September 29, 2022

Dear La Entrada Families:

Please copy/paste this message here for translation into your home language.

As we race into October, I wanted to take a moment to celebrate our phenomenal parent volunteer organizations who help make our school community inclusive and welcoming for all families. Parents in the PTA, Las Lomitas League, and Las Lomitas Education Foundation all contribute selflessly to our school by performing critical tasks like serving hot lunch and bringing together the community through events like last week's well-attended School Picnic. The Foundation supports the school through funding that helps provide a robust electives program and small class sizes while the League supports extracurricular enrichment opportunities through classes and sports. Our school would not be what it is without their support.

Thank you so much to our parent community for being active participants in our students' learning. We know not everyone is able to volunteer and we appreciate the partnership no matter your level of involvement with the school. All families are important to us.

My best,

Mark Jones

Principal

• New Bell Schedule
• Parent-Teacher Conferences
• Non-binary Bathroom
• Penny Drive
• Student Chats with Leadership Classes

Here is the new bell schedule starting on Monday, October 3, 2022. We need to move the start time back five minutes in the morning to 8:40 am to accommodate some buses that are arriving at or after the bell daily. I added the 8:40 am start to the second tab at the bottom of our existing bell schedule spreadsheet. The 8:35 am start will remain the first tab on the spreadsheet for two more days. Here are some specifics:

Grades 4-8:

• Gates will open at 8:20 am.

Grades 4-5:

• We will move back the Monday, Tuesday, Thursday, and Friday dismissal time by five minutes to 3:05 pm.
• The Wednesday dismissal time will move back five minutes to 1:50 pm.
• There will be only a 10-minute gap between 4-5 and 6-8 dismissals as opposed to the current 15-minute gap.

Grades 6-8:

• School will still end at 3:15 pm on Monday, Tuesday, Thursday, and Friday to accommodate families' extracurricular schedules in the afternoon.
• The Wednesday dismissal time will move back five minutes to 2:50 pm.

Grades 4-5:

• Teachers will offer families a hybrid conference option. Families can sign up for whatever works best for them between in-person or virtual conferences.

Grades 6-8:

• Teachers will offer families a virtual conference option. Middle school teachers observed several positive outcomes of virtual Parent-Teacher Conferences during the pandemic: Conferences have been more efficient, it's been more convenient for families' schedules, the Zoom waiting room has been helpful as an indicator of the next family arriving during a conference, and there have been fewer no-shows. That said, teachers will consider in-person options for special cases.

• All families in middle school are welcome to schedule conferences though please remember that our single-subject teachers--Math, Science, PE, some World Languages (Spanish), and Electives have 120+ student contacts for roughly 60 conference slots. We would like to reserve slots for students who are striving to reach grade level standard. If your child is exceeding grade level standard (4 on last year's CAASPP Assessment), please consider an email to the teacher asking about your student's progress in lieu of a full conference.

• Look for an email in the coming weeks from the school about PTC Wizard, our online scheduling portal for Parent-Teacher Conferences. I will also send a text to let you know when it is open.

Student Advocacy for Non-binary Bathroom

Last spring, a student put together a petition to expand the number of non-binary bathrooms on campus. With a highly thoughtful and well-reasoned letter, the student asserted that our single non-binary bathroom in the portable village and our two non-binary bathrooms in the office were both inconvenient and "othering" to our non-binary students. The student collected over 200 signatures to support the cause. I was quite impressed with the level of advocacy our students exhibited in trying to create inclusive change. Well done!

This fall, we have been working on changing the lock and signage for what will be the new non-binary bathroom in the atrium of the new building (an existing staff bathroom). This bathroom is single-stall and is centrally located for any student to use. I was thrilled to make this announcement to students yesterday about a student-driven change to increase the access and belonging of our non-binary students.

Leadership students in the second-period service committee would like to inform you that we will be holding a Penny Drive for all five grades during the week of October 3 - October 7, 2022. 

The jugs for collecting the coins will be right outside room 150 (Mrs. Webster's room). We will donate all of the money we raise to the Children's Miracle Network.

Students will put pennies in their grade-level jug to earn points and will put silver coins into other grade-level jars to subtract points. The five grade levels will also earn spirit points for donating money. Thank you so much for sharing this message with your students and for encouraging them to participate!

Student Chats with Leadership Classes

I will be starting an ongoing dialogue with our Leadership classes next week in an effort to engage students in meaningful participation regarding the school experience on campus. Ms. Webster has assembled a number of questions from the students for us to discuss and problem-solve. I hope students will feel valued, heard, and empowered by these ongoing conversations. Through consistent dialogue, we can continue to build each other's empathy and strengthen the positive school culture at La Entrada.