August

08/09 - Teddy Bear Tea (Kindergarten Orientation) (1:00-2:00)

08/09 - Meet the Teacher Night (4:00-6:00) | A Come-and-go Event

08/09 - Bobcat Bash (4:00-7:30)

08/11 - First Day of School

08/12 - Kindergarten Parent Information Night (5:00-6:00)

08/17 - 1st/3rd Grade Parent Information Night (5:00-6:00)

08/19 - 2nd/4th Grade Parent Information Night (5:00-6:00)

September

09/06 - Holiday

09/07 - First Day for Parents to Eat Lunch with Children

Welcome back Bobcats!

I am so excited for our school year to begin this week. If you haven't had the opportunity to watch Dr. Null's message about the beginning of the year, please take a moment to hear what he has to say. The message is linked above. At Bush Elementary, we have Teddy Bear Tea, Meet The Teacher Night, and the PTO's Bobcat Bash Monday. Please see more information about each event further down in this newsletter.

In the last edition of the Bush Banner, I also shared some information related to COVID-19 and the school year. Since that last update, there has been additional information. As we continue to ensure that the safety of our students and staff are our highest priority, I want to update each of you on some information related to COVID-19 and our precautions associated with the pandemic. Please know that much of this information is also shared in additional detail throughout the Banner.

• For our Teddy Bear Tea and Meet The Teacher Night events, I ask that you do not bring extended families with you to the school. Once you have met the teacher at Meet The Teacher Night, please head to the Bobcat Bash activities sponsored by the PTO. These will be in the gym and outdoors.
  
• We will continue to stress proper hand hygiene throughout the year, and we will continue to have hand sanitizer available throughout the building.
• The District continues to e-mist facilities on a regular basis.
• While we will have lunches in the cafeteria, we have reduced the numbers of grade levels in the cafeteria for lunch at any given time.
• Pursuant to the Governor's executive order, masks are not required. I, along with Conroe ISD, encourage every student, staff member, and visitor to wear a mask. I will wear a mask in any situation where I am not alone in a room.
• We will also limit volunteer opportunities for the time-being. At this point, volunteers will be limited to projects that can be completed within the front office.
  

We continue to take precautions to promote the safety of our students, our staff, and our community.

There is a lot of additional information in this beginning of the year edition of the Bush Banner. It is lengthy, but there is information about the first day of school, arrival and dismissal procedures, beginning of the year events, and many other things that will help us all prepare for an amazing 2021-2022 school year.

I am so very excited to greet each of your children as we continue our journey together. This year's theme at Bush Elementary is Be Someone's Hero. I hope you agree with me that each teacher in our building is a hero to the students they serve. If you do, please make sure you let a teacher know. The messages they receive mean the world to them.

Take good care,

Dr. Jarod Lambert

Principal

Teachers have emailed families of the students in their classes. If you have not received an email, there are a few reasons:

1. Your child is in kindergarten;
   
2. You have recently enrolled and your email is not in the system we pull emails from for teachers; or
3. You have so recently enrolled that your child has not been placed in a class yet.

If your child is in kindergarten, you will get the class placement at Teddy Bear Tea. We announce kindergarten classes at that event. In either of the other cases, you may receive an email before Meet The Teacher Night Monday. For email addresses that have rolled into our student information system, we will work to send additional emails. For those few of you who do not receive a class assignment before Meet The Teacher Night, there will be staff at the front of the school tomorrow evening with class lists. We will make sure that you know where to go to meet your child's teacher.

When making decisions about placement, we take into account what we know about students, information shared by parents about their children, and the dynamics of classes. A great deal of time and contemplation goes into finding the best possible placement for all of our Bobcats. While we do not accept teacher requests, we have greatly appreciated the information shared about returning students by parents using our placement form. Your child has been assigned to a class through a process of discussion and repeated review. We do not randomly assign students. Every student and every class is considered, and often reconsidered, through a placement process that lasted from April through August.

Bush Elementary continues to grow in terms of student enrollment. We have many students who continue to enroll. As with the beginning of every school year, there remains the possibility that we will have to balance our class sizes after the first day of school based on continued enrollment and students who do not show up the first day of school. Please know that we will do everything we can to minimize this movement, but class changes at the beginning of the year remain a possibility.

Our kindergarten orientation and meet the teacher event, Teddy Bear Tea, is Monday at 1:00. Please see more information on the invitation below. As we work to limit the number of people in the building as part of our COVID-19 precautions, we ask that only parents and guardians join our kindergarten Bobcats for Teddy Bear Tea. At the end of the event, when parents and guardians are dismissed to classrooms to pick up their children, we ask that you do not linger in the building after you pick up your child. This will also allow kindergarten teachers to participate in the afternoon professional learning activities scheduled for our staff.

