Tiger Tribune

Dear Theiss Families,

Welcome to another exciting month at Theiss Elementary! We’ve had a fantastic start to the school year, and it’s been wonderful to see our students settle into routines with such enthusiasm. Our teachers have dedicated time to explicitly teach classroom and behavior expectations, and we’re proud of how quickly students have embraced these standards.

This year, we’re continuing our tradition of recognizing students who exemplify our core values and behavior standards. Each week, students who demonstrate these qualities will have the chance to be celebrated on our morning announcements and receive special recognition from the administration. While our core values remain a familiar part of our school culture, we’ve introduced new behavior standards that align with the Character TEKS lessons being taught during weekly community circles. Our KISD Essential Behavior Standards are Kindness, Integrity, Self-Control, Respecting Authority, and Interpersonal Skills.

For the month of September, we’re focusing on the following:

Behavior Standard Focus:

• Kindness

Core Values:

• Respecting Self/Others
• Owning Actions
• Always Collaborating
• Rising to the Challenge

In addition to these key values, we’ll be introducing students to the concept of the Learning Pit, developed by James Nottingham. This tool helps students understand the learning process and encourages them to embrace challenges with a growth mindset. When you visit our campus, be sure to check out our Learning Pit visuals near the stairwell bulletin boards. We want our students to recognize that learning is hard work, and that struggling through difficult concepts is a natural part of the process. As they try different strategies and use available resources, they’ll reach that "aha!" moment where everything clicks. It’s important that our students learn to celebrate this effort and not give up when things get tough. If you’d like to explore this concept further at home, click on the resource button below for more information about the Learning Pit!

As we continue through this year, we’ve made a few changes to the layout of this newsletter to make it easier to navigate. Look for the section headings in all caps, with the newest updates at the top of each section (Celebrations, Upcoming Events, Parent Education, Procedures Updates, PTO News, Campus Resources, Connect with Theiss).

Here’s to another successful month at Theiss!

Sincerely,

Jessica Taylor
Principal

We love to celebrate our teachers for showcasing our core values and making our mission at Theiss come to life. If you own a business that would like to sponsor one or more of our monthly awards, please contact Mrs. Taylor. Thank you for showing your support of our staff!

September 9th - Grandparent's Day Breakfast

September 11th - Patriot's Day, wear red, white and blue

September 13th - Volunteer Breakfast - Come and learn how to get involved!

September 19th - Watch DOGS Kick Off, 6-7:30 PM

September 20th - Fall Individual Picture Day

September 24-27th - Fall Book Fair

September 26 - PTO sponsored Divas & Donuts, 7:15 AM

September 30 - October 4 - Marco's Pizza Nights

Save the date: Fall Festival is back by popular demand! October 25th 5 - 7 PM

Other October Events:

9/30-10/4 Marco’s Pizza Nights

10/9 National Walk, Bike, Roll Day

10/11 End of Grading Period 1

10/14-18 Fall Break (Student and Staff Holiday)

10/22 PTO Spirit Night - Spring Creek BBQ TBD

10/25 Theiss Fall Festival, 5 - 7

10/28 - 1 Anti-Drug Week

10/31 Storybook Character Parade

HEB loves to celebrate outstanding educators across Texas, and we have a bunch of outstanding educators here at Theiss. The HEB Excellence in Education nomination window is open now until 10/7. Please nominate one of your child's favorite teachers today! It only takes a few minutes to complete.

To learn more about this teacher recognition, visit https://heblovesteachers.com/ .

Click here to nominate a teacher today!

We would love to have dads, grandparents, uncles and other male figures come and learn how to get involved in our school. By becoming one of our Watch DOGS (Dads of Great Students), you have a unique opportunity to spend a day with our students and positively impact our school community. We hope to see you there!

Kick Off Details

When: 9/19 from 6 - 7:30

Where: Theiss Cafeteria

Pizza and daycare is provided for elementary school age children during the event.

This section of our newsletter will be used to help parents have more information specifically about our campus. This could be a data point, progress on a new initiative, focus point, or a celebration that we are proud to share!

As many of you know, we are growing as a student body, and space is limited for the many visitors that we have on a regular basis during lunch. To help ensure we have adequate space for our visitors, we assign designated days for visitor lunches. Starting in October, we will begin to utilize the following schedule:

Tuesday: PK, 1st, 3rd

Wednesday: Kinder, 4th

Thursday: 2nd, 5th

We will continue to allow visitors to eat with students on their birthday. If your child's birthday was over the weekend, visitors can use Monday or Friday to eat with your child for their birthday.

