PEEK AT THE WEEK

Hello everyone! This is my first SMORE Early Learning staff newsletter for the new school year and I am working on structuring it a bit different so that important information and dates are communicated to the correct staff. If you are new to the early learning newsletter, I send it out once a week prior to the new school week. My audience is latchkey staff, GSRP preschool staff, and Cardinal's Nest preschool staff along with our district building administrators and central office administrators and staff. My plan is to include a section for latchkey, preschool staff, and an upcoming dates and events section, a 'News for All' section, and our Cardinal Code focus for the week.

We begin the school year with having a year under our belts with the implementation of the new structuring of our early learning programs in the District. This includes our Cardinal's Nest 3 and 4 year old 1/2 and full day programs, GSRP at Central along with a new GSRP section at the Cardinal's Nest, and Latchkey at four buildings with both preschool and school age sections. It sure has been busy and during this past year we have all experienced changes in workplace policies, procedures, and expectations. Change isn't easy. I always think about Holly Halabicky's saying that "Nobody likes change, but a baby in a wet diaper... and sometimes they don't even like it!"

However, I truly believe that we are over the initial bumps of making systematic changes and that we are on our way to an amazing year with students and our colleagues. I believe we have a team that it ready to have a great year working together, supporting each other, and most importantly putting Kids First! I look forward to celebrating many successes throughout the year.

Thank you to the latchkey staff for your work with our children before and after the school day. I also appreciate your efforts to communicate with the parents regarding our latchkey program policies. This includes arrival and dismissal procedures, emergency card collection, assistance with registration procedures, session registration deadlines, and assisting to get our new families into the Procare software so that fingerprinting ID numbers can be issued.

Thanks to our new registration software, I was finally able to create an email distribution list for our latchkey families from Cardinal's Nest, Hahn, Hill, and Gates. I was able to send out the Latchkey Newsletter that welcomed families to the new year and gave them a peek at our staff. I also sent out a reminder to families to register for Session 2 before this Thursday's deadline. The deadline is at midnight on Thursday, September 12th and the session is taken down after the deadline. This means that the deadline for registration is firm! This isn't us being stubborn, but rather a safety issue. This gives us one day before the new session begins to get the necessary emergency contacts, authorized releases, transportation arrangements, medical information and more communicated to the site program directors or supervisors at each building. Site supervisors or program directors at each site will receive an updated student roster on the Friday before the new session begins. Please continue to communicate to parents regarding the session registration deadlines, procedures for registering on RecPro and WHY are deadlines are firm. They need to know that is our policy and that safety is the number one reason behind the policy. If you need more parent letters regarding how to register, handouts with our session calendars and prices, or reminder slips, please let the office know. Registrations for our DCS staff will once again be done over the phone so that the staff discount can be applied to their account. An email went out from myself and Michelle Edwards relaying that these phone registrations can be done this week between 8:00-4:00 by calling the early learning office at 591-0025. The latchkey prices and session dates handouts is attached below.

The Cardinal Code focus for this week is Arrival and Dismissal procedures. Students are doing a great job so far with the arrival and dismissal procedures. They are walking in lines and following their teachers into the buildings, checking into locker or cubbies and starting their classroom routines very smooth for it being only the first couple of weeks or first week of school! Our parents seem to be adjusting as well to the opening of doors by the office and not entering the building before designated drop off times. Please remember to keep security procedures in place with checking ID's at dismissal. We will have another review of safety and security procedures at arrival and dismissal at our teacher work/PD day tomorrow.

We are off to a great start with our tuition based 3 and 4 year old preschool half and full day sections at the Cardinal's Nest and our state funded GSRP 4 year old half and full day programs at our Central Elementary location. We also have a full ECSE/GSRP classroom that has nine regularly developing 4 year olds and nine 4 year olds with IEPs. We are in the process of adding a p.m. section of GSRP programming to the Cardinal's Nest. Our projected start date for the new GSRP section at Cardinal's Nest is October 7th. If you know of someone that is still in need of preschool programming for their child you can help us get the word out that we do have some openings. I have attached the Cardinal's Nest payment and sessions info and information is also on the website for our Cardinal's Nest and GSRP preschool programs under the Early Childhood tab.

Monday, September 9th- No school for students. Teacher Work Day. Lead Preschool staff will be at the Cardinal's Nest for the PD. The agenda was emailed to staff members.

Wednesday, September 11th- GSRP County Advisory meeting- Susan and Lori. GCI a.m.

Friday, September 20th- Creative Curriculum PD for GSRP staff.

Wednesday, September 25th- Early Release Day- No p.m. preschool. Extended day latchkey offered at Cardinal's Nest, Hill, Hahn, and Gates.

Thursday, September 26th- Parent Advisory Meeting for Cardinal's Nest and GSRP parents. 5:00-6:30 at Central. Topic is Curriculum, Daily Schedules and Assessments used in preschool. A flyer will go home this week with all 4 year old preschool parents.

Susan