Cedar Grove Friday Flash
September 4, 2020
Dear Cedar Grove Families,
As we conclude our first week of school, it was wonderful to reconnect with your children and visit them in their virtual classrooms. They have been busy meeting old and new friends, learning class schedules and routines, and learning how to access classes and navigate the technology. Although there have been a few glitches and some challenges, we are so proud of our school staff members who worked with students and their families to provide assistance with questions or solve some of the problems that surfaced. We especially want to thank you for your patience as we worked together to solve these issues.
Next week, we begin full day classes with the exception of Wednesday afternoons, which will be a time for your child to complete teacher assigned work independently. Your child will be adding Social Studies, Art, Music, and PE to his or her day and there will be increased time frames for Math and Reading. Please be sure to view your child's schedule on the teacher's myMCPS Classroom. As a reminder, there is no school on Monday, September 7.
We understand that there is a lot of information that our families are receiving, and we will continue to update our Start the Virtual School Year page on our school website and communicate information via this weekly newsletter, teacher newsletters, and connect ed messages.
One important and time sensitive item needing your attention is the yearly application for Free and Reduced-price Meals System (FARMS). Online applications is the fastest way to apply for FARMS and may be completed at MySchoolApps. This link is also posted on our website under Quick Links. Paper applications are also available by parent request. Applications must be completed by October 13, 2020. For additional information, please click here to access this year's Food and Nutrition Services Program guidelines and application process.
Thank you for helping to make this a successful and smooth first week of school. Please do not hesitate to contact us if we can assist you in any way. Have a wonderful weekend!
Mr. Derby and Mrs. German
Important Information Regarding Your Child's Attendance
Parents, there are some important changes to reporting your child's attendance during this time of distance learning. Students are expected to attend all live virtual learning classes in which they are enrolled. However, in some instances, this may not be possible due to illness or extenuating circumstances. If a particular class lesson is missed, students may then access the recording of the class lessons to engage in the daily learning during an alternate time within 72 hours of the absence. Please note that lessons are not accessible after the 72 hours. Parents/Guardians may then submit a Live Virtual Lesson Absence Form to document that their child engaged in the lesson and to request the unexcused absence to be reconciled to Present. If extenuating circumstances exist, parents/guardians are encouraged to communicate with the school’s administration ahead of time. The Live Virtual Lesson Absence Form must be completed for each documented absence.
Parents/students may view a short video on how to access missed/recorded lessons by clicking on this link: https://youtu.be/9zZ_9GYyOTg.
In addition, parents are asked to continue the practice of reporting their child's absence online. If your child will be absent for one or more days, please let his/her teacher and the office staff know by submitting the form linked below:
Both of these forms are located on our school website in the green "Quick Links" box and by clicking on Attendance.
Meal Service
MCPS will transition to a more traditional food service program this fall, starting on Monday, Aug. 31, the first day of the 2020-2021 school year. Breakfast and lunch meals will be provided to MCPS students at 74 meal sites; the closest meal site to our school is Hallie Wells Middle School. A student must be enrolled in an MCPS school to receive these meals. This curbside meal service will be provided from 11 a.m. – 1 p.m., Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday and Friday (no meal service on Thursday). Students/families will need their student identification number in order to pick up a meal. Standard meal prices will be charged and students who receive Free and Reduced-price Meals (FARMS) will continue to pay reduced rates. Payment will come from a student’s lunch account.
Meal prices are as follows:
- Breakfast: Regular Price: $1.30; Reduced Price: No Cost
- Lunch: Regular Price: $2.55; Reduced Price: 20 cents
Families can pick up meals at any of the 74 sites. MCPS is mailing this information home to all families, along with student ID numbers. The district will also continue to partner with local nonprofits, faith-based organizations, county government agencies and others to provide food and other critical resources to the community. Additionally, families are encouraged to visit Montgomery County's COVID-19 Food Resource page for additional resources.
Tech Tips and Reminders
During virtual learning, we will provide you with a few technology tips and reminders to help you with issues that may arise. Every week, we will add new tech tips to our Friday Flash Tech Tips 2020 slide deck to help you solve or prevent some issues that we encounter throughout the school day. You may want to bookmark this so that you always have it handy!
A message from our PTA president:
Cedar Grove PTA would like to welcome back our returning families! To our kindergarten families: Welcome to our community!
We hope this first week of the 2020-2021 Distance Learning school year hasn’t been too frustrating for parents and students. Our teachers and school administration have been committed and working tirelessly to keep up with the continuing changes that are occurring in MCPS due to COVID-19.
Also, we are excited to announce that we are transitioning to a new tool for communications, school directory, online sales, volunteer sign-ups, online calendar, and so much more. It is currently under construction and will be available for all parents starting October 1. We will be emailing you an invite to access everything our PTA has to offer for this upcoming school year. So be on the lookout!
For our PTA to be successful we need your help! Because of the Maryland PTA guidelines of no online voting, unfortunately things have been a bit at a standstill for us. We are doing our best to work around this; however, we need parent support. We lost many of our PTA volunteers during our recent boundary cut last year. Additionally, due to the recent Covid-19 circumstances, we have lost many more volunteers including board members.
In the same way our teachers and staff help grow and nurture our children, now is the time for us as parents to nurture our school and staff, even if it’s from a distance.
So please keep a look-out for our upcoming emails in early October.
We are looking forward to a wonderful school year!
Sincerely,
Jessica Carter
Cedar Grove Elementary PTA President
From Mrs. Hirschhorn, Media Specialist
Welcome to a wonderful new school year -- please bookmark the Media Center Monthly (see link below), as it is always going to be full of information that may make your connections to our virtual learning easier. I'm thrilled to see that all of our students have accepted the invitation to our Virtual Media Center and hope that you and your students will avail yourselves to the Morning News Blast as well as the many resources I've loaded into that course! By the way, I am still looking for book cover recreations, and I'd like to just give you a taste of what I've received so far!
Please read important information below about your child's Google password:
Parents, Mrs. Hirschhorn your media specialist is asking for a favor! Although we understand that students may want to change their Google Chrome password, please explain to your children that they may not change their Google Chrome passwords and must use the password centrally assigned to them by MCPS. This is also the logon information that gives them access to other MCPS applications, such as Destiny. But unfortunately, not all the apps will update the password just because the Chrome password is changed.
More importantly, the problem is that we do not get a report of the newly changed password. This means we cannot help students if they forget a changed password. We want our students to be able to access their accounts, so thank you for having a conversation with your Cedar Grove students about this!