What an amazing outpouring of support we have seen from our parent community so far this year. We want to take a few minutes to share our thanks for all the hours of labor from our Helping Hands volunteers, PTO board members and room parents, the outpouring of donations for Pie Day, classroom projects and the Spoil our Teachers campaign. Best of all, we appreciate and recognize all of you who are supporting our teachers by talking to your students at home about school, assisting with schoolwork, and working with our teachers to help your child be successful. We are so blessed to have such a supportive community! We thank you and hope that you all have wonderful Thanksgiving holidays together with family and friends.

Mrs. Taylor

Winter holiday parties for classrooms will be celebrated on December 15th at designated times throughout the day and parents are invited to attend.

Party Times:

9:15 - 10:00 4th grade

10:00 - 10:45 2nd grade

10:45 - 11:30 3rd grade

11:30 - 12:15 5th grade

12:45 - 1:30 1st grade

1:30 - 2:15 Kindergarten/PK

Link to RSVP to attend - all grades

Link for Kinder and PK parents to RSVP for an early dismissal.

Attendance is very important to your child's education. Our attendance rate has a direct impact on student's learning and, ultimately, our overall accountability ratings. We know that sometimes students will need to be absent due to illness, family emergency etc. Please arrange vacations, out of town trips and doctor appointments to limit school disruption as much as possible. You can view student holidays here on the Klein ISD student calendar. When students accumulate absences at 5, 10 and 15, letters are sent to parents to keep you updated. After 18 absences, a committee must review the child's case to determine if the child needs to be retained due to absences.

It's also important for students to be on time to class. This year, the tardy bell rings at 8:10. Tardies will be entered into Skyward this year. Classes begin right after this bell rings, so student entering late are missing out on key instruction and interventions.

Process for Reporting Absences: All parent notes regarding absences must be either handwritten or reported using Skyward Family Access. Visit this link for directions on how to report an absence through the Skyward Family Access app and through the web application. You can also use Skyward Family Access to report an early dismissal request. Truancy letters are automatically generated after 3 unexcused absences in a short period of time. Please make sure to send notes through Skyward Family Access to ensure your child's absences are excused.

Attendance is tracked in 2 key ways based on laws governing school attendance. These laws require schools to inform parents when certain criteria are met. These letters are automatically generated through Skyward and will be sent home in Wednesday folders this year. What does this mean for you? Below is a general overview of both types of attendance letters that you may receive throughout this school year.

1. Compulsory Attendance: When we track attendance in this way, we are looking for students who are missing school based on benchmarks of 5, 10, 15, and 18. Even when absences are excused, we still must track how many days of instruction students are missing and evaluate at the end of the year if the amount of absences has created such instructional gaps that a student would need to be retained. Parents will receive a letter when a child reaches 5, 10, 15 and 18 absences. Administration will be reaching out to families at 10 and 15 to devise a recovery plan to recoup lost learning. At 18 absences, families will receive a "Denial of Credit" letter, meaning that the campus attendance committee will review absences and determine if retention should be considered.

2. Truancy: We track truancy by identifying students who have 3 or more unexcused absences within a short time period. This means, we have no information about why the student has not been at school, and are therefore obligated by law to investigate further. One way to avoid these letters being sent home is to submit absence requests into Skyward as soon as you know your child will be absent from school. Parents notes and medical notes are the best and easiest way to prevent truancy issues or concerns.

Letters are already begun to generate for this school year. If you have received one already, we hope that this helps clarify what you can do to help remediate attendance concerns.

If you know that your child will need to leave school early, please send a note with your child the morning of the early dismissal or submit a request through Skyward Family Access. Office staff will give your child an early dismissal pass to ensure students and teachers know what time he/she needs to report to the office so he/she is ready for pick-up. Any student waiting for more than 15 minutes will be sent back to the instructional setting until the parent arrives. Parents are required to come in and sign the child out before he/she will be allowed to leave the school. Any early dismissal requests after 2:30 may be delayed due to the start of the campus dismissal procedures.

If you have legal paperwork regarding your child's custody arrangement or regarding people who need to have restricted access to your child, please bring the original document with the judges signature to the office so we can make a copy to retain in your child's cumulative record. We follow all the legal requirements of court ordered documents, and are able to fully comply best when we have the records on file.

In December and January, we will be focusing on the A, Always Collaborate. When students collaborate they are able listen to others, share their input, compromise and determine effective solutions to their problems or challenges. Collaboration is a crucial skill for our students to develop that will prepare them for their future.

As our students are noticed for showcasing one of our core values consistently, teachers can nominate students for a special Core Value Connoisseur award.

The long awaited playground equipment from last year's fundraiser has been ordered! We are excited to have this project fully underway. At this time we do not have a specific date for install, but have been given a 10-12 week time frame. The new equipment will be installed near the gym and behind our building to create another separate playground area.

We also have an Eagle Scout working to provide us a Ga-Ga Ball pit behind the gym as well. Be on the lookout for this new addition to come to Theiss this Fall!

Thank you all for the investment you made to give back to our school. We could not do all that we are able to without the support of our parents, families and community. You are truly a blessing!

We'll post links to all the previous newsletter from this school year here!

August

September

October

November

December

January

February/March

April

May