Welcome to the 2022-23 school year! This week's newsletter is the first message distributed to our 2022-23 family of students, staff, and parents. This is also the first newsletter distributed to all students, staff, and parents using our new Home-School communication tool, Parent Square. For past issues of this newsletter and my weekly messages to our community, visit the archives here.

Register your Parent Square account here. Or, install the Parent Square app (find links below) on your phone and follow the prompts to register. All students, staff, and parents will receive school communications even if you have not registered your account. However, you will need to register your account in order to participate in two-way communications and to access any confidential student-specific documents or forms. Please register today.

We introduced the Parent Square platform last year, but chose to take the year to transition from Blackboard Connect to Parent Square. Learn all about Parent Square for parents here. Find answers to the following frequently asked questions below:

1. How do I sign up for ParentSquare?
2. How do I fix or change my contact details?
3. How do I add a student who's missing in my account?
4. How do I change my language preference?
5. How do I change or stop notifications?
6. Need more help?

On behalf of the Board of Education, welcome to all of our incoming students and their families joining the Alvord family for the first time.....and welcome back everyone who is returning.

Supporting Service Organizations that Support Youth

Students from Hillcrest High School volunteered for last weekend's Corona Rotary Lobsterfest. The annual event is held by our community partner, the Corona Rotary, on behalf of our region's youth and the many organizations that support them.

This past week, Alma Perez, Bianca Rangel, Belen Robeldo, Perla Rivera, and Juana Gabriela Lopez Arreola, all Alvord parents, presented to the Binational Parent Leadership Institute, hosted by Mr. Ted Alejandre, San Bernardino County Superintendent of Schools. The focus of the presentation was raising parent awareness for children's mental wellbeing. Our parent leaders also presented at the National Community Schools and Family Engagement Conference this past week. The focus of that presentation was building meaningful school-community partnerships with parents and other partners involved in youth development

We have been awarded a 2022-23 planning grant to build a network of community schools in Alvord. The purpose of the planning grant is to develop a community school implementation plan in the image of a "whole-child" school improvement strategy. Our first step is to assemble a community partners task force to develop the plan.

We aim for our schools to be the heart of the communities in which they reside, uniting diverse and engaged partners to strengthen the school community to more effectively support the whole child. Students learn best when they are taught in environments that make them feel safe, valued, engaged, challenged and healthy.

The following four primary components of community schools are designed to remove barriers to college, career, and success so that students can become contributing members and leaders in our communities:

• Integrated support services (academic, physical, mental and behavioral health);
• Family and community engagement;
• Collaborative leadership and practices for educators and administrators; and
• Extended learning time and opportunities.

Stay tuned to this space for more details, including how to get involved with the task force.

Join the CSUSB Entrepreneurship summer camp and explore the fundamentals of entrepreneurship. It's four days filled with video instruction and live interactive sessions. You will receive 20 hours of intense entrepreneurial insights, develop skills to learn to think like an entrepreneur, discover how to launch your dream venture, and what it means to live and breathe innovation. It's from June 21st - June 23rd and either June 24th live on the CSUSB Campus or June 25th live at the Palm Desert iHub. Watch the brief video below. Learn more about this program or sign up here.

On behalf of the Board of Education, we look forward to serving both our first-time and our returning students and their families this coming school year.

How can we help you? Let us know.

Stay healthy. Be well.

In partnership,

Allan Mucerino

Data for the week ending Friday, June 10:

Reported a Positive Test:

• 8 students (down from 10 the previous week)
• 2 staff members (up from 0 the previous week)

Contact Tracing:

• 75 people identified (up from 57 the previous week)
• 2 people placed in full quarantine (down from 12 the previous week)

Overall, as of June 10, including the entire 2021-22 school year, we have had 3,450 students and 450 staff members report a positive test for COVID-19. Stay current with our case rate by regularly tracking our COVID-19 Data Dashboard and FAQ here. Cases recorded on the Dashboard are confirmed by Riverside County Public Health officials and remain on the Dashboard for 14 days.

During the week ending June 10, in Riverside County, there were 2,087 new cases (0.3% increase), equating to 24.4 cases per 100K (7-day average), 1 new death (0.02% increase), and a 12.4% test positivity (7-day rate), which is a 0.9% increase from 7-days prior. Since many people are now testing at home with antigen rapid tests, the positivity rate is estimated to be much higher since all cases are not reported. There are currently 98 COVID-19 hospitalized patients, 4 fewer patients hospitalized from prior day total (3.9% decrease).

According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention's newly created Community Level COVID-19 rating system, the community level in Riverside County remains Low. The Community Levels are a new tool to help communities decide what prevention steps to take based on the latest data. Levels can be low, medium, or high and are determined by looking at hospital beds being used, hospital admissions, and the total number of new COVID-19 cases in an area.

This data is as of June 10, 2022, as reported on the State's tracking web site.