Friday 12/2: SCHOOL IS IN SESSION (differs from 4J calendar)

Tuesday 12/6: UO test kit return

Wednesday 12/7: Equity Committee Meeting 7pm-9pm

Thursday 12/8: Ridgeline Board Meeting 6pm-8pm

Monday 12/12-Friday 12/15: Joy of Sharing

Tuesday 12/13: UO test kit return

Wednesday 12/14: RCO Planning Meeting 7pm-8pm

Monday 12/19-Monday 1/2: NO SCHOOL - Winter Break

Tuesday 1/3: NO SCHOOL - Planning day

Wednesday 1/4: Return to school refreshed and ready to learn!

Be sure to check the full calendar at https://www.ridgeline.org as some dates may change. Please note that Ridgeline’s calendar is differs slightly from 4J elementary and middle school calendars.

Snow dusted the grass at Ridgeline today, reminding us all to think about winter weather. Take a look at the front page of the Ridgeline website for Snow Day Information and be sure to send your students dressed in layers and prepared to stay warm all day.

There are many ways to use your talents and skill sets to contribute to the Ridgeline community! Read further to find out how you can pitch in to support Ridgeline School, students and families.

Once again we will collect monetary donations for Ridgeline families who need a little extra over the winter break. These funds will be used to purchase grocery gift cards. If your family would benefit from receiving Joy of Sharing assistance this year please fill out the Joy of Sharing sign-up or contact the Ridgeline office. We invite those of you who have a little extra and the capacity to give, to donate to this grocery gift card fund. You can donate anytime between now and December 15th, at noon, by clicking on the Joy of Sharing link.

Ridgeline’s famous talent show is on the calendar for Thursday, February 2nd, 2023!

This is talent show coordinator Kate Downing’s last year as a Ridgeline parent. She is joined this year by Chauncey and Sarah Mauney, who plan to take on the coordinating roles next year!

If you love music and stage, consider volunteering! We are looking to find someone who has knowledge of microphones and sound and lighting systems or someone willing to recruit help to fill these roles!

Ridgeline’s annual Talent Show is a pretty magical thing—let’s keep it going!

Email wobblykate@hotmail.com with questions.

Lost and Found items will be donated at winter break, so be sure to take a look in the boxes in the lobby and scan the playground fences to see if your child’s clothing is in the collection.

Our pantry is running low! Please bring donations of granola bars (Z bars are a favorite), pre-packaged snacks, fruit or fruit cups, and other healthy snacks to the office so we can stock the cupboards.

Through your generous donations to the food pantry, we are able to ensure students are never left hungry during lunch or snacks.

The Ridgeline Board will have its regular meeting next Thursday, December 8, from 6:00 to 8:00 pm over Zoom and in person in the library. Action items on the agenda include: Changes to online lottery, compulsory attendance, animals in school facilities, and changes to bylaws. Information items on the agenda include: Higher rate of return savings accounts and public records request. Discussion items on the agenda include: Brainstorm retreat options, municipal audit, and local wellness. The agenda will be finalized and posted here by Tuesday December 6th; the Zoom link to join is https://us02web.zoom.us/j/84542263211?pwd=ank5a0V4d05Zeno5dDRxV2lpYmQyUT09 Meeting ID: 845 4226 3211 Passcode: 709037.

You can always reach the board by email (board@ridgeline.org). Members of the public may also provide comments to the board in written form by emailing board@ridgeline.org prior to the meeting. The board will read (not aloud), review, and take into consideration all comments. In order to be fully considered at this meeting, comments must be received by noon on the day of the meeting. Please clearly label the email subject line as: "Public Comment."

Stone Soup is a fable that illustrates the importance of sharing and cooperation. Ridgeline students shared these values when they brought and prepared vegetables and ate the collective soup prepared by our wonderful volunteers.

