OTES English E-News

Welcome back, Texans! The First Day of the year is my absolute favorite day. August 13th marks my 15th First Day of school as an educator, and this one, was by far my favorite. It felt so great to welcome each of you back to Old Town to start our 2024-2025 school year. As I visited classrooms on the first day, our students were learning and building relationships with their classmates and teachers. Their smiles and engagement are a direct correlation to their amazing teachers. All of their hard work came together in the best way!

This year our theme is Old Town Elementary- One Community. One Family. There are so many things that make our campus beautifully diverse. Our special programming allows us to serve many different learners. I’ve listed the special programing below offered at our campus:

Prek 3 years

Prek 4 years

Functional Communication Classroom

Functional Academic Classroom

Early Childhood Special Education

Talented and Gifted

Dual Language

All of these special programs and more come together to make One Town, Old Town.

I am eager to not only start our new school year, but to continue to grow our partnership between home and school. Your voice and input matter, and what you have to share about your child matters. We are here to support, listen, collaborate and serve, always!

One way that you can connect with Old Town is by joining our PTA. If you have not joined, I highly encourage you to. There are several opportunities to volunteer at our campus, and it is a wonderful way to advocate, connect and collaborate with the school. This past week the campus and PTA partnered to welcome all families back during Supply Drop off. There are several events in the year where your help is needed if you are interested! It is also a great way to build community with other families. You can visit their website to learn about all the opportunities they have available for you to get involved.

Lastly, the information I have included below will help you ease back into the school year. It is a recap of a few campus procedures. No matter the campus, with each start of the school year, the car lines for arrival and dismissal are longer than what they normally are during the year. We are working hard to support all students and families. I really appreciate your grace and understanding as we refine our procedures to not only be efficient, but centered on student safety. As our year begins to take off, should you have questions, I encourage you to reach out to your child’s teacher, the front office, myself, or our assistant principal, Allison Keathley. We are all happy to help and connect.

Remind Information - Stay Informed! We want your partnership!

Help us reach you in more ways beyond our weekly e-news and social media.

Remind is a free, safe communication tool that our campus uses to relay messages quickly and efficiently to our staff and members of our community. We would like to encourage parents to sign up to receive information pertinent to Old Town - for example: late buses, start delays, phone lines not working, etc. This will be a wonderful tool to help us all stay connected. Visit the website to learn more https://www.remind.com/families

Sign up for Old Town’s Remind account by texting @acbd9d to the number 81010.

Be sure to sign up as a parent!

On Time and Ready to Learn

Instruction begins for our campus at 7:35 am.

Having each student arrive on time and ready to learn is critical.

Should you arrive with your child after 7:45 am please sign your child in at the front office.

Raptor Sign in

All visitors to the campus must sign in at the front office before proceeding within the building. Please bring your ID to be scanned the first time you visit in order to be added to the system. Once your badge has been scanned the first time you will be able to use the kiosk to self sign in and print a badge. Please display this badge for any staff member to see as you’re passing through the hallways. This process of scanning your ID is highly recommended because we pre register for numerous events on campus and that helps speed up the process for anybody visiting! If you have previously had your ID scanned, there is no need to scan again for this school year. Thank you for your cooperation in keeping our campus safe!

Arrival Procedures for OTE

For morning arrival, the front and back entrances may be used by families. The back driveway is also used for buses in the morning and cars may not go around buses as they are unloading students. This does get congested and the wait can be long if you are behind a bus. Please do not park in the back drive along Old Settlers at any time as these parking spots are designated for staff members only. Additionally, if you plan to park in the front and walk your child up to the building, please do not park in any of the designated office and/or staff spots. Please remember to use the crosswalk for safety. Morning arrival is a wonderful opportunity for our entire community to model safety for our students.

PreK student vehicles follow the left lane and pull forward to the cones to drop off at the PreK door. Pre-K arrival and dismissal is hand to hand. Staff members are at the Pre-K drop off entrance and will not approach your vehicles, they will remain at the door.

Many families park and walk their child to the pre-k entrance as space marked off by cones is limited. Additional information will be sent out to pre-k families.

Dismissal Procedures for OTE

2:40 p.m. Pre-K Dismissal

2:50 p.m. All Safety Patrol and Kinder Students

2:51 p.m. All 1st Grade Students

2:52 p.m. All 2nd Grade Students

2:53 p.m. All 3rd Grade students

2:54 p.m. All 4th Grade/ 5th Grade Students

K-5 Car Riders will be escorted to the front with a teacher to wait in the car rider pick up line in the main hallway.

2:55 p.m. Car Rider Dismissal Begins

*****Please reference attached OTE Arrival and Dismissal Map*****

Link

Walker

We will continue to utilize the number system for our car rider dismissal students. A car rider is defined as a student that has their pick up person physically in a car in the car rider line. Parents may NOT walk up to the porch and ask for a car rider number to put into the system. If you plan to walk up and meet your child at school, they are considered a walker and will be dismissed with walkers.

If you plan to meet a K-1st Grade student as a “walker”, please do so on the blacktop near the playground. 2nd-5th walkers will be dismissed through the front doors and will meet their parents/ guardians by the “Big Tree” near the blue benches and painted rock garden towards the left of the school. Otherwise, they will begin their trek home once they are dismissed.

