Hello fellow Franklin Academy parents,
We hope your family is enjoying the start of another school year! It's a special year, and we're so grateful to have our kids back in school in-person (shout out to all of our brave teachers and staff for making this happen.)
Usually PALS (Parents Actively Lending Assistance) would host a back-to-school coffee for parents to meet and connect, but that's not advised this year due to gathering restrictions. We're working on some ideas, and we hope to have a virtual gathering soon. We know there are a lot of new families out there. Welcome to TFA, and we look forward to connecting with you soon!
A few announcements as we start the school year:
Uniform Sales
Uniform sales are going to be primarily by appointment this year. Amanda Younger, our uniform sales coordinator and PALS co-president, is available to meet parents outside of Markell Hall before or after school all this week and next week. By the third week of school we will establish a regular day or two each week for appointments. If you need uniforms or PE shirts, please contact Amanda at uniforms@thefranklin.academy with your child's grade, clothing size, and uniform pieces needed and Amanda can pull some uniforms out of the closet for you to browse.
Parent Volunteering
Due to COVID-19 prevention precautions, the school is limiting visitors inside the buildings, and that includes parent volunteers. We're hoping there will be opportunities for in-person volunteers once we settle into the school year, but right now we are giving staff and students time to get settled in to the new procedures and routines before figuring out how we can safely return volunteers to school.
Volunteer service hours will NOT be "required" this year, but volunteers are still a vital part of our community. We'll be sending out a volunteer application next week, and encourage all parents to fill it out with your special interests and skills that you're willing to share with our community. There will be some opportunities to volunteer from home, and of course we want to be ready to go when we can safely return to in-person volunteer events and gatherings.
Room Parents
Here is a way to get involved right away, and can be done remotely. We recruit room parents for every class from preschool-4th grade, and for every house advisory group in Middle School. The room parent serves as a liaison between the teacher/advisor and other class parents, and also between the class and PALS. In a regular year, the room parent would help teachers to plan class parties, organize gifts from parents for their teacher's birthday, organize class projects for the auction, Family Fun Night, or other events, and help communicate important information to all parents and families in their class. There's so much information coming to families all the time - it's easy to miss. Room parents build relationships with the families in their class, and can send a friendly note that might get through when mass communication fails. We have a Room Parent Coordinator at each building to support the room parents and give guidance and suggestions. Please contact these amazing volunteers directly if you would like more information or to volunteer to be your classroom parent.
Room Parent Coordinators
Robin Hall (Preschool - 1st grade): Nneka Browne at nnekalb@gmail.com
Markell Hall (2nd - 8th grade) - Sara Jentz at sarajentz@hotmail.com
In general, we will try to limit the number of direct emails we send out to you. We don't want to flood your inbox!
There are several ways to find out the latest news from PALS: we will include snippets in upcoming school newsletters, send home flyers with your students, and post regular updates to our PALS WEBSITE. Please forgive the outdated info - it will be updated for 2020-2021 soon. It's a sweet walk down memory lane of what should have been last Spring if not for COVID.
We look forward to connecting with you in person (or face to face in the cyber world) very soon,
Heather and Amanda
PALS Co-Presidents
