Dear Parents/Families:
I always think about my late sister, Marjorie, on this day each year, the first day of school. I was in a conversation with her many years ago along with someone else as we were having coffee one day. The other person was a brand new Mom and she was just gushing with the joy of a new baby in her life when she said to Marjorie, “I’m going to cry when she goes to school!” Marjorie, with five grown children of her own, quickly replied, “I cried when mine went to school, too!” The other person exclaimed, “Did you???’ (she knew Marjorie wasn’t the emotional type). Marjorie took a big sip of her coffee and laid her mug back on the table and wryly said, “Yes, I cried to break my heart…everytime they missed the bus!” 🙂
As we approach the close of the first day of school, I hope your tears have dried and that you are looking forward to a fun and successful school year. All of our learners have settled in and they are surely enjoying their first day.
Here are a few important pieces of information for you that covers off the rest of this month with repsect to special dates and the like.
Curriculum/Meet-the-Teacher Night
We’ll hold our annual Curriculum/Meet-the-Teacher night on Thursday, September 14 at 7pm. Upon your arrival at school, please proceed to your child’s classroom where the teacher will have a group conversation with you for about 45 minutes or so. If you have specific concerns about your child, please set up a separate time for those kinds of conversations where you can enjoy privacy and a one-on-one interaction.
If you have more than one child here, we recommend that you go to the session for your oldest child and then send an e-mail to your other children’s teachers to let them know you couldn’t make it.
PD Day
Our first school closure for teacher PD is on Friday, September 29, 2023. We will be engaged in a full day session with the University of Florida’s Institute for Literacy as we seek to refine and improve our literacy instruction.
Cafeteria
Our cafeteria will begin operations on Monday, September 11, 2023. Full details can be found by clicking here.
Orange Shirt Day
We will observe Orange Shirt Day/National Day for Truth and Reconciliation on Thursday, September 28. On this day, we invite our learners and their families to wear an orange shirt (or a shirt with orange on it) as we have planned several activities to move us along in our school’s journey to truth and reconciliation.
As with all special events like this, we strongly discourage you from going out to buy new orange shirts. Days like these were never meant to make corporations richer on the backs of these movements. If you dont’ have an orange shirt for your child, see if you have one with orange on it as that will be entirely fine.
Telephone Messages
If you need to get a message to your child during the school day, please try to have them called in to the office by 1:00pm. This will give us enough time to ensure that all messages have been delivered before we close each day. We have 510 learners with us this year and that can translate into a lot of messages each day. Thanks so much for your help with this.
Courtesy Seats/Stops
Please click on this link if your child will require a courtesy seat or courtesy stop this year. Carolyn will be working feverishly to have all seats awarded by September 22 with an implementation date of September 25.
Courtesy stops will be processed by Monday coming, September 1 with an implementation date of Tuesday, September 12, 2023.
All bussing questions should be directed to Carolyn at carolynlethbridge@nlesd.ca.
RNC Certificates of Conduct for Volunteers
Please be on the lookout for a sheet of paper coming home today with all of the information you need to obtain your certificates of conduct. To assist you with this, please be mindful of the following links:
RNC Website and the Certificate of Conduct Application Form
The process of getting a certificate has moved to an online transaction but you will need an individual letter from me to upload – these will be coming home today.
Important! Online Forms
You will find the link to complete two important forms by clicking here. These forms include the “Emergency School Closure Protocol” and our “Media Consent” forms. The information from these will tell us what to do in the event of an emergency/unplanned closure here at school during the school day (i.e., who to call, bussing, pick-up, etc.) and it will guide us as to posting images of your children online (we can’t do it without your consent) on our social media channels.
Parking Lot
Please remember that the centre block of parking stalls on our lot is for staff; families are invited to park in the row of stalls at the bottom of our parking lot that is closet to Beachy Cove Road. Please share this information with any family members who are not on this e-mail list (i.e., grandparents, etc.).
Mailing List
If you know of another parent or family member who would benefit from receiving our emails, please send a note to Lisa Morgan and she will add the email addresses to the distribution list.
I think that’s all for now. If you managed to stay with me and read all the way through – I hope you have a pleasant afternoon!