Stonegate Greetings
Weekly Newsletter
Dear Stonegate Families and Caregivers,
I am excited to begin my eleventh year as the proud principal of Stonegate Elementary School where we wrap our arms around our students and families. We are thrilled to welcome you to the 2024-2025 school year. We can’t wait to greet our kindergarten and newly enrolled families. Our school’s leadership team has worked hard this summer to help put plans, processes, and procedures in place that will lead us toward continued excellence. Our focus continues to center on providing all students and their families with a high-quality instructional program that prepares them to be career and college-ready. We are committed to ensuring that learning is fun and engaging for all students. We have been charged with a mission to engage our students, make learning fun, ensure that all students are making academic progress, and keep students safe. Our vision at Stonegate is simple, “One Team, Students First”.
A new school year is just a few weeks away. As with every year, we see the possibilities for growth, new plans, and ways to implement new ideas. Our students’ success is built upon strong instruction, strong relationships, collaborative support from our families, and our strong PTA. Mrs. Kimberly Smith will return as our PTA President and we are thankful for her leadership. We are truly fortunate to work collaboratively with her. She is focused on providing our school with wonderful experiences, events, and opportunities for all students to have an amazing school year. My door is always open and our goal is to serve and support the academic and emotional well-being of all our students.
Our Caregiver Handbook has all the important information that families need to know!
- Arrival
Dismissal
ParentVue
Applying for Free Lunch
Online School Payments
Breakfast, Lunch, and Cafeteria Accounts
Birthdays
Childcare Options
Communication
Immunization Records
Clothing To Cash Recycling Program
Click here to view it! Here
From our PTA President, Kimberly Smith:
The Stonegate Parent Teacher Association (PTA) is excited to welcome new families and reconnect with returning families in our school community! Our PTA creates connections, supports your child, and amplifies your voice. We need members like you to reach the PTA goals for this school year.
The PTA is a parent-run, volunteer organization with the mission to make every child's potential a reality by engaging and empowering families and communities to advocate for all children. We aim to partner with the school administration to advocate for our students and support our teachers and staff through programming and events that bring our community together, celebrate our diversity, and empower students to be the best that they can be.
Membership is a key step in supporting the PTA. Your membership will help the PTA offer a variety of community engagement activities and various educational enrichment resources for our students. The Back-To-School picnic, Spring Carnival, cultural assemblies, Stonegate Snack Pantry, Teacher Appreciation, and Spring Literary Festival are just a few examples of the activities that PTA sponsors.
Kick-off the school year by joining the PTA today! There are several membership categories available, and you can donate a teacher/staff membership and individual membership to pay it forward for someone else to be a part of the PTA.
Mark your calendar for the Back-To-School picnic on Friday, August 30 and the first PTA Meeting on Tuesday, September 3. More details will be provided about these activities soon.
Please contact the stonegateptapres@gmail.com if you have questions or ideas! We are excited and look forward to helping each student reach their full potential.
--Kimberly Smith, 2024 - 2025 Stonegate PTA President
Open House
Friday, August 23rd
1:00 - 1:45 p.m.for families with last names A-K
2:00 - 2:45 p.m. for families with last names L-Z
See your classroom, meet your teacher
New families will have an opportunity to tour our new and amazing building! After the tour, you will have time to visit your new classroom.
We encourage families to walk if possible. If you drive and park in the neighborhood, please do not block anyone's driveway. Please park in the staff parking lot.
Staff will greet you and let you know who your child’s teacher is if you missed the Teacher Reveal.
We will NOT be posting class lists.
Back To School Night and Caregiver Fair
Thursday, September 12th, at Stonegate Elementary, 6:00-8:00 p.m. for all grades.
This event is for parents/caregivers only.
During Back to School Night, families will have an opportunity to meet teachers and hear about the many experiences that they will have throughout the school year. There will be a schoolwide video from the Principal, the PTA President, etc. and then teachers will share expectations, the curriculum, and how to partner with your child’s teacher. Teachers will present one time. Recordings will be made available for any parents who miss the presentation or have multiple students. This is for all families: Grades K-5, LFI, PreK and PEP.
We will offer two Schoolwide informative sessions for parents starting at 6:00 for families. We encourage parents to join us so you are informed about:
Community Building and Restorative Approaches at Stonegate
Student and Family Wellbeing for Stonegate
After the schoolwide sessions, families will be invited to join their child’s teacher for their classroom/grade-level presentation.
The following tables will be available for families to visit and receive information:
Support with Free Lunch Applications
Support with activating your ParentVUE account
Talk to our School Nurse and Health Room Tech
Learn more about Cafeteria Services
Special Education at Stonegate
Stonegate Parent Teacher Association (PTA)
Global Childcare Before/After School
Other community groups
Instrumental Music: Parent Information Meetings
Parents and Guardians of current 4th and 5th-grade students may attend any of the two scheduled meeting dates regardless of the school their child attends, as these same topics will be discussed at each meeting: Instrument suitability, rental cost, scheduling, performances, expectations, and parent questions.
