Dear La Entrada Families,

I hope you have been able to enjoy a replenishing summer break with family and friends. Summer found the Jones family on a whirlwind college tour circuit for our rising senior and in a few campsites up and down the state. Our rising fourth grader and new La Entrada (LE) Leopard enjoyed the Kickstart program last week to help get him acclimated to the new campus. As a parent, Kickstart helps me understand how fortunate we are to have the resources necessary to put together an onboarding program like this. My son loved his teacher and feels much more calm and confident heading into the school year. I can not express enough how much our teachers and staff care about our students, and how diligently they work to meet students where they are, regardless of need. LE staff are truly the heart of the campus.

Our primary focus for 2022-2023 will be on understanding and meeting students’ academic and social-emotional needs. To this end, we will pilot a new curriculum for a middle school advisory program to engage in school-wide social-emotional learning, as well as build on our learning recovery (intervention and support), and diversity, equity, and inclusion initiatives. Our goal is to engage all students in the learning environment by fostering a school climate that helps every student feel included as a valued member of our community.

Along the way, we will balance our initiatives by adhering to the evolving public health guidelines and making safety adjustments as necessary. For now, the San Mateo County Office of Education has directed us to move forward with little to no public health constraints on the learning environment and to continue forward with optional masking for students and staff. We may need to require masks for large indoor congregations when ventilation may be an issue. 

Please see below for important information as we transition to the 2022-2023 school year.

Have a fabulous end of your summer! We look forward to welcoming your children next week to another year of learning, growing, and building relationships together!

All the best,

Mark Jones

La Entrada Principal

Your student’s class schedule will be emailed on Friday, August 19. Please email school secretary Zee Ahmad at zahmad@llesd.org if you do not receive your child’s schedule by 3:00 pm on Friday.

Careful consideration was given to input from teachers, staff, families, and students’ learning styles when determining class placements. Classrooms have been balanced academically and socially and are structured to provide equitable class sizes at each grade level.

Thank you for encouraging your children to understand it’s impossible to place all students with a preferred best friend or teacher. Our staff works tirelessly to make school a positive experience for all students. It can take a few weeks for a child to acclimate to a new grade, peer group, and teacher(s); we are all here to support your children through this transition. I share this process to help you understand we may not have been able to honor all placement requests though I can assure you we have done our best to consider every student’s needs, balance every classroom, and provide programmatic stability to deliver a quality educational program.

Please note that if your rising seventh-grade student is not current with all immunizations, her/his/their schedule will be withheld.  Families have been notified multiple times, so if you have not heard anything then you are good to go!.

The first day of school begins on Wednesday, August 24, at 8:35 am. Here are some important reminders:

• Bell Schedule

Here are the La Entrada Bell Schedules for 2022-2023. Please note that on Wednesdays (including the first day of school), students in Grades 4-5 will be released at 1:45 pm and students in Grades 6-8 will be released at 2:45 pm. We will supervise in our Homework Center all 4-5 students who need to wait for 6-8 siblings to be released on Wednesdays. Students in 4-5 will now have their Wednesday release coordinated with Las Lomitas Elementary’s TK-Grade 3 Wednesday release. After picking up Las Lomitas Elementary’s students on Wednesdays, buses will travel to LE to pick up Grades 4-5 students, returning to pick up Grades 6-8 students after the TK-Grade 5 drop-off.

• Arrival

We encourage families to walk or roll to campus. Not only are these climate-friendly modes of transport, but they also help relieve congestion in and around campus. Buses provide another green option. If driving is your only option, please follow the lead of the signs and educators in the parking queue and drive slowly. We want to make sure all of our students arrive safely on day one.

• Dismissal

Again, please follow the signs and educators’ directions in the parking queue and drive slowly. We want to make sure all students arrive home safely on day one as well.

• Road Construction on Sharon Road

The long-awaited sidewalk on Sharon Road from Alameda to Altschul is almost complete, though we may see some residual effects from the ongoing construction as the school year begins. Please drive slowly in your approach to the school and observe the increased construction activity we may have alongside or in the streets.

We hope you can make it to Meet the Teacher on Tuesday, August 23, at 8:15 am. The event will give your children the opportunity to meet their teachers and see their friends. Meet the Teacher gives parents the chance to put a face to a teacher’s name and to chat informally about the upcoming school year. By bringing your child before the year begins, we can reduce anxiety about starting school and contribute to their positive outlook and sense of well-being.

