Bates Family Newsletter

I hope you're enjoying this beautiful day! Dr. Zrike said it best in his weekly memo to families: "We celebrate Dr. Martin Luther King Day. More important than having a day off from school, we must reflect on the strong links between Dr. King’s work and our efforts to create a school system that is inclusive of every child, family and employee. Dr. King underscored the importance of giving everyone a voice in the process of change and improvement and we are working hard to do this across the Salem Public Schools."

In keeping with this sentiment of "giving everyone a voice"...have you considered signing up to be a "Spotlight Family"?

What is a "Spotlight Family"?

Twice a month, two of our wonderful families will be featured on our morning announcements that are shared each day to build community in our school as well as in our family newsletter. Our hope is that this will create new friendships, bring us closer as a community, and help us celebrate the beautiful diversity that we have here at Bates. It ties in with our new motto: "Believe, Be you, Belong, at Bates!".

Families will have two options from which to choose:

Option 1: Your family will be interviewed on Zoom by our Family Engagement Facilitator, Rosalyn Guevara. She will ask your family a few questions, such as, "What is your cultural background? What are your family's traditions? What does your family do for fun?" If you choose this Zoom option, Ms. Roz will reach out to you to schedule a time for the interview.

Option 2: If you prefer not to be recorded as a family, you can create a poster with family photos and answers to the questions listed above. You can also feel free to add details of your choice! Your student(s) will be recorded at school explaining the pictures you included on your family's poster. The poster will be returned after your student(s) are recorded. If you want to come to school and be recorded with your student to be recorded, let us know!

We all belong at Bates! Let's celebrate our community in this special way by getting as many families as we can to participate in this project. Interested? Fil in this Google Form, and Ms. Roz will reach out to you. Please sign up here today!

HARASSMENT:

Salem Public Schools are committed to maintaining an educational and work environment free from all forms of harassment and violence. Harassment based on race, religion, national origin, sex, disability or sexual orientation is unlawful and prohibited in the Salem Public Schools. According to the Salem School Committee’s policy on harassment (See SC Policy 5410), “It shall be a violation of this policy for any individual to inflict, threaten to inflict, or attempt to inflict violence or otherwise interfere with a student’s education or an employee’s work through conduct or any other form of communications.

“This policy applies to all school employees, students, volunteers, contracted vendors, and other members of the school community. Each member of the school community has a responsibility to ensure that harassment and violence does not occur in the schools or at school-sponsored activities.”

Please see the SPS Harassment Policy

Please see the SPS code of conduct and student discipline in the Policy handbook.

Reviewing Rules

There's a reason why we have rules in school! The number one reason is that rules keep us safe. We'll review our rules this week as it's important to have a little "tune up" once in a while, especially mid year.

This week at Bates we focused on Managing Emotions. In classrooms, students used real scenarios with students filmed by Mrs. Smith during recess. These students offered situations to discuss the variety of ways we might feel about these occurrences. Then, classes discussed how to adaptively respond to these feelings, reminding them that ALL the feelings are “okay” but it’s how we handle them that counts :)

To follow up at home, have fun making up scenarios.

“How would you feel if we said you could stay up late but changed our mind?”

Or have fun with it too:

“How would you feel if….an elephant came walking down the street?”

Then after they’ve labeled the various emotions, ask them how they’d tend to those feelings to help themselves through it. This helps to build emotional awareness and problem solving skills. As always, we appreciate your partnership in this important social emotional work!

THIS FRIDAY! 😀

The school menus are posted on the SPS website. Find them here.

Our multilingual learners continue to test this week! If your student is an ML, we wish them the very best of luck in this testing. We are so proud of all our multilingual learners!

18.9% -- So close

Well, our goal is 18.2% or under in the "Chronic Absence" category, so we're pretty close. Again, it's that time of the year for seasonal illnesses, so this is to be expected. There are also some folks on extended vacations which does impact our numbers.

Shout out to grade 1 with the lowest chronic absences this week!

Staff attended a PD on Wednesday presented by Tony Leone, Program Director, from NAGLY. NAGLY's mission: To honor, respect, educate, and empower LGBTQIA+ youth. Please reach out to NAGLY if your family needs support or education in this area.

Ms. Traxler and I had the pleasure of visiting Ms. Larrabee's young authors on Friday. They were so excited to share their research about koalas. Way to go, team!

Did you know you can earn money for our school just by scanning your grocery receipts? All you need to do is download the Boxtops app, and scan those receipts! Don't want to scan? No worries, you can always send receipts into school with your student in an envelope marked, "PTO Boxtops".

Again, we're stressing that if you MUST leave your car during drop off, pull up past the school entrance and drive as far down the sidewalk as possible. Adults are exiting vehicles close to "the rock" causing a cars to back up into the street. This is unsafe. Please follow the drop off rules.

Our Bates spirit rock is available for weekly rentals. Celebrate your student's birthday or other accomplishments by painting a message on our rock. Please click here to rent the rock!

Bates Elementary School, in partnership with our families and community, will provide all students with a culturally responsive, student – centered, and equitable learning experience that celebrates our students’ diverse backgrounds, creative pursuits, and their academic, social, emotional success.