BIG THANK YOU to Charlie Kelley, Tommy Mele, Jen Anonia, Ziwei Wang, Amy Hess, Blaise Cooper, Jennifer Rice, Marci Davis, Shikha DeFazio, Jennifer Weaver, Margie Templeton, Tamar Hurwitz, Nancy Willcox-Trent, Nasim and Talia Telebreza-May, Amber Lippert and Sarah Mauney for making the day a wonderful experience!

THANK YOU to all of the classroom volunteers who assisted our students while they chopped hundreds of vegetables for the soup! Paula Luginbuhl, Angela Zallen, Jennifer Weaver, Ashley Cissna, Blaise Cooper, Jacqueline Hurst, Megan Thompson, Ariana Schwartz, Kari Stubbert, Lindsay Smith, Ann Carney, Jessica Lynch, Shikhal and Daniel DeFazio, Amanda Bedortha, Amber Lippert, Jenny Noyce, Whitney Whiting, Destiny Gmelch, Amanda Krieger, Jennifer Weaver, and Shannon Harty, we are so grateful for your help!

THANK YOU to Great Harvest Bread Company and Ridgeline parents, Jess and Gordon Wood for their generous donation that provided bread for all the students and staff.

Thanks to an annual program organized by A3 Public High School and an extremely generous donation from Once Famous Grill, Quakers & Keith Lewis we were able to provide 15 free turkey dinners with all the trimmings to our Ridgeline families.

Thank you to Cheri Hammons, Stephanie Edwards and Tom Gannon for helping to distribute the turkey dinners!

Our Ridgeline community showed up BIG to support our students and purchase books for our classrooms! Thanks to your generosity, we were able to purchase every book on our teachers' wish lists. The students put on delightful performances, and we were able to get to know other members of our community.

Organizers appreciate your support for this event. The Ridgeline community really shows up to support our students. In the future, we will ensure that we have more space, and that the noise level is more conducive to hearing our students' performances.

THANK YOU to every single family who contributed, both by buying books at the event and adding to the Ridgeline book fund. While we can't thank everyone individually, we greatly appreciate your generosity! And many thanks to the team of volunteers that made this year's Book Fair happen.

Sign up and work toward your commitment of 40 hours of volunteering at Ridgeline!

STILL NEEDED!

• Crossing guards are needed to help guide Ridgeline students as they cross West Amazon to and from the amazon trail. Volunteers are needed daily at 8-8:30 am and 3-3:20 pm.Safety vests and stop signs provided. Sign-up for any number of mornings and/or afternoons on Track it Forward

• Traffic Guides for the Drop off/Pick up Loop! Please sign-up to come help guide families safely as they pick-up and drop-off their children.
  

Site Council Minute Taker

• The Site Council meets once a month from 6:00-7:30 at the school. The purpose of the site council is to gather insight from school stakeholder groups to guide leadership with decision making. We are currently in need of a minute taker for the rest of the school year.
  
• The minute taker is a nonvoting member that takes key notes during the meetings including decisions that are made, plans created, and action items that need to be completed. If you are interested please contact Becky Fay.
  

If you would like to volunteer, go to the Volunteer Page of our website and review what is required.

Fill out a background check form if you have not done so in the last five years.

See instructions at the bottom of the eNews for more information on how to sign up and track your hours with Track it Forward.

Oregon is experiencing rapidly increasing RSV (respiratory syncytial virus) activity.

On Monday, November 14th, Governor Kate Brown issued an emergency declaration (Executive Order) in response to a surge of pediatric cases and hospitalizations of respiratory viruses, including RSV. The declaration will give hospitals more flexibility to staff beds for children, draw on a pool of medical volunteer nurses and doctors, and take other steps to provide care to pediatric patients.

RSV is a common virus that causes cold-like symptoms including runny nose, cough, fever, trouble breathing and loss of appetite.

RSV can cause severe illness, especially in children under 2 years old (especially infants under 6 months) and older adults.

With flu and COVID-19 cases also expected to rise this winter, we encourage everyone to take steps to prevent and reduce the spread of respiratory viruses, including RSV. Ridgeline’s Communicable Disease and Management Plans are available on the website. The school continues to implement preventative measures to reduce the risk of illness and monitor attendance closely.

