THE CURRENT

Dear Parents,

It's a busy time of year. The children are getting excited about the upcoming holidays and looking forward to winter break. This is a great time to continue or begin traditions within your family or ours here at Waxpool Elementary School.

Waxpool's Winter Sing-A-Long will be one of our wonderful Waxpool traditions. This is a time when students, staff, parents, and the community members gather together to sing in celebration of the holiday season. We want to extend an invitation to you and your family to join us during this joyful jubilation. Waxpool Elementary prides itself on "community." Well... let's come together and meet at the one place we all have in common, and show our children just one example of what it truly means to be a community.

Please consider joining us on Friday, December 20th, at 1:00pm, as Waxpool's talented music teachers, Grace Schiffler and Tiffany Williams, lead us as we celebrate the holidays of the season with a Winter Sing-A-Long. Pre-school students who left for the day are welcome to return and join us accompanied by a parent. High voice, low voice, squeaky voice, flat voice, tone dear, talented or not, it does not matter. After all, it is not about the singing.

Best wishes for a safe and happy holiday. Enjoy your family and friends.

With Piranha Pride,

Michael Pellegrino

How Absences Impact Your Student:

• Student absences lead to missed instructional time and it adds up (Attendance Matters Graphic).
• This missed instruction impacts student performance and can cause substantial stress for your student as they work to make up missed assignments.

How Absences Impact the School Community:

• We believe every student at Waxpool is a contributing member of our community. Your student’s presence makes a difference in their classroom(s) and the daily events of the school.
• Student attendance is an important metric used by the Virginia Department of Education for our yearly accreditation rating, specifically chronic absenteeism. A student is considered chronically absent if they miss 18 school days in a year, regardless of whether it is an excused or unexcused absence.

How We Can Partner Together with You:

• Here is where we can use your help as parents and guardians:
• Communicate your student’s excused absences via ParentVUE (Instructions).
• Proactively connect with your student’s counselor with concerns/barriers to your student’s regular attendance.
• Jessica Carper (Kindergarten, 2nd, 4th)
• Michelle Fernandez (1st, 3rd, 5th)
• Review your student’s attendance in ParentVUE and see where in this upcoming school year there could be improvement. Barring extenuating circumstances, we encourage families to monitor their student’s attendance and avoid more than three absences per quarter.
• Please avoid scheduled school days for planning trips.

What You Can Expect From Us:

• Increased communication about your student’s absences- this is for both excused and unexcused absences. This communication will come in many different forms;
• Phone calls from support staff and attendance team members.
• Mailings with updates regarding your student’s absences.
• Meetings with school staff to discuss attendance and other student needs.

Resources:

ParentVUE Link

Waxpool Website

Elementary school students are NOT permitted to use personal technology during the school day.

"This is the 103rd school I have visited since the beginning of the year and I have to say, the feeling you get when you are in Waxpool ES is something very special."

- LEA President

We want your child to be successful in school and that means supporting and encouraging their whole development. While excelling in academic classes is important, children also need skills to take on learning challenges, make good decisions, manage strong emotions, and get along with others.

Second Step Elementary is a research-based social-emotional learning program designed to improve children's social-emotional skills. Second Step skills and concepts are designed to help children both in and out of school. Four units will cover the following:

Growth Mindset and Goal-Setting: Children learn how to pay attention and manage distractions, develop a growth mindset, and apply goal-setting strategies to their social and academic lives.

Emotion Management: Children learn how to identify and label emotions and use emotion-management strategies to calm strong feelings.

Empathy and Kindness: Children learn how to recognize kindness and act kindly, have empathy for others and take others' perspectives, and recognize kind acts and empathy as important elements of building and maintaining relationships.

Problem Solving: Children learn how to identify and state a problem, recognize if a problem is an accident, and use the STEP problem-solving process:

S: Say the problem

T: Think of solutions

E: Explore the outcomes

P: Pick a solution

Activation Key: FAM8E09AA135