Woodbury Weekly Update for Families
February 12, 2024
Welcome to our weekly update! We are thrilled to keep you informed about the happenings at our school, celebrations & achievements and upcoming events, ensuring you're an active part of your students educational journey. In each update, you'll find highlights of the past week and a preview of what's to come, fostering a strong sense of community and collaboration between the school and our cherished families. Most weeks will be brief, but at times there is important information or updates that help support us in your involvement in our little school. Thank you for taking the time to read it!
Hey, hey it's the 100th day! 100 days of learning, 100 days of growing, 100 days smarter with a whole lot of fun mixed in!
It was this sweet lady's last 100th day of school! Mrs. Mathis makes us smile each and every day!
A Peek at Our Week...
Thank you to all who came to our Family Reading Night! We truly love the time we have with all of our families in the building. We hope you had as much fun as we did! While we know there were some hearts broken when we had our drawing we are please that Humphrey now has a new loving home. We will certainly miss him! Thank you to Mr. Mlot and Mrs. Riley for all of your planning and organization, our staff of helping hands, Woodbury PPA for donating dinner, Fox Valley Therapy Dogs, Harvest Chapel and to all of our NHS volunteers.
Friendly reminder: Please do not allow your child to bring personal items from home to school. This includes toys, collectable cards, video games, or other small toys or trinkets. Unfortunately these items can become lost or stolen or become a distraction or cause disruption in the classroom.
Our Core Value this month is focused on Empathy: The ability to understand and share the feelings of others. Due to the shorted month and missed days in January we will also continue to focus and highlight collaboration.
We have been working hard on our lunchroom behavior. Please take some time to talk to your child about lunchroom manners (we often refer to this as restaurant manners). Lunch is a social time and we want our students to be able to enjoy it. However, we have had some difficulty recently with lunch room behavior. Expectations for lunch are to stay seated, have a voice level of 2 (conversation level), clean up after ourselves, and to quiet to a level 0 (no voice) when the adults are giving directions. Thank you for your help and support!
The overwhelming chose the Kansas City Chiefs as the Super Bowl winner! There will be many excited faces walking the halls on Monday morning.
This week...
2/13: Land of Smiles Dental Presentations
2/14: Valentine's Day Parties
2/15: First Grade Opera House
2/16: 11:10 Early Dismissal, School Improvement
Avah was our winner of our Humphrey raffle.
We know she will love and take good care of our little friend!
Adrian was our raffle basket winner! Congratulations!
2024-2025 School Year Registration
5 Essentials Survey
Dear Woodbury Families,
As of January 30th, the Illinois State Board of Education's 5Essentials Impact Survey is available for stakeholders to take. Please take a few minutes to provide us with your thoughtful and important feedback. The 5Essentials survey is developed around the "Five Essentials for School Success," an evidence-based framework developed by the University of Chicago. This framework identifies how school performance on five factors, or essentials, can lead to important student outcomes, including improved attendance and larger test score gains. Prior research has shown that schools strong in three or more of the 5Essentials were ten times more likely to improve student learning gains than schools weak in three or more of the Essentials. Those 5Essentials are:
Effective Leaders
Collaborative Teachers
Involved Families
Supportive Environment
Ambitious Instruction
Why is this survey important to us? As a building and district, we will use the data and feedback gained through your survey responses to guide building and district improvement efforts. In order to receive a detailed report from ISBE, we need a minimum of 20% parent participation! Additional information about this survey, provided by 5Essentials and ISBE, can be seen here. The survey will remain open for stakeholders until March 29th. Students begin taking their 5Essential surveys in 4th grade. Last year, we were able to meet our participation rate and received great results and the best way to grow and get better is from your feedback. As always, please reach out to Mrs. Kern if you have any questions or feedback for us beyond the survey. Thank you for your time and support!
Lexia All-Stars
Woodbury PPA Updates
Looking for ways you can help out and support our Woodbury PPA? Please click the link to check out our sign up genius on upcoming events and items we could use some extra hands on. Our next meeting is Thursday, November 30th. Thank you!
Coming Up...
