Principal of Barack Obama Elementary School

March 10, 2025

Dear Obama Family,

First, we want to extend our heartfelt gratitude to all the families who joined us for our recent Literacy Night. It was a wonderful evening filled with learning, fun, and community engagement. Your support and participation play a crucial role in fostering a love for reading and learning in our students, and we truly appreciate your involvement.

As we approach Ohio State Testing, we want to ensure that every student is well-prepared and confident. These assessments are an important measure of your child’s progress, and we are committed to providing them with the tools they need to succeed. To support your child’s reading development at home, we encourage you to:

• Encourage Daily Reading: Have your child read for at least 20–30 minutes each day. Ask questions about the story to build comprehension.

• Discuss What They Read: Encourage your child to summarize stories, make predictions, and connect texts to real life.

• Use Context Clues: Teach your child to look at surrounding words and sentences to figure out unfamiliar vocabulary.

• Practice Test-Taking Strategies: Remind them to read directions carefully, eliminate incorrect answers, and go back to the text for evidence.

• Ensure a Good Night’s Rest: A well-rested mind performs better on tests. Make sure your child gets plenty of sleep before testing days.

Ohio State Testing will take place:

ELA- April 17, 2025 thru April 25, 2025.

Math & Science - April 17, 2025 thru May 9, 2025.

Please ensure your child arrives at school on time, eats a healthy breakfast, and is ready to do their best. Thank you for your continued support. We are excited to see our students succeed and appreciate all that you do to reinforce learning at home. If you have any questions or need additional resources, please don’t hesitate to reach out.

Thank you for your continued partnership in your child’s education. Let’s make this semester a success!

Please make sure that your contact information is up to date. You can do this by completing Final Forms. Make sure to sign digitally at the end to submit.

https://mapleheights-oh.finalforms.com/

Visitors & Guests: We would like to welcome you to Barack Obama Elementary school. The procedures for our guests and visitors to the building are to arrive at the main entrance of the building (Glenwood Ave.), visitors will press the buzzer to gain entrance into the main office. Guests/visitors who visit classrooms or provide services will have their IDs scanned to create a visitors pass. All of this is to ensure the safety of our students and staff. As a reminder, photo IDs are required when signing students out for the day before 2:45 p.m.

Meetings: We understand that your time is valuable, to ensure that we are able to meet your family’s needs, schedule a meeting with Dr. Hughley (Principal) or Mrs. McCrystal (Assistant Principal) 24 hours in advance. We will make every effort to meet and/or return calls between 24 to 48 hours.

School Counselor

It's that time of year again. Time for our Ohio State Testing. Below are the testing dates:

ELA Testing Window - Thursday April 17, 2025 thru Friday April 25, 2025

Math & Science - Friday April 17, 2025 thru Friday May 9, 2025.

ELA Makeups are: April 10th through Friday April 25th

Math Makeups are: Make-Ups April 23rd through Friday May 9th

Science Makeups are: Make-Ups April 30th through Friday May 9th

Good Day Obama Parents,

For all of the students who participated in the Mrs. Fields Cookie Fundraiser, the delivery truck will be here on Tuesday March 25, 2025. Pick up times will be after school from 3:00pm-5:00pm. Keep in mind that these items are frozen and must remain frozen. Therefore, Barack Obama has NO freezer/refrigerator space so you will need to be here to pick up your order during this time.

If you are unable to make it, please make arrangements with someone you know and trust to come and sign for and pick up your order.

Assistant Principal

Student Wellness Coordinator

CASEL and SEL at Obama

CASEL is an organization that works to bring high quality standards to social and emotional learning. The organization has identified 5 major focuses of SEL instruction: self-management, responsible decision making, relationship skills, social-awareness, and self-awareness. Many of the activities and lessons that students receive include many of these focuses in one lesson.

Empathy

This month many of our students have been learning about Empathy. Empathy is the ability to understand what another person is feeling or thinking, even if you are not the person going through the situation. Along with learning our steps to showing empathy, students learned benefits of practicing empathy such as: improving listening skills, increasing gratitude, reducing stress, strengthening problem solving skills, and creating community.

5 Steps of Empathy:

1. Pay Attention - What is the person saying? What are their non-verbals saying?
2. Connect - When have you felt something similar?
3. Imagine - How do you think the person is feeling right now?
4. Ask - Ask open ended questions to find out how the person is feeling!
5. Act - Show You care with your words and actions!

If you’d like to know more about the work that the Wellness & PBIS team and its partners are doing, you can check out our website here. You will find information and details about all the wellness initiatives at the district level and here at Barack Obama Elementary! If you have any questions please feel free to reach out to me (juliana.wilder@mapleschools.com)!

Student Support Coordinator