We love Meet The Teacher Night! This is the chance for each of our Bobcats and their teachers to see each other for the first time each school year. And, we are particularly excited to have this event in person this year. For returning families, please know that our growth means some of our teachers have changed classrooms. We will have staff in the halls to help everyone find where they are going. In addition, we will have staff with class lists to help our first, second, third, and fourth grade students with their teacher's name if they need it.

As we work to limit the number of people in the building, we encourage you to meet your teacher(s), take a look at the amazing things teachers have done in their rooms, and then head out to the Bobcat Bash. The Bobcat Bash, sponsored by the Bush Elementary PTO, will take place in the gym, on the bus ramp, and outside the building. Please plan to enjoy the food trucks and entertainment arranged by our amazing PTO.

We encourage every student, staff member, and visitor to wear a mask while at Bush.

We can't wait to welcome our Bobcats to the 2021-2022 school year. The first day of school is Wednesday, August 11. School hours are from 8:00 AM – 3:10 PM. Students should not arrive prior to 7:30 AM. For the first week of school, all students will go to there classrooms. Students wishing to eat breakfast through the cafeteria will be able to get breakfast before heading to the classroom.

In an effort to minimize the crowds in the school during on the first day of school, please help us with these suggestions:

• If you plan to walk your child to class on the first day of school, please take pictures before entering the building.
• For those who wish to drop Bobcats off at the front door, we will have staff available to get all of our students to their classes.

Parents and guardians may walk children into school on the first day only.

Dismissal begins each day at 3:10. We will follow our normal dismissal procedures beginning on the first day of school. Our goal is to remain consistent in our routines and procedures, so we don't want to teach our students on way at the beginning of the year only to change after the first week. Please know that dismissal on the first few days of school always takes longer than usual.

For those of our families who make use of the car rider line, please know that we continue to grow in terms of student enrollment. We anticipate longer waits in the car line both for arrival and for dismissal.

Modes of Transportation

At Meet The Teacher Night, your child's teacher will ask you to complete information about your child's primary mode of transportation. Parents may choose from four modes of transportation.

1. Bus rider. (Students are eligible to ride the bus if their home is further than one mile from the school.) Bus routes are posted online on the Conroe ISD web site. (Click on Parents/Students>Transportation>Find Bus Route.) Please check the website to find your child’s bus number, pick-up/drop-off locations, and times. Students must be eligible and registered to ride the bus and may only ride the bus they are registered to ride. You can register your child at the website here. Kindergarten students will not be dropped off without an adult present at the bus stop to meet them. Parents should bring the kindergarten yellow bus sign with them to help the driver identify the guardian. The buses may run late the first couple weeks as the drivers get students to their stops.

2. Car rider. The car rider line is at the front of the school. In the mornings, cars come into the line from both directions on Crownridge. We ask that while waiting on the street you move over as far to the right as possible to let through traffic pass. Once in the school parking lot do not wait in the single lane entering the parking lot. By doing so, you will keep school staff from entering the building. When leaving the parking lot during arrival, cars must turn right. Beginning at 7:30, there will be staff on the front porch to open doors to let students out of their cars. Please have your child sit on the passenger side of the vehicle so that they can exit directly onto the front porch. After 8:00, staff members return to their instructional duties inside the building and are not available to open doors for arriving students. (Car line dismissal procedures are described in the next section below.)

3. Day Care. Day care vehicles drop off and pick up students in the back of the school with school buses. If your child will not be riding the day car bus due to an early pick-up or transportation change, please notify the day care so they know your child will not be riding that day.

4. Biker/Walker. Kindergarten and first grade students must have a parent, guardian, or designated adult present on the third and fourth grade side of the school (Crownridge side) at dismissal in order to walk or bike home.

On severe weather dismissal days, students will not walk or bike ride home. If you select biker/walker as your child's primary mode of transportation, you will need to identify a mode of transportation for severe weather dismissal.

Buses and day care buses unload and load at the back of the building.

Car lines for arrival and dismissal are at the front of the school. Student drop off begins at 7:30. There is no staff on duty to supervise students before 7:30 each morning. Arrival procedures for the car line are discussed in the section above. At dismissal, cars must enter the parking lot by turning right into the school parking lot. The car line begins before the flag pole. When forming a line, do not wait in the portion of the drive heading to the school that is a single lane wide. Please know that car line royalty spots are raffled through the PTO each year, and these cars will move to the cones at the front of the line before the beginning of dismissal.

Each student will receive transportation tags. (These are available at Teddy Bear Tea and Meet The Teacher Night.) These tags will include a bar code that are part of our dismissal process. For car line, we scan these tags to organize the dismissal process within the building. Anyone picking up a student through the car line must have a transportation tag. School staff will scan these tags as the line advances. Once your transportation tag is scanned, do not change you location in the car line as students will be dismissed in the order transportation tags are scanned.

