Dear Oakwood Families,

I hope this email finds all of you doing well and enjoying the summer.  Oakwood has been quite busy lately with Horizons, Camp Oakwood, and admissions tours bringing plenty of visitors to campus.  While it is great to have so many people on campus, I still miss the energy and stronger sense of community that exists when our students, faculty, and families are here during the school year.  With that in mind, we have been working hard to have school ready for everyone to return later next month for our 24th academic year.  Below are updates on some of those preparations.

The transition is going well to FACTS, our new fully integrated educational platform that includes a  learning management system (teacher sites, grade books, class calendars, attendance, class scheduling, student/ parent communications, and much more) and a school information system -- that will now all "talk" to each other through a single login for you.  We have migrated most of our information to the new system and given access to our teachers who are familiarizing themselves with FACTS and building their classes.  Our faculty had FACTS training in the spring, and will have several more sessions before the start of school.  Please see this letter to families with important information about FACTS, including several help sessions that we are making available to parents in mid-to-late August.

We are also nearing completion of all our staffing assignments for the upcoming year, and I could not be more excited about the fantastic group of educators that we have assembled at Oakwood.  We have added several talented new faces this year to go along with what was already an incredibly strong group of returning faculty members.  I am proud to share with you this list of our faculty and staff for the upcoming school year.  

Speaking of our faculty, we have been busy this summer ordering some terrific curricular items from their wish lists thanks to the incredible generosity our school community showed during the Fund-A-Need portion of last spring's Blue Jean Ball.  I am really looking forward to seeing the students and faculty benefit from these classroom enhancements during the years to come.

As we look ahead, I hope you have the afternoon of Saturday, August 24 marked on your calendars as that is the PSA's Back-to-School Kickoff Party here on campus.  PSA volunteers have been hard at work planning this event and have some terrific activities planned, so please be on the lookout in the coming weeks for a communication with them sharing more details.  Please also be on the lookout for a larger electronic communication from Oakwood in the coming weeks with additional details and information about the start of school.

Thank you for all you do to make The Oakwood School such a wonderful place to learn and work.  I hope you enjoy the rest of your summer, and I look forward to seeing you and your children the next time you are on campus.

Go Eagles!