News and events

February 9, 2025

Our Character Strong trait for February is HONESTY. Check out what each grade level is working on!

• Pre-Kindergarten
• Kindergarten
• First Grade
• Second Grade
• Third Grade
• Fourth Grade
• Fifth Grade

Hello Hoover Families,

Thank you to those who have signed up for conferences. If you haven't, please scroll down, and you will see directions on how to get signed up. We look forward to seeing all of you at Hoover.

Our Hoover Spirit Gear site is now open again! It will close on March 2nd, and the products will be delivered to students/staff the week of March 17th. This will be the final time to purchase Hoover gear this year, so if you haven't bought your student grade-level t-shirts for field trips/experiences and Track & Field, this is your last chance. Other great spirit gear items must be purchased for students, staff, and families!

There are still spots to sign up to give blood at Hoover Elementary at our first community blood drive with the American Red Cross on Wednesday, February 26th, from 12:00 to 6:00 p.m. at Hoover Elementary. For more information or to make an appointment to donate, call 763-506-2890 or sign up online at bit.ly/HooverGiveBlood.

Thank you to those who have signed up or plan to sign up for upcoming field experiences. Once you've signed up to be a chaperone, please watch for an email from Tina Fletcher, VSC, letting you know if you've been selected to chaperone or not. Check your junk/spam for Tina's email; sometimes it may go there.

It will be a chilly week with our weather, so once again, please continue to send everything (coats, snow pants, hats, mittens/gloves, boots). We will continue to have recess outside unless the air temp is 0 degrees or -10 degrees with windchill.

This week's events:

• Monday, February 10 - PTO Read-a-Thon Fundraiser Starts
• Tuesday, February 11 - PTO Monthly Meeting (In-Person and Virtual Option - meet.google.com/akx-bbpm-vbj)
• Thursday, February 13-Friday, February 14 - Gr 5 STEMH STARBASE Offsite Field Experience
• Friday, February 14 - Classroom Valentine's Celebrations
• Monday, February 17 - K-12 No School; District Closed
• Tuesday, February 18 - No School; Staff PD Day
• Tuesday, February 18 - Conferences (2:30-8:30 pm)

Best,

Mrs. Strusz

P.S. In case you missed the last Hoover Family Updates. Click here to view.

P.S.S. Check out last week's Hoover Howl News video announcement. Click here to view.

• Monday, February 17 - PTO Dining Night Fundraiser at Smashburgers
• Wednesday, February 19-Friday, February 21 - Gr 5 STEMH STARBASE Offsite Field Experience
• Wednesday, February 19-Friday, February 21 - Gr 1-3 Dental Sealant
• Thursday, February 20 - Conferences (4:30-6:30 In-Person, 6:30-8:30 Virtual)
• Wednesday, February 26 - Educators Rising - Shadow Day (Hoover will be hosting students from Buffalo High School)
• Wednesday, February 26 - Hoover Blood Drive (12:00-6:00)
• Friday, February 28 - Gr 3 STEMH Conquer Ninja Gym Offsite Field Experience

IT’S PARENT/TEACHER CONFERENCE TIME!

Conferences are scheduled for:

• Tuesday, February 18th - 2:30 pm - 8:30 pm (In-Person)
• Thursday, February 20th - 4:30-6:30 (In-Person) and 6:30-8:30 (Virtual Conferences Only)

To schedule your preferred time for a parent-teacher conference:

1. Go to www.Myconferencetime.com/Hoover
2. Click on the name of your child’s teacher (if you need multiple conferences, click on the link “Register for Multiple Time Slots”)
3. Select the desired date/time for your conference by clicking ‘Sign Up’

4. Conferences are In-Person Only, Except 2/20 from 6:30-8:30pm.

5. Click “Sign Up”

After you schedule a conference on-line, the date and time are reserved for you. If you entered your email address correctly, you will receive an email reminder a few days prior to your conference. Please reach out to your student's teacher with any questions.

Thank you to our local Coon Rapids Lions Club for their gracious donation of funding that enabled us to purchase an array of books. Every student at Hoover was able to choose from the selection and take home a brand new book. Click here for more pictures.

Thank you to Nurse Michelle Erickson, and a wonderful group of nursing students who came to support our hearing and vision screening for our students in grades 1, 3, and 5. Click here for more pictures.

The district identified students who made significant growth over the 2023-24 school year in the areas of math, reading, and English language acquisition using the MAP, MCA, CogAT and ACCESS. Growth was measured by comparing performance on two of the same assessments in any of the three examined areas. Students demonstrating growth within the top 5 percentile at each grade level districtwide were identified. Of these identified students, those with highest growth at each school are being invited for School Board recognition. Click here for more pictures from the assembly.

Through February 21st, 10% of sales that come through our school’s unique code, FUN4HOOVER, will be returned to Hoover PTO in the form of an eGift Card, which we'll use to purchase carnival prizes. This is the perfect time to start planning and stocking up for Valentine’s Day parties, birthday parties, and more!

Hoover Elementary will host a community blood drive with the American Red Cross on Wednesday, February 26th from 12:00 to 6:00 p.m. at Hoover Elementary.