Meeting Dates:
Wednesday, September 4 at 12:00 p.m. on Zoom (link below)
Thursday, September 5 at 6:00 p.m. at Stonegate Elementary School (Media Center)
Zoom information:
Join Zoom Meeting (student log-in not required)
https://mcpsmd.zoom.us/j/81211035907?pwd=ZXXw2CCcBQGV3EDR2QodJBzOwnvN6I.1
Meeting ID: 812 1103 5907
Passcode: 778481
Your attendance is not mandatory for your child to participate in the program. I look forward to meeting you and to a successful school year. For more information about the program or to register, please visit the website: https://sites.google.com/a/mcpsmd.net/krohn-music/home
The exact schedule will be posted at school and to the website on September 25.
Lessons begin the week of September 30.
Here is the 24-25 School Calendar
https://www.montgomeryschoolsmd.org//siteassets/district/calendar/2024/2024-calendar.pdf
Highlights for the 2024-2025 school calendar include:
For Traditional Calendar schools: First day of school for students is Monday, August 26, 2024 and the last day of school is Friday, June 13, 2025.
Two planned professional days include Friday, October 18, 2024 and Friday, June 6, 2025.
There will be five scheduled early release days for Traditional Calendar schools. They include: September 27, 2024, November 25-26, 2024 (designated for student conferences), February 28, 2025, and June 13, 2025.
Winter break begins on Saturday, December 21, 2024 and ends on Wednesday, January 1, 2025.
Spring break begins on Saturday, April 12, 2025, and ends on Monday, April 21, 2025.
The calendar maintains 182 days of instruction, including six built in contingency days within the school year. These dates are in addition to holiday closures required by state law.
Dismissal by Car
At Stonegate, we have a dedicated car loop. Enter by making a RIGHT turn into the first parking lot. Please:
Pull as far up as you can and follow staff directions.
Plan for your children to enter & exit on the passenger side.
Do not pass cars that are ahead of your vehicle.
Drive slowly and carefully.
Display your children’s full names on a paper for staff to see.
Do not make a left turn to enter the parking lot.
Do not block neighborhood driveways, Notley Road, or stop on Notley to allow students to exit and cross the road.
Only use the parking lane closest to the school building. It is unsafe to drop kids off or pick students up using the other lanes.
Remember to use the dedicated car loop, not the bus loop directly in front of the school.
We love to celebrate shark birthdays at Stonegate by announcing your child’s name in the morning announcements and presenting each student with a special birthday pencil. Families may choose to send in cupcakes or other allergy-free treats such as Oreos. Some students have allergies to certain dyes and corn syrup in popsicles, so certain brands such as Outshine are recommended. Please work with your child’s teacher.
Remind
Stonegate communicates using the “Remind” app. Schoolwide messages and messages from individual teachers will come through Remind. Caregivers will receive messages as texts. Some parents also choose to download Remind as an app on their device.
Adjust your account settings for Remind at www.remind.com.
Choose “Sign up” and enter your phone number. Your account as an MCPS parent will come up and will allow you to edit your communication settings.
Add a phone number for a caregiver:
Do you need an older sibling, a grandparent or other caregiver to receive text messages from the school? Add an additional phone to receive school wide Remind text messages by using that phone to text @436ch8 to the number 81010.
The Stonegate Elementary School’s website always has updated information. Our webmaster is stellar. Remember, we put great and important information on our website. Please make sure that you visit us.
http://www.montgomeryschoolsmd.org/schools/stonegatees/
I also encourage you to join our PTA. Attending PTA meetings is an important part of learning about our school. PTA messages are included in my weekly communication.
Every year, students must apply and be approved to receive FREE breakfast and/or lunch.
The Division of Food and Nutrition Services (DFNS) is excited to provide regular meal services during the 2024-2025 school year. Students in Maryland who qualify for reduced-price meals will not be charged for meals! Breakfast: Regular Price: $1.30; Reduced Price: No Cost, Lunch: Regular Price: $2.55, Reduced Price: No Cost
Apply before school starts. One application covers the entire HOUSEHOLD. Translations in other languages are available through the online application.
Apply now at www.MySchoolApps.com
Here is a video about how to apply:
English Video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TJUapGLarBo
Video en Español: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dsdCrtCIFJc&t=4s
Beginning the first day of school, breakfast and lunch will be served in the cafeteria. Breakfast hours will be from 8:40 a.m. - 8:55 a.m. We will make concessions for those students who arrive late due to bus issues. The cost of school breakfast is $1.30.
Menus are sent home monthly and can be found on the MCPS’s website: Elementary Menu
Hot lunches are served daily with alternate choices. Lunch is $2.55 including milk. Milk may be purchased separately for 60 cents. Parents are highly encouraged to start a Myschoolbucks account for their child. This will eliminate lost or forgotten lunch money. The price of lunch or breakfast will be subtracted from the account. Checks should be made payable to Stonegate School Cafeteria.
