Last Dragon Tales of 2024

It's hard to believe that the 2024 side of this school year has come and gone. While there have been a few bumps to the start of the year, for the most part it's been a great start to the school year. We've welcomed in an awesome 6th grade class, we've had a tremendously successful Fall Festival of Shakespeare, a highly successful Arts Fair, great turnout for family-conferences, and much more. I'm excited to see what the 2025 side of the school year brings as this side of the school year is packed with even more events and displays of our students' talents.

I hope everyone gets the time to rest, relax and spend some quality time with their students over the break. While we all need breaks, I do encourage families to have their kids pick up a book each day or engage in some type of art activity. While it's important to rest, it's also important to stay sharp for our return on January 6th.

See you all next year,

Mr. Roosevelt

Last Thursday's Winter Music Concert was yet another example of our students' talents. Performances from African Drumming, Choir, our Trogdor rock band, Beginning, and Advanced Bands provided for a wonderfully entertaining evening for a packed house. Check out the pictures below from the event.

Check out the photos below of our Friday afternoon Talent Show.

As a reminder, our first day back from Winter Break is January 6th. This will be a regular scheduled day. However, January 7th is a 15-minute late start. Students will be allowed in the building on the 7th for breakfast starting at 9:15am, with the first class of the day starting at 9:30am.

When we return from break we will have a schoolwide focus on improving our average daily attendance (ADA) rate and decreasing the number of tardies we see each day. Our Attendance Team has decided to implement a series of different incentives to meet this goal.

We'll be looking at various incentives for the grade level that has the best ADA rate and possibly a competition by 1st period classes as well. We will also be looking at weekly schoolwide incentives around the total number of tardies from one week to the next.

We are noticing a trend of the majority of tardies and lates are in 1st period. Part of being especially chosen in the lottery process is the agreement of bringing our children to school on time each day. As someone who has two middle school aged kids, I know how difficult this can be. However, we really hope to see the amount of 1st period tardies drop as we move into the next half of the school year.

We would appreciate it if families could take a bit of time to talk with their students about the importance of being her every day and getting to class on time. These are life skills that we want all students to have a solid sense of prior to leaving da Vinci and heading to high school.

This week I want to highlight some of the work students did in their advisory classes this past week. Each advisory class was tasked with creating shoe designs that reflect the various social emotional learning competencies they’ve been learning about. Check out the pictures below of some of the designs students came up with.

da Vinci is proud to offer a number of different Affinity Groups to support students and ensure they feel a sense of belonging here at school. Affinity Groups at da Vinci are spaces where students with shared identities or backgrounds can come together to create a space where they can connect, advocate and discuss experiences related to their shared characteristic.

Funds donated to these groups will be used to support various projects and activities that the group feels are needed. This might be field trips, food for meetings, invitations to guest speakers, etc. This year, we have a BSU, LatinX, QSA, AAPI, Native American Club and JAC affinity groups that we are hoping to raise money for. These are groups that, at one point or another, were started by students and are supervised by staff. Here are links to make donations:

Donate to our Black Student Union

Donate to our LatinX Affinity Group

Donate to our Queer Straight Alliance

Donate to Asian American and Pacific Islander Group

Donate to our Native American Club

Donate to our Jewish American Club

We are excited to present the 2024-2025 da Vinci Winter Dance Showcase ~

Show A on Wednesday, January 15th

Show B on Friday, January 17th

Both performances start at 7:00pm

ALL Semester and Year-long dance classes will be showcasing their work in a high quality, professional environment with the help of their teachers and our professional design team. Join us for their wonderful performances!

Please see communication from your student's dance teacher regarding which show your student is participating in.

A suggested $10.00 donation per ticket will support da Vinci and our dance program. You can pre-pay through this SchoolPay link.

If your student is currently in a dance class and will be performing in the Winter Dance Showcase in January, please make the suggested $10 donation as you are able so that the dance department can provide all students with costumes for the shows, designed and curated by our incredible professional costumer. We pride ourselves on giving our dancers a high level, professional experience, and we count on donations to help offset the costs of costuming hundreds of students.

1) Tap Shoe Rental

2) Winter Dance Costume Donation

We are in need of donations of pencils, facial tissues, wipes and hand sanitizer. If you are able to donate any of these items, please drop them off in the main office.

Here is a list of district approved events and fliers.

• Cognizart 31st Annual Young Artists Debut! Concert & Showcase (apply by Jan. 21)

• VIBE of Portland No-School Day Camps (Nov. 4, 11, & 25-27 & Dec. 23)

• VIBE of Portland Music & Digital Art Classes for Kids