Parks Press for Parents
Rosa Parks/Millbrook ISSDA
January 10-14, 2022
Our Vision: Every Student a Success!
Our Mission: Building Children, Character, and Community Everyday!
Thank You!
Thank you for making the necessary adjustments to support our efforts to continue teaching and learning in the safest and healthiest way possible last week as remote learning was deemed necessary by our district administration.
Thank you for not holding our teachers and staff responsible for the decision to move to remote learning, but understanding that was not a decision that was made lightly nor at the campus level.
Thank you for understanding that our teachers and staff at RPM work tirelessly to help our children, parents, and community.
Thank you for understanding that our teachers and staff want in-person learning, and believe that our scholars need positive relationships with school staff members and their peers to grow, learn, and be successful.
Thank you for respecting our educators for the professionals that they are. Thank you for respecting their efforts to follow the protocols and expectations they are given.
We all wear masks for the safety of everyone who functions within our building and school community. This includes our teachers and their families.
Thank you for trusting our teachers expertise and knowing that their desire is to help our students learn and grow. Thank you for understanding that teaching and learning in a pandemic is a huge task. It is a process, and we all must trust the process and work through it together as a team.
Thank you for your patience as we may have to pivot to remote learning in the future. Thank you for understanding that teachers also have to find childcare when teaching in-person or virtually.
At the end of the day, I want to thank you for assuming the best. Thank you for understanding that we are working hard to avoid virtual instruction. We are making real time adjustments, working without subs or coverage, all the while fighting to maintain a healthy and safe status ourselves.
Thank you for understanding that we are doing all we can to keep up with all the changes and making the best decisions for your children and our community.
Thank you for partnering with us to build children, character, and community everyday in a safe and healthy way.
We Are One,
Yvonne M. Thornton
Parks Principal
School Hours are 8:00 a.m. - 3:50 p.m. Doors open at 7:30 a.m. Please, do not drop off students before 7:30 a.m.
Preparing to Return to In-Person Learning
- All students and staff are to wear masks when on school premises.
- Students are expected to return with their checked-out device and power cord in the bag supplied.
- Instruction begins at 8:00am.
- Students are expected to be in uniform. (Shirts tucked, belted pants, masks worn properly.
- Ensure that students have all learning materials and are well-rested and ready to learn.
- Breakfast is served in the classroom from 7:30-7:55am.
Dismissal
Students will not be released to anyone from any doors during actual dismissal. If there should happen to be a change with your student's dismissal, due to emergency, our front office must be notified before 3:00p.m. Early pickups will not be honored after 3:00p.m. A notice from the appointment is also required for the student to be excused from time missed in class.
Students are dismissed beginning at 3:50p.m. Any students left after 4:10p.m. are considered late pickups. Parents or Guardians picking up after the car drive closes will need to ring the bell at the front door and follow our standard office procedures for checking out or picking up a student present valid identification.
Car Riders
Attendance Matters
Attendance plays an important role in your child's academic success. We can reach this goal if everyone makes it their goal to ensure that your child attends school all day, everyday this school year. RPM is committed to taking a multi-faceted approach; including student incentives, positive peer pressure, parent workshops and truancy submissions. As parents, we communicate the importance of school in the decisions that we make. If we encourage our students to go to school each day, we are letting students know that their education is important. Not only that, but we are setting them up to be responsible and productive adults who adhere to timelines and rules.
Also know that we are under compulsory attendance laws which require students to be present in school. If your child must be absent due to illness or other reason, a doctor's note or written excuse must be emailed to our attendance office at: anitawilson@lancasterisd.org. Excuse notices must be received within three days of the student absence.
Students with excessive absences will have truancy papers filed in court. Covid-related absences do not count towards truancy. If you have questions or need assistance, please contact yvonnethornton@lancasterisd.org.
Operation Safe Tiger Return - Covid19 Protocol
Circumstances related to COVID-19 may change throughout the school year, as such, so with the response of our district. We encourage you to carefully read and review the plan regularly to remain up-to-date with changes as it relates to students, staff, and community stakeholders. Within the plan, you will find the district's expectations with regards to:
- Virus Prevention Strategies
- Health Reporting Procedures for students, staff, and visitors
- Quarantine Protocol
- Instructional Pivot Process (if needed)
See plan here: https://www.lancasterisd.org/domain/1545 or by clicking the OSTR image.
A Message from LancasterISD Communications
Tiger Families,
This week, our district was proactive and invested in various safeguards to create layers of protection within our campuses to mitigate the spread of COVID-19. Those safeguards included halting our students' return to in-person learning and launching our instructional pivot process. Our pivot allowed our students to remain home for this week, and engage in virtual learning while the Lancaster ISD Health Services department simultaneously hosted four COVID-19 testing clinics and two COVID-19 vaccination clinics. Our clinics provided more than 1,000 COVID-19 tests and vaccines to our school community. Our health services department administered more than 580 COVID-19 PCR tests to Lancaster ISD employees, students and parents. We thank our health services department and campus nurses for providing our community with testing and vaccine options. Their efforts this week have proven to be highly beneficial.