Effective preventative measures that you can take are:

• Washing hands thoroughly and frequently
  
• Keeping high-touch surface areas clean and regularly disinfected
  
• Keeping children out of school when they are sick
  
• Wearing a mask indoors in public places throughout the RSV season
  

Tuesday, December 6th after school, between 3-4

Meet at the empty lot next to Tiny Dragon Acupuncture

Wear red, or some version of red.

Bring a sign if you can, if you can’t, you can still come and walk with us.

Why is this important?

East and West Amazon are the main corridors for students from Charlemagne, Ridgeline, Roosevelt and South High as well as employees and students of the University. Being on bike or foot amidst moving traffic is a vulnerable position. And yet, those who travel these roads frequently see cars traveling well beyond the marked speed limit. Some of these are service vehicles that may be from out of town and don’t seem to be aware that this is a school zone. Let’s walk together after school on Tuesday to show our concern and ask for the city to extend more support to this popular commuting corridor. This walk is simply a way of expressing our desire for solutions whether they be flashing crosswalks, or police patrolling or speed bumps. The actual solutions can be decided upon once we make it clear as neighbors that we see a problem and we want it fixed. Please share with others.

Meeting the third Tuesday of each month:

With the holidays fast approaching, we are receiving emails about planned trips. If your students will be absent for a planned trip, please fill out the Planned Absence Request Form.

Please note that trips of more than five missed school days will result in unexcused absences, and trips longer than 10 missed school days will not be approved, and result in your student being unenrolled due to the 10-day drop requirement. If your student is unenrolled, you will need to reapply for the lottery.

Please use this link to ask to join: https://www.facebook.com/groups/604057500592213. Please take a minute to answer the questions and read over the rules of the group and we’ll get you in as soon as possible. This is a peer run community group for the parents and guardians of Ridgeline Montessori. This group's purpose is to provide connections, share information, ask questions and facilitate conversations. This group is not managed by Ridgeline staff nor does it include members of Ridgeline staff. (Exception would be if a staff member is also a parent).

Ridgeline students spend time outdoors, rain or shine, but that means we sometimes need to lend them clean clothes when theirs get soiled!! We are in need of versatile pants (especially leggings and athletic pants in gender neutral colors) in all sizes, youth size 5 through adult small/medium. When your student arrives home in borrowed school clothes, we appreciate it if they are laundered and returned as soon as possible. Please bring clean clothing donations to the office!

Ridgeline, we are one in community, and we need your help. Pick-Up and Drop-off times are a challenging sequence of events for the school day. We need all adults to work together to create an experience that is as smooth as possible and models Ridgeline’s Core Values. Please pull all the way forward, regardless of where your students attend class. Direct your vehicle with intention and care to model safety. Lastly, if your student requires your help to exit or enter the car, please park your vehicle on the street to help facilitate the smooth car line we all appreciate.

Should your student develop COVID-19 symptoms while at school, Ridgeline has BinaxNOW rapid tests available. These tests will only be administered if you have completed the Oregon Health Authority waiver and returned it to the school.

Rapid PCR testing is available at two local sites through Curative. Check their website to sign up for a testing time. Results are generally available in approximately 2 hours. They also offer other testing and services.

Ridgeline will continue to utilize Track it Forward for volunteer sign-ups and to log your volunteer hours. If you are new to Ridgeline or have not yet created an account, please do so! Last year we had a lot of folks forget to log their hours. Volunteer hour reporting is important for us to show support for Ridgeline when applying for grants and for reporting to our sponsoring district.

• Track It Forward app can be added to your phone!

If you are a first-time Track It Forward user and have not set up an account you will need to create an account first. If you already have an account, skip to step two.

Step One:

Go to https://www.trackitforward.com/site/ridgeline-montessori

Select sign in

Create your account.

Step Two:

Go to the app store on your device and search for Track It Forward.

Download the app

Log In

You are all set!