This was another great week at Lakeview. Students are engaged in learning, upholding our Lakeview values of respecting themselves, others, school, and learning, and our 7th-grade students, especially, have had a great transition from middle school to junior high.

In this week's newsletter, you will see new updates from our PTO, as well as new feedback from families. Older information is still included as it still pertains to the start of this school year.

As we get deeper into Quarter 1, the number of student Personal Communication Device violations continues to rise. We are asking our families to have a check-in conversation with their students about our expectation of "off and away the entire day" for all PCDs (cell phones, AirPods/headphones, smart watches). We really have had a great year in terms of students understanding our expectations, which has had such a positive impact in the classroom in terms of students being focused and engaged. Mr. Fisher (Dean of Students) and Mrs. Gregory (Assistant Principal) also stopped by all E/I classrooms on Thursday and Friday to remind students of these expectations.

We hope all of our families have a great three-day weekend!

Ben Baptist

Principal

Important Dates

Monday, September 2nd: No School - Labor Day

Tuesday, September 3rd: Start of iReady Math Diagnostic

Friday, September 6th: PHS Central v. PHS North Football game, PHSC Stadium

Thursday, September 26th: Parent-Teacher Conferences

Check out the presentation from Mrs. Broz-England, highlighting work from her students in Visual Art.

PLSD and Petermann sent out the following information over the weekend:

We want to let you know about a small adjustment to the bus pick-up times for our junior high students attending Lakeview and Ridgeview Junior High Schools.

Starting September 3, 2024, students will need to be at their bus stop five minutes earlier than usual. This change ensures they have enough time to get to school, eat breakfast, and be ready for class by 7:15 a.m.

As part of our commitment to supporting student success, the District provides free breakfast and lunch to all students, and we want to make sure everyone starts their day with a healthy nutritious meal.

As a reminder, you can always check your student's bus information on E-Link on the transportation website. If you have any additional questions, please contact Petermann Transportation at 614-837-8525.

Thank you for your understanding and support.

A big THANK YOU to our 58 families who have already filled out our volunteer form. We are going to start reaching out to a few families over the next few weeks to see who might be interested in helping with our POPPs (Parents on Positivity Patrol) program at Lakeview. This is a great way to help us out in the building, interact with students, and help us foster our welcoming climate. POPPs volunteers would need to be approved as Level 2 volunteers through the district, so we will share additional information with families who are interested in the POPPs program.

One of our building goals this year is to increase the number of opportunities our families have to engage with our school. If you are interested in helping Lakeview in any way this year -- e.g., Parents on Positivity Patrol, overseeing study sessions, volunteering to help run family events, etc. -- please fill out the form below indicating your interest!

We will periodically reach out throughout the year whenever we could use volunteers.

Our school spirit wear shop is currently running their Back-to-School sale, offering 30% off all items and free shipping on orders over $75. The sale runs for one more week, through September 10th! This is a great way to represent Lakeview and support us at the same time! Click the hyperlink above or click on the picture below to access our store.

We want to share a reminder of the district's expectations for students attending varsity football games.

• All K-8 students must be accompanied by an adult to enter the football game. Students must be seated with or supervised by that adult during the game.
• All JH students attending the game need to sit in the designated JH student section, which is the small set of bleachers next to the HS student section. If the JH students are not sitting in the JH student section, they must be sitting with the parent/adult in the main bleachers.
• Backpacks are not permitted in the stadium.
• Students should make transportation plans before attending a high school sporting event.

During junior high athletic events, any student attending the game as a fan must have transportation set up and must be picked up within 20 minutes of the game ending. If students are repeatedly not picked up within 20 minutes, those students may lose the privilege of attending future athletic events.

Above all, we expect our students to represent their families, Lakeview, and the Pickerington community in a positive manner.

For those families who drop off students in the morning, please note that due ot the construction at North, the back parking lot (by the softball fields and past Panther Stadium) is closed. Please do not use that parking lot to cut through.

The first PTO meeting for this school year is scheduled for this coming Thursday, September 5th, at 5:30 pm. We will meet in the Conference Room in the office. If you plan to attend, please reach out to Tiffany Appollonio, PTO President, at lakeviewpickpto@gmail.com.

If you are interested in helping to raise money for our PTO, please consider signing up for a time to volunteer at the Oktoberfest 2024, coming to Columbus this weekend.

Please read the information on the attached link and make sure you enter Lakeview PTO with your name when signing up.

Being stuck in traffic is not an excused tardy, so please plan accordingly. You can start dropping off students as early as 6:45 am; they will wait by the main office until 7:00 am to be let into the rest of the building.

