Monday, September 7

Happy Labor Day Holiday. I hope you have enjoyed your long weekend and are ready to return to another great week of school tomorrow. My holiday weekends have not been so great lately--I lost my 14 year old dog to old age on Saturday, so I am looking to adopt another miniature schnauzer from local shelters or rescue groups. The house is too quiet without the canine energy and companionship.

Highland School just received word that we are the recipient of a new grant from the federal government to serve an additional 101 students in our after-school program, HEARTS. Since this is such a large expansion of the program, we have decided to focus on enrolling as many of our English learners as possible, who will benefit greatly from three extra hours of school each day. Imagine the impact of 3 additional hours of language immersion everyday! Unfortunately, the learning gap between other sub-groups and English learners is significant, so this intervention program will help us close that gap. Applications will go home this week, and there will also be plenty of room in our current state funded HEARTS program for other interested students in grades 1st through 6th.

Last week was terribly hot, and I think the temperature got the best of some people. We had many complaints about the parking lot and the lack of consideration for others. Although we have worked very hard to communicate parking etiquette to parents through announcements in the first day of school packet, and many notices last year, we still have people double and triple parking and ignoring the direction of staff and volunteers working in the parking lot at heavy traffic times. We are doing our best to keep the traffic moving smoothly, but drivers must cooperate. Please park only in marked spaces--either in the white boxes around the island, or the lined spaces along the edges of the parking lot. No cars should ever park in yellow, red or blue curbs. Remember--our goal is to keep children safe. It may not be as convenient for the driver, but everyone needs to keep their focus on the children--not adult convenience. We will be discussing the parking lot at the first School Site Council Meeting this Thursday at 3:30, so please join us. The meeting will be held in the school office.

I will be taking a class tomorrow to learn how to update our school website, so be sure to keep checking the site often to stay current on what is happening at Highland School. My goal this year is to get every class online with a page to update parents on homework and expectations and allow you to communicate frequently with the teacher through email. Maybe the students can start a Blog, too.

Many teachers will be "going to school" this Saturday with a consultant, Rick Morris, who is going to teach us more about establishing positive routines and practices which will in turn save time that can be used to focus on learning. If you happen to drive by school on Saturday and see lots of cars in the lot, that will be why they are there.

Hopefully many families have taken the challenge to get their children to school on-time every day. Our attendance contest, "We Otter Be Here!" is going strong, and some classes are getting very close to receiving Otter Pops. Each day every child in the class is present, and on-time (in other words, the class has perfect attendance at the start of class at 9:00 a.m.) they get to color in one of the letters in the theme phrase above. After coloring in every letter, and the exclamation point, the class has earned the Otter Pops, and gets a new paper to start again. Which class will earn the most Otter Pop parties, I wonder? Could it be yours?

This is our parent meeting week, so join us at one or all of them. All meetings are held in the school office:

*****Wednesday is the PTA meeting at 5:30 p.m.
*****Thursday is the School Site Council meeting at 3:30 p.m.
*****Friday is the English Learner Advisory Council meeting at 9:30 a.m.

Enjoy your week!

--Ms. Boucher