Monty's Mail

Dear Montclair Parents and Families,

Welcome to the 2024-25 School year! Montclair Elementary has had a positive and productive first two weeks of school. Back to School Night is September 25-for PreK-2nd grade, and September 26 for Grades 3-5, both nights begin at 6pm in classrooms. We look forward to seeing you!

Our search for Montclair's next assistant principal is still in process but we hope to have an update for the community in the next week.

Please remember how important attendance is for our Montclair Elementary students! We continue to work towards lowering our chronic absenteeism and improve attendance all around. Research clearly shows that missing school even for two or three days can have a significant impact on learning. Let's keep attendance strong!

On another note, we would like to share with you a summary of Montclair Elementary's Continuous Improvement Goals. Click here to see what we are working on this year! 2024-25 Goals Summary for Community.pdf

Montclair Teachers and Staff love welcoming and teaching your students every day. We appreciate your partnership and support! Let's have an amazing 2024-25 school year!

Mr. Slayter

Please remember that you must have a picture ID when visiting or picking up your child from school. A child may only be released if the person picking up is as a parent/guardian or an emergency contact.

If you need to pick up your student early, please keep in mind that the last dismissal of the day will be 3:10 pm. This process will help alleviate traffic in the office. We appreciate your understanding.

We are noticing an increase in parent-excused absences. Please see some important attendance policy information for you to know:

• Parents can only excuse 10 days per school year. Doctor's note may be requested by the school.
• BE ADVISED that excused absences count the same as unexcused absences towards chronic absenteeism.
• Once a parent has reached 10 excused absences for the school year. PWCS requires a doctor's note for each additional absence.
• Parents have up to five days to excuse an absence.
• Five unexcused absences will result in an initial conference with an administrator, student, and the parent.
• If there are two or more unexcused absences after the initial conference, an interagency meeting will be scheduled.
• If there are 2 additional unexcused absences after the interagency meeting, a conference will be held with the truancy officer.
• Family vacations are not considered excused absences.

Please utilize the PWCS calendar to plan for travel. Attendance impacts our school accreditation. Please visit the PWCS 24-25 calendar.

Thank you for making school attendance a priority! Our chronic absenteeism (missing 10% or more of school year) rate was 15% in 2022-23, 10.8% in 2023-24. Our goal is 9% in 2024-25.

The Back-to-School Packet must be completed by Friday, September 13. Please be aware that when you log into ParentVUE, you will be alerted to complete the Back to School Packet, and you will not receive access to any other student information, including student schedules and bus information, until the packet has been completed.

Please be on the lookout for chorus sign ups later this month. Chorus will begin on October 8th and will be held every Tuesday after school in the music room (dismissal at 4pm.) Mrs. Shotwell will be at the 3-5 back-to-school night to answer any chorus questions!

October 4th is picture day; please see attachment.

Hello Families! We are so excited to see our returning students and those new to Montclair! We hope the start of the school year is going well for all of you!

To start the year, we visit every classroom for a brief lesson on the role of the School Counselor, how students can seek our support, and we read a book titled, “You Are Enough” by Margaret O’Hair. Every student in our building then decorated a heart to add to our school bulletin board. We hope you can find your child’s heart on Back to School Night!

We are also excited to announce that we will have Special Agent Courtney Goode from the Virginia State Police who will come to our school on September 12th for 3rd, 4th and 5th graders to discuss internet safety and how to be a safe digital citizen. The students will listen to her presentation during their encore time. In addition, she will present to our parents and guardians on September 16th at 6:00 PM. More detailed information will be sent home soon!

If you need to reach your School Counselor, please contact:

Mrs. McDonald (Grades 2, 3, 5) at: mcdonaaj@pwcs.edu

Mrs. Smith (Grades K, 1, 4) at: smithkw@pwcs.edu

Ms. Montavon (on Tuesdays) at: montavem@pwcs.edu

The PWCS Library management system released a new type of user experience where parents can now create accounts to restrict their students’ library material choices.

Montclair's PTCO welcomes you to the 2024/2025 school year! First thing you might ask yourself new and veteran families is, what is PTCO? The acronym PTCO stands for Parent Teacher Cooperative Organization. Our purpose is to support the students and staff at Montclair Elementary. Check out our website to learn more!

Montclair PTCO

Make sure you follow us on Facebook @Montclair Elementary PTCO and Instagram @montclairesptco.

You may be asking yourself how do I become a member?!?!? It is simple click on this link and join! https://www.montclairesptco.org/join

Thank you to all the students, staff and families that came out for our Summer Blacktop Party. Those that attended managed to go through over 200 freezie pops! Thank you to the parents that dropped by for our parent social. We look forward to getting you in the school volunteering and helping out with PTCO activities this year!

Keep your eye out for upcoming events!

please see the below links for exciting information