Zaj's Weekly News

Can you guess how many miles we collectively ran last Thursday, Oct. 24th for our Spooky Fun Run? Did you know we have 700 students in grades PreK-4. And if every student ran at least 1 mile (which almost all of the students did), that would already be 700 miles. However, there were many students who ran more than a mile and some even ran over 2 miles! Mr. Hackett puts his estimate at 1200 miles! How crazy is that? And thank you to all our awesome cheerleading parents! We loved your energy and your support. We saw some cool signs too!

Wow! What an incredible school community we have! A big shout out to our PTO (parent organization) for hosting this successful fundraiser: Spooky Fun Run. Our 700 students planned to run at least 1 mile and asked family and friends to pledge a donation to our school. We raised $10,060.80! How wonderful! That is thanks to all of you, our family and friends! All the money fundraised will go back to our students and teachers to support their learning experiences and offset fieldtrip costs. PTO provided water and snacks for all of our runners. The top winning class in grades PreK, Kgn, and 1 and the top winning class in grades 2, 3, and 4 will get a pizza party. All classes will get a freezie pop for their efforts in their pledges and for running their mile! Way to go dragons! We are so proud of each one of you!

Thank you to our PTO for providing Pizza and water, treats, and the awesome photo booth for our event. Thank you to the Bell Museum and our science teacher, Ms. Rebecca Hansing, for the fun STEM activities for our families. And a big thank you to our staff who helped make our Title I Night a fun night of learning with family and friends. Check out our friends below and on our Facebook Page!

When parking for school events, please be respectful of our neighbors' driveways. Do not park within 5 feet of a driveway or you may get a parking ticket. Thank you.

With Halloween coming up, just a friendly reminder of our food/candy policy. We have a growing number of students with health and nutritional needs that can be put at risk if exposed to certain foods. Rather than excluding our students from celebrations, we would like to have all of our classrooms find ways to celebrate and have fun together in ways that do NOT involve food. If you would like for your child to share something with their classmates, please make sure it's NOT a food item. We can NOT put our students at risk. Please work with your child's teacher for some ideas that do not involve food. Thank you for keeping our students' health and safety first. Please call Principal Xiong or Nurse Michelle if you have any questions or concerns.

Each year, every school establishes what their school goals are and puts it down in writing in what we call a School Continuous Improvement Plan, or SCIP for short. Last year, our district adopted a new Phonics/early Reading program called UFLI and a new math curriculum called Into Math. We made 8% growth in Math and a 5% growth in Reading. We are very proud of our students hard work and the dedication of our teachers. We know it's not where we want to be yet. We will continue to work hard on meeting our goals this year. If you would like to see our 1-page SCIP that shows our MCA Reading and Math Scores for the past 3 years, as compared to our district and the state, please click here. Another important resource is the MN Department of Education's website which can be found on our school's Title I parent page. We know it takes a partnership between home and school to support our students. We appreciate you helping and supporting your child in their education. If you have educational concerns about your child, please contact your child's teacher at any time.

Our Hmong Dual Language teachers have been busy developing a new Hmong phonics program with a clear scope and sequence, aligned with other Hmong language programs across the country. We are using this Hmong phonics program this year in our K-2 classes this year. We are excited to see how it will help our students learn to read in Hmong.

Parents, please make sure your children are dressed appropriately for the weather. All students go outside for recess every day for 20 minutes, regardless of the weather. The only times we have indoor recess is when it's raining very hard or when it's zero degrees or below Fahrenheit. Please LABEL your child's coat, snowpants, jackets, boots, hats, mittens with their first and last names! Many clothing pieces are left on the playground and it helps us get it back to the student.

Student Fieldtrips:

Thur, Oct. 31st - Kgn Field Trip to Apple Orchard, 9:45am-12:30pm

Nov. 1st - Grade 1 Field Trip to Como Zoo Japanese Garden, 9:45am-1:30pm

Nov. 7th - Grade PreK and ECSE (Ms. Gina) to Tamarack Nature Center, 10:00am-1:30pm

Important Events:

Nov. 5th - Election Day - go out and vote! (only if you're old enough :))

Nov . 6th - 5:00pm-8:00pm - Parent/Teacher Fall Conferences (Evening)

Nov. 7th - 5:00pm-8:00pm - Parent/Teacher Fall Conferences (Evening)

Nov. 8th - No School for students

Nov. 8th - 8:00am-3:00pm - Parent/teacher conferences (Day)

Arrival/ Xa tuaj kawm: 9:10-9:30am

Dismissal/ Tuaj tos me nyuam: 3:55-4:10pm

Front Office Hours/ Tsev kawm ntawv qhib raws sij hawm no: 8:30am-4:30pm

Clerks/ Kws teb xov tooj: Lisa Lor and Aneedda Xiong

School phone number/ Xov tooj: 651-293-8935

Principal/ Thawj Tswj: May Lee Xiong, AP/ Lwm Tswj: Michelle BrownTon