LS Weekly Memo Week 5, September 5 - 9, 2016

Here we go.  Welcome to the first week of school.  See details below about Open Classroom and the first three full days of school. I look forward to welcoming everyone into the new building after all your hard work getting it ready.  With so much new to us all I am sure there will be changes and alterations needed to make each day run smoothly.  Kirstin, Chris and I will do our best to be available and be response to needs as they arise.

CONSTRUCTION UPDATES

Gratitude - Thank Jon, Rod and crew whenever you have a chance.  They have been so helpful.

Keys

Jon and Rebecca have distributed keys to the building.  Please contact Rebecca if you did not receive yours. With your key and your keycard you should be able to access all the spaces you need.

Furniture Update

• Desk chairs  - All have been claimed
• 2 Drawer File Cabinets - awaiting the arrival of the second half of the shipment
• Hokki Stools - Two smaller stools left over on the Flex Classroom are up for grabs
• Student Chairs - We have some black rolling chairs left.  See stack in the 5th commons.  Claim them or we will offer them up to the rest of the campus.
• Tables  - We have several square and rectangular wheelbarrow style tables up for grabs.  They are in Fariss Hall.

Furniture Reimbursements -  If you paid for furniture and would like to be reimbursed please add your purchase to the Furniture Reimbursement list. David will reimburse what the budget will cover. Offer ends Tuesday at 3:00pm.

Rugs

If you have small, curling pieces of rug in your classroom, they are going to be a challenge for the custodial crew as they can get stuck in the vacuum.

Classroom Setup

VERY IMPORTANT: PLEASE VIEW THE CLASSROOM SETUP GUIDELINES BEFORE SETTING UP YOUR CLASSROOM! This document contains important information you need to know about safety before you purchase new items or set up your space.

Set-up Reminders

• All windows need to be fully operable to support cooling of the building. As you are setting up be sure to keep your windows fully operable.  
• All blinds and shades need to be fully operable for safety.  Be sure to keep sills clear of obstructions.
• The exposed concrete plays a critical role in heating and cooling the building. Keep it exposed.
• The building was designed to be our most energy efficient building on campus.  Please limit the electricity demands you are adding to the building:
• Personal refrigerators are particularly inefficient and create significant residual heat. We have a refrigerator available for your use on each floor;
• 1st Floor - Teaching Kitchen
• 2nd Floor - LS Office
• 3rd Floor -   Chris Thompson’s Office
• CFL and LED lights use significantly less electricity and generate significantly less heat than incandescent bulbs
• All building lights, except required emergency lights, turn off automatically. You will need to turn off any lights you add to your classroom or commons.

The Move-in Update

• Good furniture is still available in Fariss Hall; trapezoidal tables, rectangular tables, desks, chairs, bookcases, storage, file cabinets.
• Clear storage bins for the new storage area are available in the entry. Each teacher may have up to 10 bins for storage in case you find more to store as you do your final organizing.
• There are 158 items on the list so far. Rod and crew are working their way through. Keep adding to the New LS Building Maintenance Request Log
• We will have a building use/operation training during opening faculty meetings

Climate control  in the New Building

You received a training from Jon.  Use your windows and dampers well.

Lacrosse Storage Under Exterior Stair

Jon is working on a athletic bags/ lacrosse stuff storage solution for under the east exterior stairs.

Fariss Hall Help

Amy and Kristen are teaching music in Fariss Hall.  While their classrooms look great, the journey to the classrooms could use work.  If you have some time Tuesday afternoon to help clean-up and spruce up the path to Fariss Hall music rooms, please contact Kristen or Amy.

COMMUNITY

First Days of School Details

It is very important that all faculty and staff read carefully the First Days of School details, which include information about Open Classroom, the Ribbon Cutting/Bell Tower Ceremonies (new time!), Specialists Opening Day Partners, special duty schedule details for the first week and more. There are several links in that document that you will need to click on.

Community Building Tours

Kirstin, Chris and David will be leading tours of the building from 8:30 - 10:00 on Friday, September 9 and Friday,September 16.

Educational Support for Students

See Ari to review files of students with known learning differences.

Health Alerts

Elaine has put your students health alerts in your mailbox. Please remember to treat this information with strict confidentiality.  This information is confidential and protected by law.

Note these additions

• Colton Prater-had emergency appendectomy with a complicated, long hospital stay. Will most likely miss the first week of school
• Becca Schindler- had foot surgery in late August and will return to school using a wheelchair/crutches
• Rowan Paul - will bring his own lunch each day due to allergy issues.

Food from Home

We are fortunate to have a food service that is so committed to tending to the dietary needs of our students.  Rarely, we find ourselves in a situation where a student needs to bring food from home rather than use the school’s food service. We will consider this option only we have done the following:

• Worked in partnership with the parents and Bon Appetite to test in-school options
• Had a parent meeting including a Bon Appetite representative and the OES Nurse
• Received doctor’s statement about the medical issue and proposed interventions

OES Employees Photos

Sub Hiring

We are starting to look for substitute teachers for the upcoming year. If you know of someone who you think would be a good addition to our sub team, please invite them to send their resume to lsteacher@oes.edu .

