VPS Home-School Connection
A Resource for Families, Week of May 18th
Dear Families,
There are many updates this week and we have worked to compile them into this message to reduce the number of e-mails you receive. Please take a few minutes to read the following carefully and let us know if you have any questions.
Our learning focus this week is on Historical Fiction and Communities! This week we have a special, optional project: During this unique time in history, consider making a time capsule as a family! You will find all the details in the daily Smore pages. We hope it will be engaging and fun for you to do together...Enjoy!
Curbside Pick-Up: We recognize when school closed in the middle of March, many children left personal belongings in the school. We are happy to provide you with a time to get these using a curb-side pick-up process. Your child's teacher will be collecting the personal belongings for children in their class. Then, during the week of May 26th, we will have a curbside pick-up available for families. Please note the following schedule:
- Tuesday, May 26th: Third Grade Families
- Wednesday, May 27th: Second Grade Families
- Thursday, May 28th: Multiage Families
To help spread out the traffic on campus, we are asking families whose last name begins with letters A-L to come between 5:30 - 6:30 p.m. on your designated day and families whose last name begins with letters M-Z to come between 6:30 - 7:30 p.m. on your designated day. If you are not able to come during the designated day and time, please let your child's teacher know so other arrangements can be made.
If you have any classroom materials that need to be returned to school, including classroom books, please bring these with you to return to your child's teacher. If you are borrowing a Chromebook and/or hotspot, these will be collected at the end of June and you will be receiving more information next month.
In addition to picking up personal belongings, we will also be offering the following at the same time:
- We will have another opportunity to get library books. If your child would like more books from the library, please complete the interest form by clicking HERE. Please be sure to fill out the form by 3:00 p.m. on Monday, May 25th and complete a separate form for each child at VPS. The books will be given to you when you arrive to your teacher's designated parking area.
- If you would like to return any library books that your child is done with, there will be shelves available on sidewalks outside the main office on the bus loop and outside the dining room in the south parking lot.
- If your child has medication in the health office, you will park in the designated parking area on the bus loop, come to the marked health office window, and one of our school nurses will make sure you get it back.
- If your child lost something at school this year, we will have all of our lost and found items on the sidewalk outside the main office.
You can find a detailed map by clicking HERE or looking at the image below. This map indicates parking areas for each classroom teacher, as well as locations for medication pick up, library book returns, and lost and found items.
While this will be a time to see your child's classroom teacher, we are asking those who come to wear a mask, pull into the designated area for your child's teacher, give a wave and receive your child's belongings, and then continue on to keep the flow of traffic moving.
Budget Information: At their meeting last Thursday, our Board of Education approved a budget for the 2020-2021 school year with the focus on maintaining the current programming we offer our students. I would encourage you to review the budget information on our school district website by clicking HERE. There will be a budget hearing through the VCS Town Hall on FaceBook Live on Wednesday, May 27th at 6:30 p.m.
Because of the pandemic this year, the vote will be done by absentee ballot only. In order to vote, you MUST be registered. If you are not yet registered, you may register with the New York State Department of Motor Vehicles and it is recommended you register by May 22nd to ensure eligibility. Absentee ballots will be mailed to registered voters between May 27th and May 29th. Complete your ballot and return it in the provided return envelope. Ballots must be received by the district by June 9th. If you have any questions, please contact Maureen Goodberlet, District Clerk (goodberletm@victorschools.org).
In closing, I would like to share something with you that was shared with me this week. Knowing our children have missed time learning in school, many have expressed concern about children falling behind. Here is another important way we can look at all of this...it is the way I am choosing to look at it with my own children.
What If?
What if instead of "falling behind," this group of lockdown kids are actually ahead? Hear me out...
What if they have more empathy, enjoy family connections, can be more creative and entertain themselves, love to read, love to express themselves in writing?
What if they enjoy the simple things, like their own garden and sitting near a window in the quiet? What if they notice the birds and the dates the different flowers emerge, and the calming renewal of a gentle rain shower?
What if this generation are the ones to learn to cook, organize their space, do their laundry and keep a well-run home?
What if they learn to ride a bike, play a board game, do simple crafts, learn to bake, climb a tree, play without a screen?
What if they learn to understand the value of money, what's important and how to live with less? What if they learn to plan shopping trips and meals at home?
What if they learn the value of eating together as a family and finding the good to share in the small delights of the everyday?
What if they learn to just be: to be resilient, to be content?
What if they are the ones to place great value on our teachers and educational professionals, librarians, public servants and the previously invisible essential support workers?
What if, among these children, a great leader emerges who had the benefit of a slower pace and a simpler life to truly learn what really matters in this life?
What if they are AHEAD?
With Great Appreciation,
Jen Check
Principal, Victor Primary School