Zebra Family Update!

Hello Zebra Families!

We jumped into this school year feet first, and it's been quite a ride so far. We weren't totally sure what to expect with bringing all of our students back. It's been wonderful to see so many of our students throw themselves into their school work and school activities, though!

In fairness, we expect that some students might struggle with all the 'abnormal normal' - for some students it looks like anxiety, for some it is depression, for some it is an outward lashing out, for some it is internalized stress. For 18 or so months, the message has been stay away/stay apart/work independently! So it's been hard for some students who were encouraged to be on their own more to be put back into very full classrooms and expected to pick up school work like in the pre-COVID days. In short, students are dealing with the return to 'normal' in all sorts of ways.

If your student is struggling with internalizing their feelings, or is externalizing their feelings in ways you aren't sure how to manage or support, let us know. Reach out to your student's teachers, counselor or assistant principal - they are here to help. We've increased our capacity to support students this year with on campus counseling provided by Wellness Together, and this might be a good option for your student. Be in touch with us so we can continue to find ways to support your Zebra! You can connect with your student's counselor here.

My goal is to send this newsletter out monthly in order to keep families in the loop. I hope it is helpful. Please feel free to reach out to our team - we are here to help!

Best,

Jen Hladun

LHS Principal

Families of our seniors, help us support your senior. Encourage your senior to engage in a little "adulting" by monitoring their WPUSD email (they can view it by logging into their WPUSD chromebook/account, clicking on the google 'waffle' in the top right and selecting "gmail"). Our counselors push out their information just for seniors via email regularly!

Two recent emails to be sure to look at with your senior:

• Senior Meetings with Counselor-Important; sent on 9/17 at 2:45 pm

• Message from your Counselors - Senior Timeline; sent on 9/14 at 1:20 pm

Also, parents and students can keep an eye on the College & Career Schoology Page for information about college & career visits (in person and virtual); access it via: Schoology > Groups > College & Career

We are looking to rebuild our Site Leadership Team. This is a group of parents who will meet each quarter to look at and offer feedback about our site plan (which is the document that guides how we spend our supplemental dollars from the state), our site safety plan, and to help us become aware of concerns in the parent community that need to be heard. If you are interested, please take a quick minute to fill out this form. Depending on interest, we may hold elections for formal voting members, but all families are welcome to participate in these conversations.

Our site ELAC (English Learner Advisory Committee) is scheduled to meet four times this year. Be watching for agenda topics from Jen Hladun and Paola Gachet (our amazing LHS Community Liaison). We'll be looking at our site plan as well as talking about items of interest to our English Learner Student/Family community. Mark your calendars now:

• Wed., 10/13 at 6 pm via Google Meet
• Wed., 12/18 at 6 pm - format TBD
• Wed., 2/23 at 6 pm - format TBD
• Wed., 4/27 at 6 pm - format TBD

First off, we apologize for the volume of emails from LHS as of late - there were so many related to athletics in August, and lately, the COVID email volume has been a bit nuts!

One option you have is to set your notification settings in ParentSquare to receive emails in a "digest" at the end of each day. You will still receive all emergency notifications in the moment (those are serious emergency notifications and come out only in case of a true emergency). Most communications regarding school events, COVID, etc... would come out once a day. The school district has a ParentSquare FAQ section here. Below is some specific details about changing your notifications to "digest."

I am getting too many messages from ParentSquare, is it possible to receive less notifications?

You can customize your notification settings by going to your homepage and clicking on your name in the top right corner and selecting "My Account" from the drop down menu. On your account page, you can find your notification settings in the top right corner and click "Change This" to customize your notifications. If you are receiving too many notifications, try changing to our Digest setting where you will only receive one condensed message in the evening. Here is a help article on changing your notification settings.

Our Peer Tutoring Program is up and running and is a wonderful resource for students. Our tutors are matched with students based on content area specialization and can support with concept review, homework help, quiz/test prep, organization, just a quiet place to get work done, and even test retakes if your student was absent!

Tutoring is available in person (in the library) and online (Google Meet Code: LHSTutoring):

• Mondays from 2-5 pm
• Tuesdays and Wednesdays from 3-6 pm
• Thursdays from 3-8 pm (this extra time is a new feature - we hope it's helpful for student involved in sports and other activities or who work right after school!)

For more info, check out this link! Big thanks to our tutors and to Mrs. Edwards, Mrs. Gonzales, Mrs. Ward and Mrs. Jocoy for their efforts to provide this amazing service!

We are trying so hard to say "yes" whenever we can, and we are excited to say yes to Homecoming this fall!