Dismissal Number System for Car Rider

Each family will be assigned a number to be displayed on the placard provided by the school (if you still have yours from last year, please let your child’s teacher know so that we do not issue you another one). These placards will need to hang from the rear view mirror and be visible to the staff member on duty noting the number. For the first two weeks of school, we will call your child’s name while we assign numbers to new families and reacquaint students with their numbers already assigned to them. During this time, the students and teachers will work to ensure that your child is aware of their number. This process has been successful in getting the students out quickly and safely. Please continue to help in this effort by asking that they know your number as part of your morning routine at home. We are excited to continue to cut down on the car rider line time in the afternoon with this system. If you are new to Old Town and need a number for the car rider line, please utilize this form Car Rider Number Request- New to Old Town Request

Ms. Limas is also passing out QR codes for you to get a number if you need it in the car rider line.

Parking on Plantation Cove - City Violation

Knowledge is power! We are so fortunate to have Old Town tucked away and within several neighborhoods. While we do have a front drive and back drive for dropping off and picking up students, there is another way to access the campus through Plantation. This way does have stipulations. Attached is city code regarding parking on Plantation Cove. Parking on the circle drive is a violation and could result in a citation by RRPD. If you plan to park and walk your child up to Old Town, do not park on this street/area. Instead, use the front parking spots on campus and walk your child to the door.

https://library.municode.com/tx/round_rock/codes/code_of_ordinances?nodeId=PTIICOOR_CH42TRVE_ARTIITRRE_DIV11PARE_S42-321PLCOREPADI

Please reference our map

InfoSnap
Please be sure to fill out the InfoSnap enrollment information that is emailed to you from the district. This contains not only registration information, but permission for yearbook pictures, Google Suite, directory release, district release and information regarding the Chromebook 1:1 expectations/charges for lost/damaged devices.

New this year!

Do you need to look back and find something from a previous enews? Located on the front of our webpage now is a tab that says e-News! There you will find all the enews that are sent out via Finalsite/Parent Link. Stay in tuned with all things Old Town!

Chromebook/iPad Apps

Throughout the year, we utilize online applications that will enhance the learning of your child and support and reinforce the concepts we are teaching in class. Before using these applications, we want to make you aware of federal laws and regulations that apply to the use of technology to support classrooms and require parental consent in order to be most effective. In order for teachers to use this online tool with student records or other information that could be personally identifiable, the Family Education Rights and Privacy Act (FERPA) requires that your consent be given due to the possible exposure of your student’s information to the website’s operator or to other participants. In order for students to use these programs/services, certain personal information must be provided to the website operator. Under the Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act (COPPA), these websites must provide parental notification and obtain parental consent before collecting personal information from children under the age of 13.

Please fill out the form for app approval (available at this link or on the campus website) for each child that attends Old Town. If this form is not filled out by the end of September 2024, it is assumed that permission is given. You do not need to know the student’s teacher to fill out the form.

If your child is not returning to a RRISD school this year, please return all chromebooks with chargers to our campus.

Safety

Safety will remain a top priority for all our students and staff members. All adults on campus are required to badge in at the front office through Raptor (please have your ID on hand). On the second day of school and in the days moving forward for the year, we kindly ask that goodbyes take place prior to students entering the building. We have several Texan families learning our safety rules for the first time. Please be patient and kind to staff members as we support our students and community with following our safety protocols. We will have multiple staff members at the front and back doors to greet you, your child, and help them get to their classroom safely! If you are a first time parent with an incoming PK or Kinder student or are a new family to OTE, I can assure you that your child will be in great hands and we will love them through the tears of leaving care takers. It is very important that your child’s teacher knows how they will go home, especially on the first day so we can plan for dismissal accordingly.

***** If students arrive past the 7:35 am start time, please plan to park and bring your child into the building to sign him/her in because our doors lock promptly at 7:35 am.

Playground

We love our amazing and inclusive playground at OTE and seeing children laughing and playing together is a great sight. Please know that the playground is closed to the public during school hours for student and staff safety. We also have an agreement/contract with the YMCA that they are provided an hour for students that attend the YMCA to play on the playground. This hour is also closed to the public and their designated time will be set closer to the start of school. We want to ensure student safety and that the adults on duty have eyes on all our students while they are in our care. Please refrain from bringing younger siblings/children to the playground during the school day. Pass the word on to a neighbor as well if they are not enrolled at OTE and would not have knowledge of this information.

Families, we are excited to offer our 4th and 5th grade students a chance to help out our campus and develop their leadership skills through our Safety Patrol Program. Students who sign up will participate in the program for a 4-5 week period 1-2 times per year. If your child is interested and you give them permission to participate please click here and fill out the form.

• Friday, August 16th - 4:30-6:00 pm - Kinder Meet The Teacher Event
  
• Monday, September 2nd - Labor Day - no school for staff/students
• September 16-27 - PTA APEX Fundraiser

All campus events can be found on our Master Calendar located on our school’s website - it can be added as a Google Calendar to gmail accounts.

Email: oldtown_master@roundrockisd.org
Website: https://oldtown.roundrockisd.org/
Location: 2200 Chaparral Drive, Round Rock, TX, USA
Phone: 512-428-7600
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/rrisd.oldtown
Twitter: @OTESchool