PROGRAM

Volunteer Needs - Thanks to those who sent your needs her way. To those who have not- Get your volunteer needs to Sarah ASAP.

As we did last year, the Volunteer Spot (now SignUp) chair and co-chair (Sarah Ulbrich and Heather Peizner) will enter volunteer needs into SignUp for the first month of school. Please respond to Sarah with your needs via e-mail: supdx05@gmail.com by The end of the day on Friday.  Use the 2015-16 Volunteer Sign-up as a reminder of your needs last year.   The timeframe is September 14-October 7th. Please include: name of activity (i.e., lunch helper); date(s); time of shift (start and end); how many volunteers needed; and description of activity. Attached are documents detailing the volunteer information for each classroom for last year. There are two documents for each classroom: "Scheduled Jobs" and "Projects".  These can be used as a reference to generate volunteer requests for the current school year. Over the course of September, you and your room representative can meet to discuss volunteer needs for the rest of the school year, and the room rep will enter those into SignUp.

Faculty Meetings

Tuesday, 9/6 - Check-in Meeting 11:05, LS Library

Thursday - 9/8 - No Formal Meeting. Kirstin, Chris, David to check-in.

Faculty Meeting Follow-up

Safety - Rebecca Williams

Building Operation - Jon von Behren

Google Apps and calendars - Jeffrey/ Debra

Duty Schedule - Chris

Duty Schedule

The first two rounds of duty sign ups are complete! So, far it has been a wonderful success. Chris will post the duty schedule on her office door the morning of open classroom at 7am, as well as a current tally of duties. Most of us need to sign up for 2 more duties to make a grand total of 8. Here is a glimpse at the duty schedule. (This doc is view only. Changes must be made in person Tuesday.) Chris will do final tally and checking Tuesday at 3pm.

New Lower School Schedule

Here are several useful links for the schedule

LS Schedules - note the tabs at the bottom, one for each class and specialist

Year Long 6 Day Rotation Calendar

Year Long Intensive Specialist Calendar

 

OPERATIONS

Safety

• Post your emergency evacuation route in near an exit in an obvious location
• Post your Emergency Procedures flip chart near your desk in an obvious location
• Bathroom Storage - no permanent storage in any of the classroom bathrooms due to ADA  and emergency guidelines.  Temporarily putting wet boots and hanging wet jackets in the bathroom is fine.

Cleaning

Custodial crew has worked overtime to remove unwanted items and clean the building.  You will need to clean any mess you make this weekend.  Unless plans change, the next major cleaning will be Tuesday afternoon/ night.

Transitions, Arrival and Dismissal

Please visit the Transitions Document for important information about transitions, arrival and dismissal procedures in the new building.  Feedback can be sent to Kirstin.

Snack

Snack will be stored in a large storage cabinet located on the ground floor near the stairs.

Shirley will deliver snack to each affinity commons.  Please indicate where in the commons you want snack delivered.

Cheese

In an effort to reduce the number of mini-refrigerators in the new building we will store cheese in the following areas

PK, K, P - Teaching kitchen refrigerator

1st, 2nd, 5th - Faculty Lounge refrigerator

3rd, 4th - TBD

Calendar Event Updates

Please add all important dates for your class/team (learning celebrations, field trips, etc.) to the LS Faculty Calendar before August 25th. Thank you!

These are the 2 main LS Calendars:

1. LS FACULTY CALENDAR (also known by some of you as the LS Faculty Google Docs calendar). This is our internal calendar and is not visible to the public or to the families.

Type of events that are posted on our LS Faculty calendar - all events or activities happening in your grade or department not requiring parents/families attendance and all divisional meetings.

2. LS EVENTS WEB CALENDAR (technically known as "Final Site" calendar) - this is the calendar on our main OES website: LS Events Web Calendar  - this calendar is visible to the public or to our families! All events submitted to this calendar are reviewed and approved by the Head of School Executive Assistant.

Type of events that are posted on the LS Events Web calendar – events or activities in your grade or department requiring or inviting our parents’ attendance, and events like trips* for information purposes.

* For security reasons - when submitting a trip event, don't mention the specific location of the trip, rather post it as "2nd grade field trip", etc... you can mention the location of your trip in your classroom website or in your email to the parents.

IMPORTANT: Faculty or Staff hosting an event is responsible for submitting request for posting an event into the LS Web Calendar. This is to ensure accurate event information.

NOTE: this calendar information can also be found in the LS IMPORTANT DOCS.

Your Announcements

Send any announcements you have for faculty to Kirstin, Chris or me by Thursday each week and we will include them in the Weekly Memo.  This should help reduce the number of emails we are receiving, and maximize our time to collaborate during meetings.

Archive

Utilize the archive for previous Weekly Memo.