We'll celebrate homecoming the week of October 4th:

Wednesday, October 6th (evening):

• Powderpuff Games

Wednesday night or Thursday during school (TBD):

• Rally

Thursday, Octobers 7th:

• Girls Golf, Girls Tennis and Girls Volleyball are all playing at home!

Friday, October 8th:

• Non-school day
• Float prep during the day
• Football game at home v. Oakmont at 5 pm/7pm
• Special Homecoming half-time presentations!

Saturday, October 9th:

• Dance in the stadium! The theme is Broadway!
• One thing to know now - no stiletto shoes allowed to avoid turf damage and broken ankles!!!
• More details about tickets will be coming soon.

Two important reminders regarding COVID:

• students are expected to wear a mask indoors - the mask must rest on the bridge of their nose and cover their nose and mouth. If your student does not wear their mask properly, they will be reminded, but if they are a close contact, they may not have the opportunity to be on modified quarantine and instead may be told to quarantine at home for 10 days. Thank you for your support to keep our community safe and healthy

• if your student is not feeling well, please just keep them home and call us for advice on sending them to school - we are here to help you navigate the system.

Have your student stay home and call us for next steps if your student exhibits symptoms of COVID-19 which cannot be explained by an underlying chronic condition documented by a healthcare provider (e.g., allergies or asthma).

Symptoms consistent with COVID-19 include:

• Fever or chills
• Cough
• Shortness of breath or difficulty breathing
• Fatigue
• Muscle or body aches
• Headache
• New loss of taste or smell
• Sore throat
• Congestion or runny nose
• Nausea or vomiting
• Diarrhea

More information about our protocols for COVID can be found here - take a look at pages 16-19.

We can be reached from 7:30am-4pm at 916 645 6360 if you aren't sure if you should send your student to school and still have questions after reviewing the district's materials (linked above).

Tik Tok has popularized the idea of a "devious lick" where you damage a space or take something without getting caught. Some students are recording their 'licks' and posting them on Tik Tok or in SnapChat (or other social media platforms).

This trend has led a significant amount of damage - particularly to the boys restrooms at LHS. We have had dozens of soap dispensers broken or destroyed, soap sprayed on the floors and in the toilets, toilet seats broken, toilets covered in ketchup and hot sauce, smoke detectors and other wiring pulled from the ceiling, vape detectors pulled from the ceiling, items pulled off the walls (hand driers, paper towel dispensers, soap dispensers, etc...) leaving wiring and screws exposed and damaging tile/drywall, mirrors pulled from their frames and moved around the restroom and significant graffiti. This trend seemed to start in our restrooms, but we are honestly anxious that this trend may lead to damage to other spaces too - items being taken from classrooms, damage to fire extinguishers, etc... based on the trending videos on Tik Tok. We've already seen some potentially related activities in classrooms - entire boxes of masks going missing, calculators destroyed, shared classroom materials taken, etc...

This behavior is insanely frustrating and demoralizing and honestly, it's really annoying for the students who are trying to come to school, do their work, and just need to pee, but can't find an open or clean restroom.

Due to staffing challenges and our inability to manage all the restrooms at once, as well as the safety hazards this behavior has created (we've had staff get injured trying to clean up messes left in restrooms), we've closed down all of our boys bathrooms except for two - the library and the restroom in the 30s/40s portables by the quad. Even still, restrooms continue to be vandalized. To be transparent, we have had no damage to any of our girls restrooms that is beyond what we typically see.

We are offering financial rewards for information that leads us to identifying who is behind this behavior. There are school, financial and potentially law enforcement consequences for this behavior. It is destructive, dangerous and not the Zebra Way. If your student has any information about who is behind these activities in the restroom and/or in classrooms, we encourage them to share what they know via this anonymous tip line. We will investigate any legitimate notices we receive.

Thank you for your support to keep LHS a safe place to learn and have fun!

Social Media

• Facebook @LincolnHighSchoolWPUSD
• Insta @lhsfightingzebras

Calendars

• School and Athletics Calendars are here!

Staff Directory

• This directory contains some staff who are no longer at LHS, but it also includes all of our current staff

Specific Course Information

• All of our teachers posted information about their class on Schoology - parents and students can always go back to revisit syllabi and a video introducing your teacher on their Schoology pages: https://wpusd.schoology.com/ > Courses > Select tile for the class you want to learn more about!

General School/Course Information

• Website: lhs.wpusd.org
• Course Catalog: https://lhs.wpusd.org/academics/course-offerings/course-catalog
• Handbook: https://lhs.wpusd.org/our-school/about-us/student-handbook

Email: jhladun@wpusd.org
Website: lhs.wpusd.org
Location: 790 J Street, Lincoln, CA, USA
Phone: 916 645 6360