**Please remember that you may only bring lunch for your own child, and not for other students.

Please be aware that students who arrive or are dropped off prior to 7:40 are not supervised by adults. We expect any students arriving early to sit against the wall and wait patiently for school to open. Students should not be riding bikes under the bus porch, playing ball or other games during arrival as this creates safety concerns for all. Banging and kicking on the door as well as screaming at others who are inside the cafeteria is unacceptable behavior by both adults and children. Our staff begins their morning duty at 7:40.

Campus Kids operates starting at 6:30 AM in our cafeteria and provides adult supervision for students prior to the school day starting. Click here to enroll!

We are dedicated first and foremost provide a safe and secure school setting for your children. Please know that these expectations must be followed for every visitors every time they visit.

1. Ring the doorbell.
2. Identify yourself, your child and your purpose for the visit.
3. Show a valid photo ID to the camera near the doorbell and signage.

On the sign, you can see in fine print that you should not let other parties in behind you. I know it may feel awkward to ask people the let the door close instead of following in behind you, but it does help us ensure we are following the KISD protocol for every visitor every time they visit our campus.

*The only exceptions to this protocol will occur when we have large campus events. We have a campus specific protocol for special events due to the number of visitors that arrive at one time.

Now that the school year is off to a great start, we want all parents and guardians to be aware that tardies count toward student's attendance. Getting the school day off to the right start is very important for our students to be successful, and our instruction begins as soon as the tardy bell rings. Please help us by dropping your child off before 8:10 so they can make it to class and be in their seats as we begin announcements for the day and start normal routines. Children thrive off of routines in and out of school, so making a consistent morning routine at home helps students create consistent morning routines at school as well.

This year, perfect attendance awards will be recognized in each quarter's learning celebrations. In order to receive the perfect attendance award, students may not have more than 3 tardies for the quarter in addition to zero absences. Each quarter the tardies and absences will be reset for the award purpose, however cumulative totals will be used to identify families in need of intervention for attendance throughout the year.

Increasing our attendance rate, as well as decreasing tardies and early dismissals is part of our campus improvement plan each year, as it plays a part in our accountability system. Our attendance rate overall for last year grew 1% from the year before, which is great progress. We continue to strive for a 97% rate or higher by the end of the school year. Thank you for doing your part in helping our attendance rate!

We are committed to safety for our students and, in doing so, have updated our drop off procedure for students and staff to align with our feeder schools.

• Food deliveries for staff will be dropped off on a cart on the front porch, so no unauthorized delivery people will enter the school.
• Food delivery service drop offs for students will be turned away.
• We highly discourage dropping off fast food meals for our students.
• Student drop offs (food or forgotten items) will be left on a cart in our vestibule.
• Only parents/guardians can drop off lunch for their child, and their child only.
• Parents will need to write the student's name and teacher on a sticky note and leave it on the cart.
• Students will come through the front office to pick up their items and return back to class through the front office.
• Parents are responsible for making sure students know to come get the dropped off item by coordinating in advance. For forgotten items (glasses etc...), please send the teacher a Remind. The teacher will send the student to pick up when possible.
• Please note that our teachers are focused on teaching the class, and may not immediately see any messages about forgotten items or lunch drop offs. Please make sure that your child has everything they need for the day each morning as they come to school.
• We will follow standard protocols and require IDs to enter the vestibule to drop off items.

Thank you for understanding and following these new procedures.

If you have legal paperwork regarding your child's custody arrangement or regarding people who need to have restricted access to your child, please bring the original document with the judges signature to the office so we can make a copy to retain in your child's cumulative record. We follow all the legal requirements of court ordered documents, and are able to fully comply best when we have the records on file.

We are kicking off a new year, and our PTO board is planning great things for this school year! Check out these links for more information about PTO and how you can get involved!

PTO Slide Deck - General Meeting 9.5.24 - Coming Soon!

Interested in Volunteering?

1. All volunteers MUST complete a background check through Raptor. It only takes a few minutes! Click here to complete.
2. Join PTO - it's free! Use the QR code below.
3. Want to learn more about KISD Volunteers? Click here to access the KISD site for volunteers.

We love to celebrate birthdays with your child and will work hard to make it a special day for them at school!

However, sending invitations to school to pass out will not be allowed. Instructional time cannot be used to support or promote private social events such as birthday parties.

At this time, we will not be accepting birthday treat bags. If you would like to arrange for an edible treat to be shared for your child's birthday during the lunch period, please follow the KISD protocols and begin the process 2 weeks in advance. No food brought up to the office will be allowed without going through this process. Thank you for your cooperation.

We'll post links to all the previous newsletter from this school year here!

August

September

October

November

December

January

February/March

April

May

Join our Facebook group to get instant updates from the website!

Find our calendar of events, contact information for staff, request additional car tags and more!

www.theiss.kleinisd.net

Website: theiss.kleinisd.net
Location: 17510 Theiss Mail Route Road, Spring, TX, USA
Phone: 832-484-5900
Facebook: facebook.com/TheissElementary