• There is a split lane in front of the school.
• The lane next to the curb is for drop-off only.
• The lane to the left is for parking only.
• Once all buses clear and a staff member directs cars, the left lane can be used for drop-off.
• Do NOT use the left lane for drop-off until a staff member is directing cars into that lane.
• You may NOT park and drop off your student. If you are parking and coming into the building, please walk with your child to cross the flow of traffic.
• Your child should be prepared to exit the car when stopped anywhere along the white dividing line.
• If traffic does not stop, you should pull all the way up to the yellow sign that says “Stop Buses Only.”
• Students can enter through the main doors near the office or through Door Y (to the right of the main office).

This plan is designed to make drop-off safe for our students and more efficient for our parents. We appreciate your cooperation and help in keeping our students safe.

Overall, we have been very impressed with how our students have adhered to our new PCD expectations. Currently, we have collected only 37 phones this year, which is a very low number considering out student population of nearly 930 students.

At Lakeview, our expectation for our students is that their Personal Communication Devices (PCDs) -- including AirPods and smart watches -- are powered off and stored out of sight from when they enter the building until the end of the school day (exceptions include IEP/504 accommodations and medical necessity). We know this is going to be a major change for some of our students, and we want to work with our families to make sure that we can support our students as they adjust to this change. We will work with grace early on as we help students understand the reasoning behind our expectation.

To enforce our expectation, we will progress through consequences if students repeatedly break our expectation. The first time, the student will be issued a warning. The second time, the student will be issued a lunch detention. Starting with the third time, the student will be referred to the office for additional consequences. Each time a student has their phone/device out during the school day, administration will take the phone/device for the day and store it in a locked container. On the first instance, the student can pick up their device at the end of the day. Starting with the second instance, we ask that a parent/guardian pick up the device after the day has ended.

If our families need to get in contact with their student(s) during the school day, we encourage them to send an email to the student's school Gmail account or call the Main Office (614-830-2200) and we will have the student come to the office.

Please understand that our intent for this expectation is to help to teach students better, more responsible use with their cell phone while in school. We appreciate your support and your willingness to work alongside us.

Please note the building-wide approach to late/missing work for students. All students have up to two days after the original assignment deadline to turn in work for full credit (no points deducted). After the two days, the student will no longer earn credit for the work; however, we still encourage the student to complete the assignment in order to receive feedback, and to prepare for the unit assessment.

The athletic website for both PHSN & LJH is now live. Use the https://pickeringtonpanthers.org/ to watch for announcements! All coaches will be using this website for updates and announcements, so please check here if you have any questions. When you go to https://pickeringtonpanthers.org/ you will need to click on "more" and then Final Forms is under "Athletic Registration".

This form will be linked in each Community Corner update, allowing families to offer feedback to the counseling and administrative team regarding social justice, mental health, academic support, friendships/relationships, etc. Counselors and administrators will review the feedback on a weekly basis and send out any updates to concerns/questions in the next Community Corner update.

We really appreciate the feedback that has come in from families in recent weeks. We don't always know everything that goes on, so it's helpful to get feedback on things going well or additional information on concerns so we can try to address the issues. Please keep the feedback coming!

We received another "thank you" for the personal communication device policy. While the number of device use violations continue to increase, we are still very pleased with how our students have responded to our expectations with keeping devices off and away the entire school day.

One family shared a concern regarding the number of unsupervised students at the football game last Friday. As a reminder, the district has expectations for students in grades K-8: They must be with an adult to enter the game, and they must be supervised by that adult during the game. For our junior high students, we have a dedicated set of bleachers for our students to sit in if they are not sitting with family in the main bleachers. We also shared the concern with our district's Director of Security, and the plan is to have additional staff under the bleachers, as well as portable lights.

A final piece of feedback was related to our late work policy. The family wrote that they are pleased with a hard deadline for late/missing work, but the concern remains that grades are not entered into Infinite Campus quickly enough for students to know what is missing. We had several conversations with our staff over the summer about this. The intent is to have grades posted in Infinite Campus as quickly as possible, though there are delays at times for various reasons. We also have a building "Missing Work Form" that students can complete as a reminder that they have a missing assignment to complete. They also have the ability to enter a parent/guardian email address, and that form will populate an email to the parent/guardian to make them aware of the missing work.

Has your child done something awesome recently and you want to give them a shout out? Make sure you use the Lakeview Family Feedback Form (linked below) to fill out information in the Student Spotlight section. You can also send a picture to ben_baptist@plsd.us if you would like a picture to accompany the shout out.

Office Hours 6:45 am - 3:15 pm

Email: ben_baptist@plsd.us
Website: https://www.pickerington.k12.oh.us/Domain/19
Location: 12445 Ault Road, Pickerington, OH, USA
Phone: (614) 830-2200
Facebook: Lakeview_JH_PLSD
Twitter: @lakeview_jh