We have had quite the week at Wasco! I stepped into our Empower classes and encountered a BUZZ of activity. Our students have been transformed into storytellers utilizing puppets, filming, and stop motion. All week long students have thrilled us with their imagination and tickled us with their innovation and humor. Props are popping up all over. I have provided some samples of the work in progress and look forward to sharing future project developments. Students will be working on the Show it Off Module up until Spring Break and families can view final projects on their child's Empower schoology page.

In other exciting news, we have 240 people attending our PTO Bowling party on Sunday. Because of the huge response, the event was expanded and now there are two sessions. I can’t wait for parents to come have fun with their child’s friends and families! Thank you to the Wasco PTO for providing an opportunity for us to have fun outside of the school environment!

Kind Regards,

Principal Brennan

March 13 PTO Bowling Event

March 23 Early Release at 2:10pm

March 28 Spring Break

April 4 Students Return from Spring Break

Apples, bananas, carrots and celery...oh my! The Wasco Wellness Team has created a class challenge for all grade levels to promote eating healthy snacks during the school day. The contest will be Monday, March 14 - March 25, 2022. Each class will receive a tally sheet to record the fruits and vegetables eaten during snack time. Students may, of course, bring other healthy snacks; however, the only food that counts for this challenge is fruits, vegetables and applesauce. The contest will last for 2 weeks. The winning class in each grade level will get a free extra recess arranged by their teacher. The overall winning class in the school gets to choose and play their favorite PE activity during PE class.

Thank you for encouraging your students to bring healthy snacks to school.

PTO is hosting a Scholastic book fair in the LRC NEXT WEEK! This will be the first time that students have browsed a book fair in person since March 2020! We are so excited to bring the excitement of new books (and smells.... yes, books smell great!) to Wasco School!

Here are the details:

1. Students will browse the book fair in the LRC during the time their teacher sign up for. This will be a time for your child to create a wish list to bring home for families.

2. Students will NOT shop or bring money during the wish list browsing days Monday-Wednesday.

3. There are three ways in which families may purchase books-

1. Order online- Families can order books online from our Scholastic Book Fair Site. Students can share their wish list with families to buy items from their wish list. All online books will ship to home for free with orders of $25. Note that orders with any toys/trinkets can not ship for free, therefore, can be purchased in a separate order to avoid extra shipping costs on books.

2. eWallet funded linked here- For this method of shopping, students would first share their wish list with families and then families will load money onto the eWallet. Please add 7% for taxes. If a student has any leftover money in their eWallet, funds will be transferred to a Scholastic gift card for future fairs or can be spent at the family event on Friday. Students will subsequently return their wish lists to the LRC (through the classroom teacher) with titles to purchase clearly marked or circled and PTO/LRC will fulfill orders directly from the fair and bring purchased books to the students.

3. Please attend the Book Fair Event for in person shopping. Friday, March 18th to shop after school from 5:00-8:00pm! More details to follow. This will take place in the Community Room.

5. interactive flier

6. Teacher wish lists will have a special trifold display during the book fair. Families may treat your children's class to new books for their classroom library!

As part of the district’s equity audit, parent 1 hour focus groups will be held across the district via Zoom during the month of April to give families an opportunity to share their thoughts on our district’s strengths, areas of need, and long-term opportunities for providing the best educational experience for all students. Focus groups will be constructed and led by our partners in the equity audit process- the Consortium for Educational Change (CEC). There will be morning and evening focus groups available for parents. Every school’s goal is to have 15 families agree to participate in a focus group. During the week of March 21st, a member of our school staff will begin calling parents from a document with families’ names listed in random order to invite prospective participants to be part of a focus group. All parents are welcome to email your own written responses to the focus group questions to CEC should you not be selected to participate in a focus group but desire to share your opinions (A list of the focus group questions and a place for submitting your answers to them will be posted on the district website beginning April 4th). We thank you for your commitment to equity in education, and we are excited about this next step in gathering the voices of our district so that we can create a comprehensive plan to move forward. If you have any questions regarding the focus group process, please contact our Director of Diversity, Equity, & Inclusion, Dr. Tracy Taylor, at tracy.taylor@d303.org.

Feb. 28-March 4 is Read Across America week! To celebrate, the elementary LRC directors are kicking off a district-wide book competition called March Book Madness 2022. Each week, throughout the month of March, students will view books that have been recorded by the elementary LRC Directors and Youth Services Librarians at the St. Charles Public Library. Students will use Google Forms to vote for their favorite of two books, eliminating books in a bracket-style competition. All students will have the chance to participate in this fun reading promotion. The winner will be announced March 25th!

Full district bracket here. Read alouds are linked on each title. Titles will move as voting takes place each week.

Schools within each division are:

1= Corron, Lincoln, Norton Creek

2= Wild Rose, Ferson Creek

3= Wasco, Anderson, Bell Graham

4= Munhall, Davis, Richmond

Our PTO has openings for Treasurer and Secretary. You can use the PTO’s Website (link here) to learn more about their work and find contact information. Individuals interested in serving should contact any of our current board members (contact information listed on PTO site). The election will occur at the May 9th PTO meeting.

Website- Please visit our brand-new website at the link below. We are working very hard to get this to be a great resource for all things PTO. This is going to be our main source of communication from here on out. We will be posting the most up to date information here.

https://sites.google.com/d303. org/wascopto/home

Email- We will still continue to send emails as needed

Freshschools- Please send an email to one of the following board members to get added to this communication platform. This is a great way to be able to get in touch with other student's parents.

Shannon or Scott Von Essen: WascoPTOPresident@gmail.com

Alison Sweet: WascoPTOVicepresident@gmail. com

Misti Floyd: WascoPTOSecretery@gmail.com

Heidi Hastert: WascoPTOTreasurer@gmail.com

Shannon Martin: sm3martin@gmail.com (Executive Fundraiser)

Please reach out with any questions you may have to any of the executive members above.

Thank You all for your continued support.

Wasco Elementary PTO