RES NEWS

Dear RES Community,

It has been wonderful to see how well our classroom communities are forming and the engaging learning that students experience each day at Ridgebury. Our gardens continue to look beautiful with fall decorations. Thank you to our PTA beautification committee, our scout troops, and families who are contributing with decorations!

I am pleased to share that on Tuesday, October 15, 2024 the Ridgefield Board of Education approved the acceptance of a PTA gift to enhance our recess area at Ridgebury. Thanks to the fundraising efforts of past PTA president, Beth Ingram, and the RES PTA and community, funds raised several years ago in support of accessible and inclusive playground equipment, will be utilized to purchase large soccer nets for the grass area behind the Kindergarten playground. Thank you to our PTA for working to research and purchase the nets and we will coordinate with facilities and the town for installation. I will keep our community updated on the timing of the installation of the soccer nets.

Across the district we have recently discovered that cell phone carriers (e.g., AT&T, Verizon, T-Mobile) occasionally label our calls as spam. Consequently, when we leave a message, it is not transmitted to you, and you are not notified of a missed call. To hopefully address this issue, we kindly request that you add our school phone number (1-203-894-5875) and our bus company's number (1-203-431-2924) to your contact list to prevent it from being mislabeled as spam.

In this edition of our newsletter you will see that we have many exciting upcoming events. We hope you will join us for the PTA sponsored Trunk or Treat Event, our Book Fair, consider making a scarecrow for our gardens, and have your child submit a design for the HRRA contest.

Have a fabulous week!

In partnership,

Mary

Mary Scalise, Principal

Traci Mayette, Assistant Principal

Tuesday, October 22, 2024: RPS Special Services Parent Session (Virtual) 10:30 AM

Thursday, October 24, 2024: School Picture Retakes

Friday, October 25, 2024: PTA Enrichment Grade 5 Mountain Workshop

Friday, October 25, 2024: PTA Social Event: Trunk or Treat 4:00-5:30 PM

Monday, October 28 - Friday, November 1, 2024: RES Book Fair

Monday, October 28-Friday, November 1, 2024: RES Fall Spirit Week

Wednesday, October 30, 2024: RES Book Fair Family Night 5:30-7:30 PM

Thursday, October 31, 2024: Halloween - All Students Invited to Dress Up for School

Tuesday, November 5, 2024: NO SCHOOL - Election Day

Wednesday, November 6, 2024: Peter Pan Jr. Informational Meeting 3:30 PM - RES Cafeteria

Monday, November 11, 2024: NO SCHOOL - Veterans Day

Tuesday, November 12, 2024: RES Veterans Day Assembly

Friday, November 22, 2024: Early Dismissal 11:40 AM - Parent Teacher Conferences

Monday, November 25, 2024: Early Dismissal 11:40 AM - Parent Teacher Conferences

Tuesday, November 26, 2024: Early Dismissal 11:40 AM - Parent Teacher Conferences

Wednesday, November 27, 2024: Early Dismissal 11:40 AM

Thursday, November 28 and Friday, November 29, 2024: NO SCHOOL; Thanksgiving Recess

Please consider creating a fall scarecrow with your family and setting it up in the RES tiered garden!

At Ridgebury Elementary School, and across the RPS Elementary Schools, our teachers have been sharing C.A.R.E.S lessons, which are built on Responsive Classroom social and emotional competencies. Teachers introduced students to updated school-wide expectations that are used across all settings. C.A.R.E.S. stands for cooperation, assertion, responsibility, empathy, and self-control. According to Responsive Classroom, these competencies prepare students to successfully learn, play, work, and form relationships with their peers by teaching them how to be in control of their own behavior and how to make positive choices for themselves.

At Ridgebury, each class creates a charter together, which is an agreement based in feelings. Teachers begin with the question, "How do we want to feel at school?" then, "How will we make sure to feel these feelings?" and finally, "What will we do when there is conflict or unwanted feelings?" A RULER charter is a collaborative document or visual display that helps establish a supportive learning environment by outlining how a community wants to feel and behave. The charter is created by the classroom community and is intended to be a "living" document that is checked in on throughout the year. A class charter helps to establish common goals, create a shared vision, reduce unkind behaviors, foster a sense of accountability, and make everyone feel safe, welcome and heard.

Check out a few of our RES Class Charters below!

Looking for a way to connect our social and emotional learning to your home? Check out this resource from the RULER Approach.

The Ridgefield Public Schools have established guidelines that ensure we have a welcoming and safe school community.

Dropping off an item: If you have something to drop off for your child during the school day such as a forgotten lunch or instrument, please place the item on the table and label it with the child’s name and teacher. We will provide the item to the student.

Visitors are admitted by appointment only. At Ridgebury, we use a daily visitor log, where faculty and staff list expected RES visitors each morning. Typical visit reasons include: meeting/conference, mystery reader, parent volunteer, etc.

Please be sure to have your driver’s license ready to be scanned once you are admitted into the building. All visitors must wear a visitor sticker when in the building.

All visitors must enter the school through the main doors - never enter from another area of the school.

Thank you for your attention to this process.

Mrs. Paradiso will be reviewing the acceptable use policy in all library classes over the month of September. All families have access to and agree to the district technology policies when they sign the student handbook in PowerSchool at the beginning of the school year.

• School Dismissal Manager (SDM) is an easy-to-use mobile and desktop interface that allows you to make these changes in advance or for the current day. You can also report student absences, late arrivals, early dismissals and even schedule recurring dismissal instructions for after-school activities.

• We are utilizing SDM's Late Arrival feature so that you can let the school know when your child will be arriving late. Select the day on the calendar that your child will be arriving late, then select Add Late Arrival, fill out the reason and click Submit. When reporting a late arrival for the current day, please note that the cutoff time is 8:45 am. Upon arrival, your child must still check in with the security guard at RES.

• Requests for pickup must be made through the School Dismissal Manager (SDM) system. We assume every student rides their bus to school and home. This is the default setting in SDM. An alternative plan, what SDM terms as “exceptions” must be entered before 11:15 am.

• In the event that you have an emergency and need an alternative plan after 11:15, please contact the main office at 203-894-5875. Emergency contacts, which you identify in the PowerSchool Portal, should be people you feel comfortable can pick up your child from school if there is ever the need. We do not release students to adults, even if we know them, without written permission from you, or if they are an emergency contact.

Questions related to RPS Transportation? Please use this transportation email address:

RPSTransportation@RidgefieldPS.net. The district has several staff members monitoring this email account and will be looking to acknowledge emails from parents within a 24 hour time period and solve most issues within that time frame as well.

We know how fun it is for our students to get together after school and enjoy time together! Due to safety and limited space on the buses, we are asking that students have no more than 2 guest riders with them at a time. Anytime there is a need for more than 2 additional students to ride, families will need to make arrangements for parent pick up that day. Thank you for understanding!

School lunch will be available from the first day of school. Aramark is the District-wide food service provider. The school lunch menu is available online on the RPS website; click Departments and click on Food Service. For students in grades 2-5, snacks and additional items will be available through MySchoolBucks system which allows students to purchase their lunch by entering a 5-digit code at the cash register. Questions in regard to MySchoolBucks can be directed to Andrea McCurry, RPS Food Service Director at 203-894-5550 x1127 or amccurry@ridgefieldps.net

Address: 112 Bennetts Farm Road

Website: https://res.ridgefield.org/
Phone: (203) 894-5875