Our district leadership team and health services department evaluated our district's current COVID-19 numbers this morning. We are happy to report that after this intense week of COVID-19 testing and vaccinations, we are now in a better position to return to in-person learning next week. Therefore, we will welcome our students back to school for in-person learning Monday, January 10, 2022. Students with checked out technology are asked to return their devices and power cords on Monday to their homeroom or first period teacher.
We appreciate your flexibility and patience as we continue to work through the challenges presented to us by this pandemic. Specifically, to our parents who have expressed their desire for our district to continue a virtual learning option for students, we hear you. Unfortunately, at this time, our district is unable to provide a universal virtual learning option due to a lack of funding from the state. We understand this is a huge request from our community. If and when we receive guidance from the Texas Education Agency on providing a universal virtual learning option for students, we will provide updates.
As we prepare for our students to return on Monday, we will continue to lean on our valued parent partnership to reduce the spread of COVID-19 within our schools. If your child is sick, please do not send them to school and click here to review our student return to school criteria. We will continue to enhance our Operation Safe Tiger Return plan. We will maintain our current required mask mandate and continue to prohibit outside visitors to campus. We will proceed with our daily on-campus COVID-19 testing option for students with parental consent. (Parents may contact their child’s campus nurse directly to provide on campus COVID-19 testing consent.) Additionally, we will maintain our established COVID-19 quarantine protocols for students and staff and report campus COVID-19 cases daily to our district COVID-19 dashboard.
Furthermore, we want to acknowledge our district's custodial staff and the vital work our custodians have always done to ensure our campuses are sanitized and clean. Each campus building was thoroughly deep cleaned and sanitized during the holiday break in preparation for our students' return. In addition, all campuses have been restocked with hand sanitizer and PPE. As students return to school, our custodial staff members will be working throughout the day to clean and sanitize high-traffic areas on all campuses.
The impact of COVID-19 in our community is ever-changing. Therefore, we will continue evaluating daily campus COVID-19 data collected from our Lancaster ISD Health Services Department. Please note that we will welcome students back in person on January 10; however, if there is a need to pivot a campus to virtual learning due to a high number of COVID-19 cases, that decision will be communicated directly with parents on a case-by-case basis. Click here to review our instructional pivot process.
As we return to in-person learning this week, please remember the following:
- All Lancaster ISD employees and students must wear a mask/face covering inside district buildings, campuses, and school buses.
- When feasible, everyone should social distance, wash their hands, and regularly use hand sanitizer. This is more important than ever due to the increasing number of COVID-19 cases in our community.
- Continue to monitor your child for symptoms daily. If symptoms develop, keep your child home and notify your primary care doctor for instructions.
- Parents should directly report positive COVID-19 cases to their child's campus nurse. Click here to access the Lancaster ISD Campus Nurse Directory.
- Please perform a daily health screening on your student before they enter any Lancaster ISD bus, campus, or building to ensure they are free of all COVID-19 symptoms. And review the Operation Safe Tiger Return Plan for all safety and entry criteria.
- If you have any questions or concerns about your child's health, please contact your child's primary care doctor for instructions.
- To report a positive COVID-19 diagnosis after hours or over weekend, please call 214.315.1726.
If you have any questions or concerns regarding virus prevention, please seek additional information from Dallas County Health Department, the CDC, your family pediatrician, or feel free to speak with your school nurse. Also, please feel free to submit your questions or concerns here, and we will follow up with you.
Thank you for partnering with our district to keep our students and staff safe.
Cowboys Win!
College Wednesdays
RPM Spirit/$1Jean Day
RPM vs. The Gap Season Schedule
Jan. 10 Return to In-person learning
Jan. 12 MAP Assessment Practice Session (Ensure your scholar has their headsets/earbuds at school.)
Jan. 13 3rd Six Weeks Ends
Jan. 14 Professional Development (No School)
Jan. 17 Martin Luther King, Jr. Holiday (No School)
Jan. 18 4th Six Weeks Begins
Jan. 21 3rd Six Weeks Report Cards Emailed
Jan. 18-21 MAP "MOY" Assessments (MOY - Middle of Year)
Jan. 28 100th Day of School
Yvonne M. Thornton, M. Ed.
Rosa Parks/Millbrook Information Systems & Software Design Academy
#WeAreOne: Building Children, Character, And Community Everyday
“A hundred years from now it will not matter, what my bank account was, the sort of house I lived in, or the kind of car I drove; but the world would be different because I was important in the life of a child.”
~Forest Whitcraft
Email: yvonnethornton@lancasterisd.org
Website: lancasterisd.org/Domain/16
Location: 630 Millbrook Drive, Lancaster, TX, USA
Phone: 972-218-1574
Facebook: Facebook.com/rpmelementary
Twitter: @RPM_ISSD