Bus schedules can be picked up in the Front Office at Meet the Teacher or anytime thereafter.

La Entrada School will be providing breakfast and lunch free of charge to all families. The LunchMaster is our new food service provider for the 2022-2023 school year. The LunchMaster is an outside vendor and they have high standards for your child's meals. This means they serve antibiotic & hormone-free meat/poultry, daily fresh fruit & veggie choices, 80% of the produce is grown locally, all bread and tortillas are whole grain, no food is ever fried, and daily vegetarian & gluten-free meal options are offered.

Sign up through TheLunchMaster to participate:

Download The LunchMaster app where you can access the parent portal  

Register Using the School Code laslomitas 

For questions on how the app works, please contact The LunchMaster at 650-596-8008 or email lmadmin@thelunchmaster.com.

Please join us for PIN on Thursday, September 8.

Grades 4-5 will begin at 5:30 pm and Grades 6-8 will begin at 6:30 pm to afford families the opportunity to visit classrooms for children in both grade-level bands.

More information to come soon.

Please join me in welcoming our new staff!  Some are brand new to our school, some are starting new roles at our school, and some are returning to roles they held prior to the pandemic. 

• Caitlin Davis, Librarian
• Kristy Fordham, Grades 4-5 Visual and Performing Arts
• Joshua Gould, Grade 7 Science
• Megan Hogge, Speech-Language Pathologist
• Laura Luna, Student Teacher
• Irena Olson, Grade 4
• Carla Pulido, Paraprofessional
• Abbie Reynolds, School Psychologist
• Emily Saccullo, Grade 6 Core
• Whitney Thwaite, Grades 4-5 Science
• Teagan Webster, Grade 6 Core / Leadership

All students in Grades 6-8 will have 1:1 Chromebooks this year. Students will be expected to transport devices daily between school and home or leave devices in our dedicated charging room overnight. Please look for a separate email from me with the Technology Acceptable Use Agreement and optional insurance form to complete our Chromebook distribution to your student.

Every classroom in Grades 4-5 will be provided a set of Chromebooks. Unlike Grades 6-8, students will not transport devices between school and home. All devices in Grades 4-5 will remain inside the classrooms.

For families in Grades 6-8, School Loop is an important way to keep track of your student's course grades and assignments. Please register here for a parent School Loop account.

I encourage all parents to subscribe to The Leopard’s Spot at the PTA website to receive our weekly newsletter in order to stay connected to the school.

Thank you to LE PTA and LLEF for everything you do to support our schools! Please consider joining these student-centered organizations if you have not already done so.

The Las Lomitas Elementary School District is undergoing major modernizations at the Las Lomitas Elementary School and La Entrada Middle School campuses.  These facility upgrades include structural, architectural, and technological improvements to most of the buildings on both campuses, and will extend through the 2022-2023 School Year and into the Fall of 2023.  The work is phased such that only a portion of each campus will be under construction while the rest of the campus remains open for instruction.

XL Construction, the general contractor managing the modernization work, has erected signage and fencing around the perimeter of the impacted construction areas and has directed its workers and trade partners to minimize impacts to school operations:

• School will remain fully operational during construction
• Deliveries and mobilizations are scheduled not to occur during drop-off and pick-up
• All work is limited to the hours of 8:00 am - 5:00 pm by local ordinance, with the exception of urgent conditions requiring emergency work
• Perimeter fencing is covered by a mesh screen preventing interaction between workers and students/staff

FOR THE SAFETY OF ALL STUDENTS, FAMILIES, STAFF, AND NEIGHBORS:

• Please do not enter the construction areas for any reason at any time.
• Please do not interfere with construction activities – stay well clear of trucks, equipment, and materials at all times.
• Please obey all signs, fences, flagging, danger tape, etc.
• Please immediately notify the School Main Office at (650) 854-5900. If you see any hazardous conditions at any time

More details about the construction work can be found on the School District Website here: Facility Project Updates

The La Entrada Office is open Monday - Friday from 7:45 am - 3:45 pm and can be reached at (650) 854-3962. Staff members can be reached by email using the first initial and last name followed by llesd.org (mjones@llesd.org for Mark Jones, for example). Staff emails can be found on the La Entrada website as well. The LLESD District Office can be reached by phone at (650) 854-6311. District office staff emails can be found on the LLESD website.