Hawk Highlights

Upcoming Events:

• 🎡 Highlands Carnival: September 27th @ 5:00
• Volunteers and donations needed! Please sign up here.
• 🌎 Highlands + Crestview Cultural Night: October 10th @ 5:30 @ Crestview Elementary
• 📌 End of Quarter One: October 10th
• 🚫 No School - Teacher Work Day: October 11th
• 🚫 No School - Teacher Professional Learning: October 14th
• 👥 Fall Conferences: October 17th (after school) & 18th
• 🚫 No School - Fall Conferences: October 18th
• 🎃 Halloween Class Parties: October 31st
• 2:15 All School Costume Parade: outside track (parents welcome)
• no weapons or gore
• 2:30 Class Parties (directly following the parade - parents welcome)
• *Please note: Winter & Valentine's Class Parties are reserved for students, teacher, and room parent + 2 helpers. Due to the safety protocols in place (more info to come) for the Halloween Parade, parties will be opened up for all parents to join the Halloween class party.

It's great to be a Highlands Hawk!

Laura LaHue

Principal

Instagram: @HighlandsHawks512

Twitter: @512Hawks

Congratulations to Mrs. Gabby Harrison, speech-language pathologist, for being nominated as our Highlands Teacher of the Year! Our school is incredibly lucky to have Gabby on team HI.

🎡 Highlands Carnival: September 27th @ 5:00.

• 📌 We are in need of donated materials, as well as volunteers for our upcoming school carnival! Please sign-up here.

📸 Yearbook Photos Needed!: Our goal is to feature as many students as possible in the yearbook and for that we need your help! Photos snapped of your student at school or a school sponsored event (ex back to school, Color Run) can be emailed to highlandsyearbook6200@gmail.com. We love to feature Hawks at their sports and extracurricular activities but please don't send photos with students from other schools.

🔗 Join the PTA!

• A PTA membership gives you access to classroom directories, updates on events, and helps support the PTA's impact on our school for the upcoming year.

Pen Pals with Crestview! Our intermediate grades have been preparing for our Cultural Night with pen pal correspondence with their same-aged peers at Crestview!

⭐️ Highlands will continue the work of belonging and inclusion through the newly-adopted district Social-Emotional Resource Character Strong for grades K-12. We will kick off each theme from Character Strong at our monthly All-School Mindful Moments and continue throughout the month at Hawks Nests and daily social-emotional lessons.

⛈️ ☔️ We will continue with an alternate dismissal plan for inclement weather (heavy rain, sleet, extreme cold, thunder/lightning).

📌 A message will be sent to parents via email during the day (as time sensitive as possible) to provide notification when the alternate dismissal plan will be used.

🔔 This method is used sparingly and only when student/staff safety is compromised by weather. It will likely take a bit longer than normal, but we will get the hang of it. Your patience and understanding are very much appreciated ❤️.

Alternate Dismissal Plan:

• ❗️Please go through the carline to pick up your child.
• ❗️Do not park in the parking lot and cross the crosswalk as this delays dismissal for all students and creates confusion for both staff and kids.
• 🚶🏽‍♂️‍➡️If you do park and walk up to the circle drive, your student is considered a walker.
• 🚗 If you are in the carline, your student is considered a car rider.
• 🎙️Students will be dismissed from their classroom as they are called from the walkie in the carline (the walkie calls are transferred to a shared google doc on the projector of each classroom).
• 🚶🏽‍♂️‍➡️Walkers will be dismissed last.

🫶🏻 We want your children here! Chronic Absenteeism is 10% - or 18 days - of school missed. That comes out to being absent 2 days a month throughout the year.

Chronic Absenteeism in Kindergarten, or even Pre-K, can predict lower test scores, poor attendance and retention in later grades, especially if the problem persists for more than a year.

If your child is struggling to get to school, please reach out to your classroom teacher, Mrs. LaHue, or Mrs. Sutton (social worker) and we work together to provide wraparound support. ❤️

Per the SMSD student handbook (reference the "Attendance" section), the Highlands Attendance team will be reviewing chronic absenteeism weekly by proactively communicating with families (via email) when students have reached 7 absences, 10 absences, and 10 tardies.

After 10 absences, documentation will be required for all future absences/tardies. For illness and appointments, a doctor's note will need to be provided to document the reason for the absence.

Highlands 23-25 Chronic Absenteeism Rate: 8.3%

HI WIG #1: Implement a system-wide monitoring process that utilizes collaborative instructional teams who meet regularly to review student data from screening, progress monitoring, and common formative assessments (CFAs) to identify next steps for instruction. (Intentional Tier 1, Tier 2, Tier 3 instruction)

• ✅ Lead Measures (to get us there):
• Intentional Core Instruction: Students are doing the talking (thinking); teachers are asking questions to encourage students to think and generalize what they know to new situations.
• Intentional Core Instruction: Teacher teams will use information from CFAs and real-time observations during core instruction to strategically target skills that will accelerate achievement
• Educational Equity: How will we get EVERY student there? A collective responsibility to provide students with what they need, when they need it, and with an urgency to master essential outcomes.
• IXL: students will engage in personalized learning plans using the IXL app to master skills for each priority standard with an 80% proficiency in both ELA and Math.
  

HI WIG #2: Prioritize social/emotional personalized learning through explicit instruction, modeling, classroom norms, school rituals/routines, and caring attention.

• ✅ Lead Measures (to get us there):
• Character Strong SEL Curriculum: Tier 1 daily instruction.

• Attendance Team: The office attendance team will monitor excessive absences by proactively sending out 7-day & 10-day absence letters and excessive tardy letters (10+ tardies) each week.

• Chronic Absenteeism rate will be communicated each month via school parent newsletter, as well as grade-specific rates through individual classroom newsletters.

• Mindful Mornings: 8:00-8:30 daily, building-wide. Students know they can softly enter the school day through friendship and connection. Device-free.

• Schoolwide System of Mentorship: all-school monthly Mindful Moments, Class Buddies, Hawks Nests, StuCo

• BIST + PBIS: building-wide system of grace, accountability, and positive reinforcement

• Weekly student SOAR tickets

• SOAR student store

• Quarterly PBIS assemblies + Highlighted Hawks

• BIST continuum: Implement buddy pass system and monitor usage/efficacy of buddy intervention