For more information or to make an appointment to donate, call 763-506-2890 or sign up online at bit.ly/HooverGiveBlood.

Hoover Elementary is committed to strengthening our community and helping meet hospital and patient needs through blood donations. This blood drive is our way of giving staff, colleagues and families an opportunity to help save lives.

Blood is a perishable product that can only come from volunteer blood donors. With someone in the U.S. needing blood every two seconds, blood products must be constantly replenished, according to the Red Cross.

We urge community members to donate blood and help ensure that patients in local hospitals have a supply of blood ready and waiting before an emergency occurs. There's no better feeling than knowing that your blood donation may give someone a second chance at life.

According to the Red Cross, donors with all blood types are needed, especially those with types O negative, A negative and B negative.

Please send an extra pair of pants and underwear for your child in case there is an accident (bathroom, breakfast/lunch spill, etc.). The health office loves donations of gently used sweatpants and leggings sizes 5-10. We also appreciate new packs of underwear for boys and girls sizes 5-10.

The health office has free at home Covid tests. Email Darlene.Anderson@ahschools.us and we can send them home with your child.

Wondering if your child is well enough to come to school? Click here for more information.

If your child goes to the doctor or dentist, please request a doctor's note and send it with your child for attendance purposes.

I want to first start off by saying thank you for all the help we have received the past couple of weeks! This school would not be able to do all the amazing things we do without you amazing volunteers! Just this week, we had over 50 volunteers helping our school with a field experience, book distribution, vision and hearing screening, movie night, every meal food program, Skillbuilders and more! On behalf of myself and the rest of the staff, thank you so much!!

We have conferences coming up and the PTO is providing mac and cheese and salad for a meal to our amazing staff! They are hoping to get donations like toppings and sides for the mac and cheese and salad bar and also some drinks and snacks for our staff. Monetary donations can also be donated for PTO to use and purchase more food items for the meal.

Hoover is hosting a blood drive on February 26th! We are looking for a volunteer to come in and help support 4th grade students rotating through at the canteen table and to take over once the school day is out at the canteen table. Shifts are 12pm to 3pm and 3pm to 6pm. We are also looking for a volunteer to come in at 3:45pm to help check in people for the blood drive.

Staff Appreciation is the beginning of May and there is a lot of planning that goes into this. I am looking for some volunteers to assist with this. You can either sign up or reach out to me via email if you'd like to help or have questions.

You can find sign up links for all our volunteer opportunities HERE.

Just a reminder that any volunteer 18 years or older must complete the volunteer application and background check each school year. Those 17 and younger only need to complete the volunteer application each school year.

Please reach out Tina Fletcher, Volunteer Service Coordinator, at Tina.Fletcher@ahschools.us or 763.506.2830 with any questions.

February Updates:

Restock the Classroom – Winners & Updates!

Drum roll please – Kindergarten is the winner of our Restock the Classroom challenge, the prizes for the students should arrive at the classrooms this week.

Valentine’s Day Celebrations

PTO will be providing a little something for students (not a treat) to go with the fun planned in the classrooms.

Read-a-Thon - February I Love to Read Month

Our Read-a-Thon is live but officially starts on Monday (2/10). We have already collected $310 with Team Packer in the lead. We have registration rewards, reading incentives, and individual prizes. The goal is to get families to register and record their reading minutes. Each student will receive an “I Love to Read” pencil to celebrate the start of this fundraising campaign.

Bingo Night - March 21

Bingo Night seems to be a family favorite event, so we are doing it again after we get back from Spring Break. Save the date for March 21!

Spring Carnival - May 2

We are entering planning mode; can you believe it!! It is the time of year that we start to solicit donations for our raffle and find the best deals for game prizes. We need a bunch of volunteers for this event, and we’d love your help too.

HundredX – May 12 through June 10

Our HundredX Fundraiser is back this school year. It's great because families and supporters don't have to buy anything. They only need to complete surveys about their recent shopping or business interactions.

Dining Nights

We have two upcoming dining nights on the calendar, Monday, February 17 at Smashburger and Wednesday, March 5 at Chipotle.

Hoover PTO Facebook page

PTO's website

Hoover Elementary Facebook page

Please reach out if you have any questions or feedback. We’d love to hear from you. Thank you for your support; we appreciate you!

Cheers!

Hoover PTO

It may be cold, but in Minnesota we play outside all year long! In this month's Parent Press, we focus on having fun in the frigid weather with simple ideas to make winter fun.

Another option is to go to https://www.boxtops4education.com/ to learn more about downloading the app to scan receipts for box tops for Hoover Elementary.

The Anoka-Hennepin School District allows qualifying flyers from nonprofit groups to be distributed at school and sent home with students. These flyers have gone through the district approval process. A virtual gallery of flyers is also available. These events, classes and activities are not sponsored or endorsed by Anoka-Hennepin Schools.

This does NOT change our regular flyer policies or procedures! To have a flyer posted, the organization still needs to go through the process, be approved, and deliver paper flyers to schools in our district.