FEBRUARY:
2/13: Land of Smiles Dental Presentations
2/14: Valentine's Day Parties
2/15: First Grade Opera House
2/16: 11:10 Early Dismissal, School Improvement
2/19: No School, President’s Day
2/23: End of Trimester II, Therapy Dog Visit
2/26: K-2 Bowling
2/28: Third Grade Bowling
MARCH:
3/1: National Reading Month
3/4: National School Social Worker Week
3/5: Kindergarten Hoover, Tornado Drill
3/6: Spring Pictures
3/8: 11:10 Dismissal, School Improvement
3/10: Kindergarten DuPage Children's Museum
3/22: Therapy Dog Visit
3/25-3/31: Spring Break
APRIL:
4/2: World Autism Day
4/3: Paraprofessional Appreciation Day
4/4: National School Librarian Day
4/8: Woodbury Spring Concert
4/11: 2nd Grade Opera House
4/19: 11:10 Dismissal SIP Day, National Volunteer Appreciation Week
4/22: Spring Benchmarking Begins
4/24: Secretaries Day
4/26: Therapy Dogs
MAY:
5/1: Bicycle Safety Month
5/3: School Lunch Hero Day
5/6: Teacher & Staff Appreciation Week
5/8: School Nurse Day
5/9: Yellow Day
5/10: Kindergarten Mother's Day Tea
5/23: Track & Field Day
5/24: LAST DAY, Kindergarten Graduation, 1:10 Dismissal
Attendance
Attendance Policy
Since switching over to our new system, TeacherEase, we've been updating attendance codes, etc. needed for the state and we will soon begin sending out attendance letters again. Below you will find an abbreviated attendance policy to make things a little easier to understand, so if you receive a letter, it will hopefully make more sense. If you do have any questions, we will be happy to address them.
*Students are excused for 7 days per year regardless of why they miss. (This will not count if a student is marked truant from the previous year.) You will receive a letter at 5 excused and 7 excused, just as an update or reminder of your student’s attendance.
*Anything after 7 days needs a doctor note to be excused.
*Any time a doctor note is supplied, it is counted as an excused absence.
*After 3 unexcused absences, a letter will be sent home reminding the parents/guardians about the amount of unexcused absences.
*After 5 unexcused absences, school is required to notify truancy and truancy will usually set up a meeting to discuss needs and/or further actions.
*Parents/guardians must call the office to let school know their student will be absent that day.
Policy Found in Our Handbook
"Students shall be permitted no more than seven (7) excused absences, including vacations, per school year based upon parental/legal guardian confirmation for the reasons of the absence. After the student has been excused seven times in one school year, additional excused absences for illnesses may only be verified through a written medical statement from a physician.
After seven (7) excused absences, the school office will notify the parents/legal guardians by mail. Other excused absences will be limited to death in the family, a family emergency requiring the absence of the student (this must be approved by the administrator at the building level), religious reasons that prohibit attendance for a given time and/or other reasons determined by the administration. The parent/legal guardian must verify the reasons for such absences. If a student is sent home due to illness documented by school personnel or if a student’s absence is verified by a doctor’s excuse before the student has reached the limit of seven days (or classes) of excused absences, that absence will not count towards the seven days permitted by this section. If the student was sent home from school with fever, vomiting, diarrhea or at the nurse/administrator discretion, they will not be penalized with an unexcused absence and will not count toward the seven parent/guardian excused absences. The following day may also be included in instances of fever, vomiting, or diarrhea. All doctor notes must be turned in to the office in a timely manner or the administration has the discretion not to accept the doctor’s note. For extended absences, the administration may ask for updated documentation of the absence.
When a student reaches three (3) unexcused absences, a letter will be sent to the parent/legal guardian warning of future consequences related to attendance. At five (5) unexcused absences, the student will be referred to the DeKalb County Truant Office for intervention.
When counting unexcused absences, the district will count back 180 school days (i.e. unexcused attendance days from the previous year will be counted towards the student’s current school year attendance records). When requested, the student will be required to provide a doctor’s note. Notes and letters will be placed in the student’s temporary file."
Update from the Nurse
Dental Reminder
Completed Dental Exam forms are required for current Kindergarten and second grade students by May 15th. If you are unable to obtain the required dental exam, please complete the Dental Exam Waiver.
District Reminders
Negative Lunch Card Balances
Lunch balances can add up quickly. Please check your student's account balance onTeacherEase to make sure your student has a positive balance. If you need assistance logging into TeacherEase, or adding funds to your student's account, please call our main office at 815-786-6316 for assistance.
Registration Fees
If you have not yet fulfilled payment for registration fees you have/will receive a note home from school with your remaining balance. If you have any questions regarding these fees, please reach out to our main office at 815-786-6316.
Free/Reduced Application Information
Are you struggling to pay for fees, lunches, field trips, and/or extra fees? Please be aware that there are opportunities to get help with school fees, field trips, lunches, and other fees.
We currently utilize the free and reduced waiver program through the USDA. If you qualify, this waiver may cover lunches, registration fees, sports fees, field trips, etc. If you would like to know more about this program, what the qualifications are, or how to apply, please call Mrs. Kruswicki at 815-786-2187.
Please remember, this program must be renewed every year. Since we utilize the guidelines of the USDA program, we must use their forms.
For those who would like to apply for free/reduced lunch, please do so using the following link: Online Application. Families who qualify for free/reduced lunch will have their registration fees waived or reduced (if process is complete prior to fees being assessed)
Woodbury Staff Shoutout
Would you like to leave a shoutout for one of our Woodbury Staff? Please use this form to help celebrate and recognize our staff. Your words of praise, recognition, and support lift us up. Thank you for helping us support all those who contribute to our awesome learning community! We love hearing from you!