PEEK AT THE WEEK

Thank you kindergarten principals Mrs. Miller, Mrs. Flowers, and Ms. Torok for sharing a wealth of information about options for 5 year olds in our district. We had pizza, offered child care, and introduced our preschool staff and all of our kindergarten principals to our incoming kindergarten parents. We had a great turnout with nearly 200 parents and 77 kids in child care! Parents asked great questions and got to hear some real life examples from our own principals about why choosing to give the gift of an extra year of growth may be what is best for your child. A special shout out to our DHS students that helped out with child care!

As you know,

March 22nd has been added as an a.m. student day and a p.m. PD day for DK-12th grade staff. How will this affect our early learning programs at GSRP, Cardinal's Nest, and latchkey?

• It will not affect GSRP students because it is a Friday and GSRP students do not attend on Fridays and GSRP attends well over the state required amount of days per year.
• It will be a regular four hour planning time for GSRP lead teachers. It is a non-work day for GSRP associate teachers and child care providers.
• Cardinal's Nest preschool will be open for the a.m. just as we are on early release days. This means the 1/2 day preschool classrooms at the Nest will dismiss at the regular a.m. time and there will be no p.m. classes. The full day classrooms will dismiss at the a.m. dismissal time. Please notify the parents of your students right away.
• We will offer early release latchkey services at the Cardinal's Nest, Gates, Hill, and Hahn. Please put out a sign up sheet as we normally do for early release latchkey sign up. There will be no additional cost for parents that are signed up for session 7 latchkey (March 11th-April 11th). I am waiting to hear back from latchkey staff to see how many of you are able to work this additional day. Please respond to the email that I sent asap.

If you have any questions, please let me know. Thanks for all you do for our kids everyday!

As we know, we have made many changes and updates to the Cardinal's Nest building during the past year. Change is hard! But, we must continually look at data, research, and consider the needs of our community when making decisions about what is best for our students and families. With this being said, we have shared with current preschool staff the reasons (Why's) behind the shift from offering drop in hourly child care to offering high quality preschool programs. We are now on a mission to share the reasons and "Whys" behind the changes in programming with K-12 staff and the community.

The "Why" behind the changes was shared with K-12 principals and other administrators by Superintendent Brown at the general administration meeting this past week. Mr. Brown shared that the school district is commiting to using the space that we do have to provide high quality preschool and kindergarten readiness options for our community. High quality programs are preschools programs that use a state approved pre-k curriculum, focus on the state pre-k standards, use a state approved evaluation tool for both the programs and staff, and have a comprehensive positive behavior plan (PBSC). The definition of high quality preschool is nearly analogous with the meaning of accreditation for school age programs. We will be moving forward with getting the message out to the community regarding the changes and plans to move forward with providing more state funded and tuition based preschool options for our district. Discussion in the general administration meeting included that the new mission and rebranding for the Cardinals Nest aligns with taking action on the research that shows the significant gaps that 3 and 4 year olds already have when coming to school. We aim to close the gaps before students enter kindergarten.

Lori and I will be holding a meeting with current Cardinal's Nest staff to clarity future expectations and to make plans for moving forward with this mission at the Nest.

Don't forget to complete the Bond Renewal Survey that was sent to Davison staff and families. Hey, did anyone notice a Comprehensive Early Learning building on that plan? Just sayin.... :)

During the last early release day, we were able to hear from GISD Social Emotional Specialist Tara Stimson. Tara talked to us about parents and children living in poverty in our county. She reminded us that our students often live in environments and have circumstances that simply make getting to school on a daily basis a very difficult task. When student's basic needs and social emotional foundation are not in place, their learning will suffer. A comprehensive preschool program allows us to meet the basic needs of our young children while also providing resources and information to help our parents.

We will be diving deeper into behavior training during our next early release day as we visit the major vs. minor behavior infractions, behavior strategies, and we will continue to learn about the tiered behavior PBSC model for preschool.