As you move through the car line, remember these safety reminders:

• Children will load on the passenger side of the car. This lets them entry the car directly from the front porch and keeps them out of the driveway.
  

• Please wait for the line to move forward once your child has been loaded into your vehicle. For everyone’s safety, do not pull around other cars.
• Remain in your vehicle while in the car rider line.
• In order to keep the car line moving, please take the time to teach your child to unbuckle and buckle their own seat belt/safety belt. Please do not stop the line or exit your vehicle.

Cars must turn right when leaving the school driveway at dismissal. On most days, there will be a CISD Police Officer—Officer Don—on duty at the entrance to/exit from the school during dismissal.

Transportation changes must be made in writing before 2:00 PM. We cannot accept transportation changes by phone. To submit a transportation change, you may send a written note to your child's teacher or provide a not to the front office with the following information:

• the date
• your child's full name
• homeroom teacher
• bus number (if applicable)
• your signature

If an emergency arises, you may send an email to bush@conroeisd.net. The e-mail must include all of the above information, including a parent signature, and must be received before 2:00 PM. If you submit a transportation change by email, it must go to the email address referenced above. Teachers do not check their email regularly throughout the day, so transportation changes should not be emailed directly to the teacher.

Please send a new note for each day the change occurs; we cannot accept notes for multiple days or with multiple changes. District policy states that a student may only ride the bus they are registered to ride; students may not have a transportation change to ride a different bus.

Please help your student be fully prepared for their day by ensuring that they have all needed materials (i.e., backpack, lunch, and water bottle) as they arrive at school. We are unable to deliver lunches and water bottles to students. We will ensure that any student who forgot lunch is fed in the cafeteria, and we will provide water to any student who needs it.

If you need eye glasses delivered to your child, please bring them to the school. We will deliver them to your child immediately. Any class work, binders, or books dropped off at the school will be placed in the teacher's mailbox to be picked up during the day.

Delivery of flowers, balloons, and similar items students at school is not permitted.

The first regular school breakfast and lunch is free for every student in Conroe ISD this year. Additional meals can be purchased for $2.60 (breakfast) and $3.85 (lunch).

While meals are free during the school year, it is still very important for those who are eligible for free or reduced lunch to continue to submit the application during the registration or records update process. The number of students eligible for free or reduced lunch (whether they use that service or not) has the potential to affect the state accountability rating and funding for the school.

A printable version of the calendar for the 2020-2021 school year can be found online at: https://www.conroeisd.net/wp-content/uploads/2016/01/2021-2022-Calendar.pdf

All SMS messages received from the Conroe ISD District Office and your child's campus will begin with "Conroe ISD:" and come from the subscribe code 67587. If you have not yet opted-in to receive SMS messages, you can do so at any time throughout the school year by texting "Y" to 67587.

Dear Bush Bobcat Families,

We hope you are having a wonderful last few weeks of summer and are so excited to welcome families back together soon. To celebrate our community being back together, your PTO will be hosting our first Bobcat Bash sponsored by Adventure Begins! It will be held from 4:30-7:30 PM.

On August 9th, after you have the opportunity to meet with your teacher (a come and go event between 4-6 PM), plan to stick around to enjoy some delicious food and mingle with families! For our kinder families who enjoyed Teddy Bear Tea earlier in the day, head back to the school in the evening to get to know even more of our amazing families. Additional Parking is kindly being offered at Woodland Oaks Church on the corner of Alden Bridge and Crownridge.

After spending time in your classroom, head back to the cafeteria area where we will have informational tables, Spirit Wear for sale or where you can pick up your bushpto.com pre-ordered spirit items!

Food trucks will be on hand to purchase dinner and are graciously contributing a portion of their sales back to the school. In addition to some creole by Chef Seddy, tacos by Moyz Street Foods and gourmet pizzas by Refill Stafion, we will have Chick Fil A and Kona Ice available for purchase. Let the kids play on the playground while everyone enjoys our amazing DJ Becky as you get to see old friends and meet new ones! And don’t forget to check out Adventure Begins’ table to learn more about them and all of the exciting things they offer!

Please don’t hesitate to reach out with any questions to Caitlin Reeves at President@buspto.com

Thank you! Look forward to seeing you soon!
Your Bush PTO

The Conroe Independent School District does not discriminate on the basis of race, color, national origin, sex, disability, or age in its programs and activities and provides equal access to the Boy Scouts and other designated youth groups. The following persons have been designated to handle inquiries regarding these non-discrimination policies: Title IX Coordinator, 3205 W. Davis, Conroe, Texas 77304; (936)-709-7700 and the Section 504/ADA Coordinator, 3205 W. Davis, Conroe, Texas 77304; (936) 709-7670.