As we come to the close of the first semester and 2021, we want to say thank you for your help, understanding, patience and support this year. Students will be dismissed at 10:45 a.m. on Friday, Dec. 17 for the winter break. We hope our families have a wonderful holiday season, and our students and staff will return refreshed from the much-deserved winter break.

The Cheatham County School District's new transportation facility is almost finished. The facility is on Sweethome Road behind Sycamore High School. It will replace our current facility on Thompson Road in Ashland City. This project has been in the works for many years and is needed as the current location is in a floodplain. The Cheatham County Commission approved the funding for this project in November 2020. We plan to host a ribbon-cutting ceremony at the new facility in January.

The Ashland City Civitan Club hosted its annual Christmas Anonymous on Dec. 11, and thanks to the community’s generosity, more than 400 children received toys, books, games, coats, stuffed animals, bags of candy and more. Christmas Anonymous has been serving the community for more than 40 years. It provides a helping hand to families who are faced with economic challenges. A special thank you goes out to Soles4Souls and Macy's for providing hundreds of coats and the American Legion and Ashland City Lions Club for sponsoring the coats. Sycamore Middle School serves as the site for the Christmas Anonymous store, where families shop for their gifts. As they have done for more than 20 years, members of the SMS National Beta Club provided candy bags. Many of our middle and high school students, along with Civitan Club members, set up for the store on the afternoon of Dec. 10.

With the wintry weather season approaching quickly, we want to remind families of our inclement weather policy. Inclement weather closures are made when we determine that not all students can safely be transported to school. Our buses travel through every part of the county, and road conditions may vary by location. Should we make the decision to close schools due to weather, families will be notified via an automated phone call and email. The closure will also be posted on the district’s Facebook, Twitter and Instagram accounts and website as well as shared with the Nashville TV stations. If possible, we will notify families about school closures or delays the night before. If the decision to close school is made overnight, parents and staff can expect to receive a phone call early in the morning. Our goal is to notify parents by 5 a.m.

We made a switch in November in our mass notification system. We are now using Blackboard in order to let you know about emergency situations, school closings, school updates and more. We use the contact information from your child's registration and/or emergency cards to send out these notifications via phone, text and email. Please ensure that your contact information (phone numbers and email addresses) is up-to-date by calling your child’s school. Also, please contact your child's school if you are not currently receiving these notifications.

We are hosting our second STEAM (Science, Technology, Engineering, Arts and Mathematics) event on Saturday, Jan. 22. The 2022 Speed Derby for students in grades K-8 will be held from 9 a.m. to noon at Ashland City Elementary STEM Academy, 108 Elizabeth St. in Ashland City. Check out the flyer for additional information and scan the QR code to register.

Cheatham County is blessed with a multitude of agencies and organizations that provide a wide variety of support for families. Last year, we compiled a Community Resource Guide to help families know about the services that are available in the county. The resource guide is one of the initiatives in the Partnerships and Community Engagement strand of the district’s five-year plan. A copy of the 2021-22 guide is available here. We will update the list as needed. If a resource needs to be added to the guide, please contact Communications Director Tim Adkins at tim.adkins@ccstn.org.

We want to remind our families that they can pay online for just about anything school related (such as school meals, yearbooks, daycare, club/organization events, laptops, etc.) via our RevTrak payment system. We have individual school links on the district website. To access the RevTrak system, click here. Please note that due to scheduled maintenance, all web stores and RevTrak admin portals will be offline from Friday, Dec. 17 at 9 p.m. to Saturday, Dec. 18 at approximately 12 p.m.

We announced earlier this year that we have launched a new educational resource video series to assist our families with their child’s learning. In our “Better Together” series, we share tips, strategies and resources on how families can work with their children outside of the classroom. These videos are published on our social media pages (Facebook, Twitter and Instagram) as well as on our “Cheatham County School District” YouTube channel and district website. To watch all of our videos, click here.

Students will return to school on Tuesday, Jan. 4 to begin the second semester of the 2021-22 school year. Report cards for the second nine-weeks grading period will be released on Friday, Jan. 7. Additionally, schools and the central office will be closed Monday, Jan. 17 for Martin Luther King Jr. Day.

We encourage everyone to protect themselves against the flu virus this year by getting vaccinated. Vaccination is the best way to protect against the flu and severe complications from the flu. Flu vaccines can be administered at a variety of places such as private physician’s offices, walk-in clinics, pharmacies and health departments. Also, while we are out of school for winter break, we encourage our families to clean their children’s personal items such as backpacks, lunch boxes and water bottles to help prevent the spread of germs.