Like so many of you, I believe that having actively engaged parents is critical to improving student achievement. Research shows that parent involvement improves student achievement. When parents are involved, children do better in school, and that is why our parent engagement initiatives are geared towards helping us increase parent involvement in all its forms:

• Parenting

• Communicating

• Volunteering

• Learning at home

• Decision-making

• Collaborating with the Community

One area that our staff has always been particularly proud of is the amazing fundraising support we get each year from so many of our families!

As a reminder, all money raised is used to provide student field trips, assemblies, incentives for student achievements, intramural sports and instructional materials for our school. Each year, we have been able to provide every classroom with an educational field trip, brought in character education and enrichment assemblies for our students, and provided additional instructional supplies for our classrooms!

Our phenomenal Parent Faculty Organization (PFO) spearheads our efforts each year and I am thrilled that we choose to provide our families experiences like Trunk or Treat and Rainbow Runs rather than cookie dough or candy bar sales to raise funds. I was also overjoyed to see so many join us at our first PFO meeting this year and look forward to everyone joining our PFO membership drive -- just think, for the price of a cup of coffee you can make a huge impact for our kids -- be sure to become a member this month! Again, on behalf of all of us here at Edison, thank you for your support!

As always, I look forward to hearing from you. You are always welcome to stop by my office, just call ahead and the door will open.

We are excited to be on pace to exceed our overall attendance target this year! Each day we stress the importance of coming to school and that coming everyday is part of being a responsible Bobcat! Remember families, you should send your child to school if they:

• have a runny nose or just a little cough, but no other symptoms.

• haven’t taken any fever reducing medicine for 24 hours, and they haven’t had a fever during that time.

• haven’t thrown up or had any diarrhea for 24 hours.

Thank you parents for making attendance a priority everyday. Together we are making a difference! (Used with permission from Attendance Works)

Edison has once again been recognized as a Gold Level Award winner in California! The California PBIS Coalition recognizes schools each year for exceptional work with Positive Behavior Interventions and Supports (PBIS) to improve the culture on campus for students and staff. PBIS is a process for creating safer and more effective schools, and we are fortunate here at Edison to have a hard working and committed team leading the development of our systems including: Mrs. Stearns, Mrs. Zajicek, Mrs. Birdwell, Mrs. Eberle, Mrs. Vo, and Ms. el-Rhashid. Special thanks to our PBIS Coach and Mentor Ms. Espinoza for leading our amazing PBIS team, and our amazing staff for implementing our systems school wide.

Are you interested in enhancing your children’s health and well-being, ease traffic congestion near our school, improve air quality and improve community members’ overall quality of life? Then you need to join us for our upcoming Walking Safety Assessment on September 19. During this first step of our Safe Routes to School initiative we will tour the streets surrounding our school with our City of Ontario Active Transportation Master Plan team (ATMP) to identify safety concerns around the school. Following the walk, we will have a debrief discussion where the Ontario ATMP team will document comments received and prioritize concerns. The Safe Routes to School (SRTS) program is an opportunity to make walking and bicycling to school safer while also easing traffic congestion near our school. You can learn more at Get Around Ontario

Edison Academy has gone social; social media that is - @edison_academy. We use this additional outlet to share timely reminders, announcements, and even snippets or snapshots of learning and fun on our campus with you. These short messages are not intended to replace our other forms of communication but rather intended to add another layer of communication about Edison. So, while social media has proven to be a great tool for institutions like us to share reminders and snapshots of what’s happening here, it is not the best tool for us to use when it comes to discussing individual students or situations. Thank you in advance for being mindful of student privacy and continuing to contact us directly; either in person, by phone, or email when you have any questions or concerns.