A bit about our new Davison Schools Cardinal’s Nest summer preschool program...

• Davison Schools Cardinal’s Nest preschool building will be running a preschool summer camp with weekly themes.

Camp themes include: All about Animals, Healthy Bodies, The Great Outdoors,

Literacy (books, being an author, storytelling and digital literacy)

Cooking for Kids, and Music!

• 3, 4, and 5 year old (pre-kindergarteners) are age eligible.

• 6 one-week camp sessions will be offered between June 24th-August 9th

• The summer camp hours will be 9:00-3:00

• A.M. and P.M. latchkey will be offered from 6:00-9:00 a.m. and 3:00-6:00 p.m.

• On-site presentations or developmentally appropriate preschool age field trips for each theme have been scheduled for 4 and 5 year olds. 3 year olds will remain on-site.

• Students will provide a sack lunch each day

• Online registration will be open April 1st

• Registration Tab for summer program registration will be on Davison website: Early Childhood Program tab and DCER tab. No paper registrations will be taken.

• DCER will be offering summer programming for school age children

Summer Camp Pricing:

Families will register and pre-pay for each week before child’s name is added to the weekly roster.

$100 per week

$25 a.m. latchkey

$25 p.m. latchkey

We are very excited to offer this themed enrichment during the summer to our early learners. Flyers will be coming out soon and other advertising. Our price is extremely competitive! Help us get the word out. DCER and Parks and Recreation will be offering a number of summer programs for school age students. Parents can be referred to the DCER tab for more summer program information. Staffing information will be shared after the first enrollment deadline on June 1st.

Check out the flyer below!

Monday, March 11th- Sub for Sabrina at Hahn- Jennie L.

Tuesday, March 12th- County Center Director's Meeting (Susan and Lori)

Wednesday, March 13th- GISD/GSRP Advisory (Susan)

Thursday, March 14th- Library bus visits today at 9:30 and 1:00.

Friday March 15th- Meeting at Cardinal's Nest for Erin Gillis donations for family

Looking Ahead...

March 22nd-Extended latchkey services offered at Card Nest, Hahn, Gates, and Hill

Spring Break! March 25th-29th

Thursday, March 21st Family Literacy Day @ GSRP

Thomson field trip for Cardinal's Nest and GSRP June 3rd and 4th

Skip playdate March 19th for Davison SKIP families in Central's multipurpose room

IEP schedule for Monday, March 18th Alicia B.- two students

Thank you to our latchkey staff for all you do to provide a before and after school care option for our Pre-K-8th grade Davison families. As you know, staffing has been very difficult in the last month or so with many needs for substitute latchkey caregivers.

The district has four latchkey locations and five latchkey programs including Gates, Hill, Hahn, and both preschool and school age latchkey at Cardinal's Nest that need to be staffed every day two times a day. I am happy to say that with the help of the Davison Facebook page and principals sharing this info with their staff, we have had some recent success with getting the word out that we needs sub caregivers and regular caregivers for latchkey.

If you know of someone that like to work with children, is at least 18 years old, and could work the before or after school hours from 6:00 a.m. to 8:30, 2:00-6:00 p.m. or 3:15 to 6:00 p.m., please send them my way. I want to give a huge shout out to GSRP staff Adrienne Vickerman, Jennie Lewandowski, and Amy Herriman for stepping in and becoming GECS sub caregiver employees in addition to their current GSRP roles. I was able to hire some new caregivers and sub caregiver staff this past week, but we will need to hire more in order to adequately staff and continue to offer latchkey. Please help spread the word that openings are available. Thank you!

From social committee chair Melissa Schwab:

1. Pot luck is Soup and Salad bar

2. Pot luck is Wednesday, March 20th

3. Kids and staff wear green on Monday, March 18th

4. Please sign up for the reading event this Thursday! Sign up sheet is in the lounge.

5. Next meeting Monday April 1st at 3:50pm