. And there are a lot of unknowns – if a student is quarantined, if a building has to close – it just seems best to have students hang onto those laptops for the foreseeable future.
• Building labs will be available, but keep in mind that keyboards, mice, and desks will need to be cleaned between groups if they are utilized.

• Going 1:1 will take time. We have several infrastructure and filtering issues to work through – not to mention just organizing and prepping nearly 10,000 new laptops! Delivery for the laptops is required for mid-December for funding, but they will not be ready to be distributed for some time after the delivery.
• Once everything is ready for our official 1:1 implementation there will need to be a collection of current laptops, reimaging / updating, and redistributing.
• Our older laptop carts will be redistributed to K-1 classrooms district wide. Those students will not use a nightly take home model for their 1:1, but there will be a computer available for every student for class activities, something the teacher may ask them to work on at home, or an emergency closure. We feel we can maintain these computers for a long time in these circumstances.
• Our newer laptops – those that were purchased for middle school last year as well as the 12,000 purchased this year – will be distributed to students grades 2-12.
• We do not know exactly how that is going to happen yet. Much will be determined by the health situation which continues to evolve.

We appreciate your flexibility and patience. It has been an eventful year for all of us – and your support working with teachers and families to help with remote learning is much appreciated!