OUR GRAY HAWK FAMILY works together to help students feel safe, loved, and inspired so they can be empowered learners and engaged citizens.

Our Incoming Kindergarten Parent Information Night will be Tuesday, March 22 from 6:30-7:30 p.m. Please note, this is a parent/guardian only meeting. Here we will share information about our school, enrollment process, PTO, health forms, round-up assessments, & what kindergarten looks like. We hope to answer as many questions as you may have.

Please bring with you: 1. Copy of official birth certificate; 2. If new to the district, Proof of residency (water or sewer bill in your name)

We would love to have OUR GRAY HAWKS join in on the Monday that we return (MARCH 21) by doing any of the following:

• Wear crazy socks
• Discuss the videos that your child will see about Down Syndrome that day

Your child will also be wearing a sticker to recognize this special day and we will be featuring a new person each day on the announcements with Down Syndrome to bring their story and contributions to the forefront.

We ask that during this time, you please not schedule your third, fourth, or fifth grader for any outside appointments during their testing day. We also ask that you make it a priority that they get plenty of rest the night before their tests, as well as eat a nutritious breakfast on those days as well. Thank you for your support with this.

There is a letter to all 3rd, 4th, and 5th grade parents that may be viewed at this link. It was also sent out via Skyward on March 14, 2022.

This week for our featured books we’ll take a look at some books about women that were instrumental in getting an amendment passed which gave women the right to vote. In 1868, 3 years after slavery was made illegal, the 14th amendment passed that ALL MEN over the age of 21 should be able to vote. In 1870 the 15th amendment passed that the right to vote can not be denied based on a person’s race. It wasn’t until 1920 that an amendment passed that allowed women that same right. It should be noted however that in the Wyoming Territory they allowed women to vote in 1869, the only area that did this! Again, thanks to the determination of a woman!

Our featured story this week is When Esther Morris Headed West: Women, Wyoming and the Right to Vote by Connie Nordheim Woolridge. This book is a biography of the first female judge in the United States tells the remarkable tale of how, back in 1869, she fought for a women's right to vote and she believed that a woman could hold a public office. If you get a chance to read about this remarkable woman, you should.

As a part of our commitment to ensuring that our students are exposed to the contributions of people of color and from different backgrounds, we kicked off this past week by giving daily clues to a famous person from history that has made our world a better place. This past week, the students heard the following clues:

• Her intense curiosity and brilliance with numbers vaulted her ahead several grades in

school. By 13, she was attending the high school on the campus of historically black West

Virginia State College.

This person was an American mathematician whose calculations of orbital mechanics

as a NASA employee were critical to the success of the first and subsequent

spaceflights.

• In 1962, as NASA prepared for the orbital mission of John Glenn, this person was called

upon to do the work that she would become most known for. The computers had been

programmed with the orbital equations that would control the trajectory of the capsule from

liftoff to splashdown, but the astronauts were wary of putting their lives in the care of the

electronic calculating machines, which were prone to hiccups and blackouts. As a part of

the preflight checklist, Glenn asked engineers to “get the girl—to run the same numbers

through the same equations that had been programmed into the computer, but by hand, on

her desktop mechanical calculating machine. “If she says they’re good,’” “then I’m ready to

go.” Glenn’s flight was a success, and marked a turning point in the competition between

the United States and the Soviet Union in space.

• When asked to name her greatest contribution to space exploration, she would talk about the calculations that helped synch Project Apollo’s Lunar Module with the lunar-orbiting Command and Service Module. She also worked on the Space Shuttle and the Earth Resources Technology Satellite (named Landsat) and authored or coauthored 26 research reports. She retired in 1986, after 33 years at Langley. “I loved going to work every single day,” she said. In 2015, at age 97, President Obama awarded her the Presidential Medal of Freedom, America’s highest civilian honor.

I wanted to take a moment to give everyone a heads up that in April, Gray Hawk will be offering a community viewing of the 60 minute documentary Resilience followed by conversations with parents, teachers, and other community members to see how we can work together to better understand toxic stress and work together to support our children and each other! We do not have a date set at this time, but will decide upon a time the week we return and send it out. We hope to see you there. Please check out the trailer below for more information.