It is hard to believe that March is already here. It won’t be long before the warm weather arrives and stays as the end of year madness begins! We have lots of fun activities to finish out the year including Discovery Days, Field Day, and several field trips. These are all fun and amazing learning opportunities for our students that we want them to experience, but there is still a lot of academic work to accomplish.

I do want to share that this will be my last year at Cottonwood. My family and I will be moving to Florida in July to support extended family. I've worked in Paola my entire education career and I can't say how amazing this community is! You as parents ROCK! I hope to find the same support in my next community. Cottonwood has an amazing staff that will continue to take care of your child, and I look forward to sharing as much information with the next leader as possible.

Regards,

Mr. Troast

Parent-Teacher Conferences are right around the corner! Conferences will occur on March 7th from 3:40 pm to 7:40 pm and on March 8th from 8 am to noon. Classroom teachers will reach out to schedule conferences via phone, zoom, or in person. If your schedule allows, I encourage you to come into the building for in-person conferences.

A parent-teacher conference is a great opportunity to:

• Discuss your child's progress
• Share your child's strengths and needs
• Work with the teacher to help your child do well in school
• Additional support over the summer.

If you have any questions or concerns please reach out to your child's classroom teacher.

Kindergarten: Wesley Williams and Oliva Green

1st Grade: Ellery Kirk and Ayleen Don Juan

2nd Grade: Logan Fay and Gatsby Nelson

Congratulations to Sammie Jakubowski! Sammie's artwork has been chosen to represent Cottonwood Elementary School at the Youth Art Month Exhibit at the Topeka Shawnee County Public Library. It will be on display from February 27th through March 23rd.

Please see below for reminders regarding our attendance policy. We have lots of activities and testing that we need your child here for. Please reach out if you have any questions.

Parents,

We are looking for volunteers for our Discovery Day Event on April 18th. Discovery Days is a day long event at Cottonwood where students will rotate to various stations based on a city our staff visited this past summer. This year, we chose Dallas. In order to make this event successful, we need as many parent volunteers as possible to help run stations. THIS EVENT CANNOT happen unless we get enough parent volunteers to help. If you are able to help, please complete the information below. I will send out reminders and additional information as we get closer to the event.

https://forms.gle/93CLDptvaVFBTMMh9

Please note that Kindergarten Round-Up will take place on March 28th and 29th . Our current Kindergarten students will NOT HAVE school on March 28th and 29th. Current 1st and 2nd graders will have a normal day on both days. If you have a future Kindergartener or know any families that will have a Kindergartner next year, please feel free to share the below link with them. Click the link below to find our more information.

Mrs. Wolf's class partnered with their 5th grade buddy classroom to do a community service project for children's mercy. They put together care packages for patients and will be delivering them to Children's Mercy on March 22nd. What a great representation of our 7 Mindsets in actions!

March 4th- Board Meeting 6pm

March 6th- Read Across America Day

March 7th and 8th- Parent Teacher Conferences

March 11th-15th- Spring Break

March 18th- School Resumes

March 28th and March 29th- Kindergarten Round-Up

Email: corey_troast@usd368.org
Website: https://www.usd368.org/vnews/display.v/SEC/Cottonwood%20Elementary
Location: 709 Hedge Ln, Paola, KS 66071, USA
Phone: 913-294-8050