Sugar Creek Elementary

At Sugar Creek we really value field trips and similar hands-on learning opportunities, and seek ways to support our grade level teams with affording these because we do NOT charge students for field trips. Some ways we do this are:

1. From our operating budget, we set aside $20 per student from our operating budget and allocate that to each grade level team.

1. Please help get the word out: We use our family and teacher newsletters to promote a Sugar Creek Field Trip fund: https://checkout.square.site/merchant/MLGMC7V19BKZT/checkout/754LPNPPSNASBORA2HVECDUV

Classroom teachers, please be sure to schedule family contact time for any students with IEPs on the Sugar Creek school-wide family contact days: Monday, August 17th from 1-4:00 pm or Thursday August 20th from 3:00-7:00 pm. This makes it so that Case Managers are not coming back and forth to Sugar Creek for meetings at many different times throughout the week. Case Managers, please be sure to reach out to the classroom teacher for students on your caseload so that they know which students need to be scheduled with priority on those dates.

Here is the Family Contact FAQ from VASD’s HR. (You will note that nothing has changed from last year.)

Staff, if you ever have any questions or log in problems with PowerSchool, like account access, credentials, password reset, etc.) always start with Adriana.

Speaking of PowerSchool: Adriana will be removing access to Powerschool on July 27th and restoring on August 7th. Class placement will go out to families on August 7th at 3 pm. Please do not contact families before then!

You will be receiving a tracking form from HR before long, where you are required to document and have approved by your supervisor how you have served the 7.5 hours of Family Contact time (prorated for part-time staff) between August 1 and September 30.

At Sugar Creek, we have two options for some of YOU to have meaningful in this if you have another plan of your own to serve this time, but if you choose to do so they will add up to the 7.5 hours you need AND you can meaningfully contribute to the culture of care and welcome at Sugar Creek.

Please remember, you can also reach out directly to classroom teachers and case managers to join in some of their Family Contact meetings (perhaps of a class or grade level with whom you work more often).

First option:

K Play Dates: August 6, 13, and 20. Events run 5:30 - 7:00 pm

• Sign up soon if you are interested in this!

Second option:

Any certified staff member who hasn’t reached their required 7.5 hours of family contact time can sign up and attend a PTO (parent / teacher organization) meeting this year and have that count! Here’s the sign up.

Due to the change in breakfast cost, staffing needs from Food Services, and increase in curricular minutes for Science/Social studies we are going to have students pick up breakfast on their way to class rather than building 15 minutes into the schedule for it. More details will be shared at Welcome Back Days in August! Kindergarten breakfast boats will still be delivered to class.

Our 26/27 Schedules are complete and ready for viewing. You can find them linked on the Dashboard or in this folder here. I took into consideration as much of the feedback from your surveys as I was able, but as you can guess, scheduling for 31 sections and 600 students is a big puzzle :-) Please let me know of any questions or concerns. If you see something you think may be a mistake, please do let Kirstin know as it’s always possible I made an error here or there. I will say that depending on our hiring of a part time music teacher, some schedules may change slightly depending on that staff member's availability, so please consider these TENTATIVE until we finalize that position.

Please note that we will begin the school year with the SWIM SCHEDULES (also linked on the dashboard and in the folder) as swim will begin on September 8th.

Casemanagers, EAs and SEAs-Your schedules will be done a little bit later in the Summer, so keep an eye out for an email for that later on.

These will be delivered to each site office during the week of July 28th. Each site will have a printed list of the staff names with their requested T-shirt sizes included inside the box(es).

SC staff will need to pick these up in our offices prior to Convocation on August 24th because we are all asked to wear them on the day of Convocation.

NOTE: a detailed schedule will come out later for SC staff for the annual Staff Welcome Back Days.

Staff, we all take the time to read and learn in order to grow professionally. Please consider reading this article about recess, and consider your own beliefs about recess.

At a time when few children are allowed free play time outside of school, or live in areas where their outside options are unsafe, as part of our health and wellness focus Sugar Creek avoids taking recess away from students. Here’s a key quote from the article:

“Just as physical education and physical fitness have well-recognized

benefits for personal and academic performance, recess offers its

own, unique benefits. Recess represents an essential, planned respite

from rigorous cognitive tasks. It affords a time to rest, play, imagine,

think, move, and socialize. After recess… students are more attentive

and better able to perform cognitively. In addition, recess

helps young children to develop social skills that are otherwise not

acquired in the more structured classroom environment.”

If so - great! We like to list them on our new staff document, invite them to a start of the year meeting held for new SC staff, and include them in other ways. Further, HR now asks sites to document who our student teachers are each year. So: if you are hosting a student teacher or practicum teacher this year please notify Kirstin.

This is mostly updated at this time, but some documents are still under construction!

Week of 3rd and 10th-Hallways being Waxed and building access will be limited. Jason will be out August 4th-18th so email Kirstin if you have questions about building access.

Some Building Improvements that happened over the summer thanks to our amazing custodial staff:

• 200 hall Girls Bathroom is getting new stall partitions

• New roof in the Blue & Green hallways

• 300 hall Girls & Boys Bathrooms are getting new stall partitions and new epoxy floors

• The gym is getting a new scoreboard and the floor will be resanded. New basketball lines and new to Sugar Creek Pickleball Lines are also being added.

• Brunner’s Buddy Bench(gifted to Todd from the PTO) is being installed on the front playground under the new shade structure

• A large elliptical machine is being added to the Wellness Room in it’s new location (Room 512).

We are lucky to have very little turnover in our amazing school, but as you know we had a few new positions. If you are interested in communicating to a new staff member here are their positions.

In addition to Adriana, Brooke, Jason, Jim, Jimmy, Monique and Tashi, a big thank you to all SC staff who participated in VASD’s elementary summer school (which was of course held right here in our school): Nicole Real, Justin Rippl, Chris Westberg, Geraldin Rivera, Grace Pustina, Connor Daniels, Gabby Freire, McCaley Laube, Kevin Shrader, Mai Thao, Amy Cartwright, Alexis Nass, and Jackie Vitela. You’re the best!

For the 26/27 school year Briana Lenzlinger, Justin Beirowski, and Andrea Zapata will be Sugar Creek’s principal designees. Thanks!

If they want to learn more or get general questions answered, have them reach out to Kirstin. I routinely hear of future opportunities within our district and I can talk these through with them in a discussion around their career aspirations.