Dear Families, Faculty, and Staff,
Our students had an abbreviated week with Election Day and Veterans Day. We hope they were able to enjoy friends, family, and some downtime. Our faculty engaged in robust professional learning on Tuesday, which we expect to have a long-lasting impact on our classrooms—some of our faculty stepped out of the District, some had the opportunity to learn from their colleagues here at home, and others worked in partnership with staff developers.
Congratulations to all those who earned a Board of Education seat during the election, and to all those outgoing members- thank you for your time and efforts. We wish you the very best. On Monday, we will have a full Board of Education agenda, and look forward to also recognizing outgoing members of our Board- Divya Dorairajan, Elizabeth Floegel, Rachel Ruggeri, and Jonathan Steckler. On Tuesday evening at 6:30, all three Town Boards will come together for the annual Tri-Board meeting in the Town Annex conference room.
In this edition, you can see many of the wonderful photos of our Veterans Day celebrations across our schools, and again we extend our sincere gratitude to every one of them for their service. We ask that students take some time tomorrow on their day off to reflect on the many gifts of freedom that we have through the sacrifices of the men and women in service.
Warmly,
Susie
Susie Da Silva, Ed.D
Please check your students' e-Backpack for this important information and other programs across the district. Organizations that meet the RPS policy may submit their request for inclusion to cmelagrano@ridgefieldps.net.
Text and Photos Submitted by Caroline Keenan, Sarah Kaplan, and Alex Gizela
Over the summer, a small group of PTA volunteers worked to restore the Farmingville Elementary School garden to make it a place of beauty and learning, accessible to all.
We began in June by fixing a broken grape arbor and some damaged beds. Then, with help from a truckload of compost from the food composting program FES is a part of, we planted tomato, basil, and cucumber seedlings as well as pumpkin, cosmos, and zinnia seeds. When the kids came back to school, they found a garden bursting with life. We also bought two colorful benches and a bistro table to make the space more inviting to everyone at FES and were happy to stumble upon a second-grade class using the garden to read outside with their teacher.
During a September recess session, we invited all the grades to come check out their garden, learn about what was growing, play games, and harvest basil to give to the cafeteria. In the first week of November, we held two days of recess sessions where the students planted almost 500 tulip and daffodil bulbs in and around the garden which we hope will give us a beautiful spring bloom.
We also enjoyed being able to give the teachers vases of fresh flowers and were thrilled to recently team up with the Conservation Commission to clean up and add native perennials to our pollinator garden in front of the school.
We have lots more activities planned for the spring, and are happy to have started to revitalize this important part of our school for the benefit of students, staff, and - we hope - anyone who passes by!
Ridgefield CT 06877