Dear Parents/Guardians:
WELCOME BACK!
We
are so excited to welcome your children back to school! All of our
staff members had a wonderful opening day at our high school auditorium
yesterday. We enjoyed getting together early in the morning but, as
usual, our teachers, administrators and support staff were extremely
anxious to get to their classrooms and offices to get right to work
getting ready for our students!
I first want to thank you all for your patience as
we implement a new system of identifying contacts in our student
information system in order to send you calls, emails and texts. I also
want to thank you for going online to complete your student forms in Ecollect.
This will make everything much more efficient in the long run, and I
hope that it will be MUCH easier for parents/guardians in the future to
complete that required information digitally instead of with paper!
If
you have a new cell phone number in our system, you should have
received an "opt in" text from us. I am especially concerned that
parents/guardians get our text messages because we know that in an
emergency, voice calls take longer to send out. If you did not receive a
text message from us during yesterday's test message, please do this:
Use that cell phone (number must be in the system) to send a text message -- Y -- to the opt-in number: 67587. (You can even use this opt in just to double-check that you are, in fact, opted in.)
If you do not get a confirmation, please report that on THIS ONLINE FORM.
REMINDERS:
Our Bay Village Board of Education has authorized a calendar
modification for the 2019-20 school year so that the district can
conduct a safety and security training day (without students in
attendance) on Friday, August 30th. This will be an important staff development day so that all our employees can focus on school safety training. Again, there will be no school for students on Friday, August 30, so families -- enjoy an extra-long Labor Day Weekend! (The First Day of School for students remains as Thursday, August 15.) Find the revised 2019-20 school calendar here.
Another important bit of calendar news is our two, scheduled No Homework Nights! The first No Homework Night will be Thursday, September 19
(the second is Wednesday, March 25). We hope you will support our
purpose of these set-aside date by planning to be together with your
family! We know that the most important factor in your children's
success is having great family relationships. So whether you stay home
and play board games, have a family discussion, take a walk together or
attend an event together, please use this time with purpose to put your
family relationships FIRST.
SAFETY CHANGES:
We
have improved security at our buildings with strategically-placed
bollards (as barriers to vehicles from the parking lots) and with
vestibules where needed to give our security aides more time to
question, observe and respond to visitors. Our security aides have been,
and continue to be, trained by law enforcement in best practices. In
addition, there are many upgrades to technology that will help security
and may not be visible to visitors.
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The
new Bay High School entrance will be north, or to the left, of the
traditional main entrance. Visitors who arrive after the start of the
school day will be required to enter a vestibule and present themselves
at one of the reception windows.
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Westerly
Elementary now has a front entrance vestibule. Visitors during the
school day will be buzzed into the vestibule after talking with our
security aide. Once in the vestibule, the security aide has a clear view
of any items being carried, etc., and the visitor is buzzed in a second
time. |
Safety Training
Our
August 30 staff day for safety training will cover a variety of topics.
Know that students - and parents - will be involved in some future
training. Watch for more information soon from your building principals.
We are off to a great start, and it's going to be a great year!