Your child may be eligible to receive free or reduced-price meals. Apply online at MySchoolApps.com or complete a Household Application for Free and Reduced-price Meals, available from your child's school. Those approved for free/reduced lunch during the prior school year must reapply every year.
MySchoolBucks.com is an optional service for parents/guardians to make prepayments to a student's cafeteria account for breakfast, lunch, and à-la-carte meals online with a credit or debit card. This service is offered as a convenience for interested families.
By creating a secure online account, parents can monitor and manage their child's account.
There is a $2.49 (new) convenience fee for each payment transaction.
There is no cost to set up an account, check your child's spending history, and receive low-balance notifications.
Payments to student cafeteria accounts can be made either through My School Bucks (optional, not a requirement), or cash or checks payable to Stonegate Cafeteria and submitted to the cafeteria manager.
Principles of our Restorative Approach
We work together to foster the physical, social, psychological, and academic well-being of students, staff, and families through:
Community Building: Building caring communities and healthy relationships based on mutual trust, respect, and responsibility
Self Care: Learning to recognize and regulate our emotions, so we don’t cause harm to ourselves or others
Conflict Resolution: Recognizing when our words or actions have harmed others and taking steps to repair that harm
What does this look like at Stonegate?
Daily Classroom Community Circles
Celebrating our successes and building a sense of community
Schoolwide Town Hall Meetings
Honest, open, structured conversations after a peer conflict
More Information:
All schools in MCPS implement community-building and restorative approaches. At Stonegate, we are intentional with relationship building and responding to behaviors so we know this is the right direction for us. To support this shift, we have an RA specialist from the central office, Ms. Bethlehem Beru, who will be supporting our transition. Mr. Kedon George, our school counselor, and Ms. Tarnicka Congress, Fourth Grade Teacher, will lead our work around Restorative Approaches. They will work closely with the central office specialist, receive professional learning and, along with our school committee, will engage staff in professional learning to deepen our mindset and practice.
School
As a school, we have three school agreements:
Care for Self
Care for Others, and
Care for Environment (the school environment)
Staff and students will co-create what each of these agreements looks like in different parts of our school building. Students will give their voice and input. This, combined with staff input, will help us define what these agreements mean in our school.
Staff will engage in continued ongoing professional development and continue to refine our implementation.
We will utilize the Cultivating Restorative Spaces approach to respond to students who break the school agreements.
Student value and agency have always been important at Stonegate and we will make sure they are aware of the shift and why it is important! We will share with students that there will be times when students break some of the agreements. This is because we are humans with emotions, challenges, and frustrations and sometimes we express those by breaking agreements. What we want to work towards is encouraging & celebrating when we keep the agreements because they help our school community be a great place to learn and to have relationships. And when we don’t keep our agreements, we have ways to respond that will support them in returning to sticking to the agreements and repairing any harm that might have happened.
Classroom
Each classroom will co-create its class agreements, based on the same categories of Care for Self, Care for Others, and Care for Environment (their classroom environment).
Staff will utilize the Cultivating Restorative Spaces approach to respond to students who break the agreements.
Together, classes will fill a Shark Tank with “shark bait” to acknowledge and celebrate how students are honoring the school agreements. As we fill the tank together, the class, as a community, builds towards celebrations for their collective success. This is in line with the community-focused aspect of RA. It is inclusive and celebrates the community. It removes the transactional system of behaving in order to receive a ticket to buy prizes and emphasizes sticking with our agreements because it is what is good for the class and the school.
Stonegate Family Community
As we progress in this journey, parents and caregivers will have opportunities to learn more about Restorative Approaches. Look out for opportunities to continue to learn more about restorative approaches.
We are excited to continue the use of our math curriculum, Eureka Math®. As you may know, Eureka was created by Great Minds, a nonprofit that brought together teachers and experts to craft a program based on the world’s most successful math programs. The most important principle that frames the Eureka curriculum is that students need to know the why when problem-solving to really reach a deep, conceptual mathematical understanding. Now that we’ve been teaching Eureka for a few years, we are able to hone the lessons in a way to encourage a fun and engaging learning environment as well as utilize tools to meet our students' learning needs.
This upcoming school year we will be continuing with Eureka Math Equip™ to support our students' needs just in time. Eureka Math® teacher–writers created Eureka Math Equip™, an adaptive digital diagnostic tool designed to identify learning gaps and address them through direct instructional videos and fluency practice.
In response to gaps in elementary literacy skills, MCPS is committed to the Structured Literacy approach to building readers. This shift began two years ago and the work continues. Structured literacy focuses on the systematic and cumulative teaching of the five components of reading—phonemic awareness, phonics, fluency, vocabulary, and comprehension as well as writing. This shift is supported by research on improving how MCPS teaches reading and writing. In Kindergarten through Grade 2, the Dynamic Indicators of Basic Early Literacy Skills (DIBELS) assessment, continues to be the high-quality screening tool with early literacy skills. This measure allows for specific, targeted instruction.
When students' foundational reading skills are firmly in place they benefit from better word-level reading, improved reading accuracy, and an increased reading rate. For students of all ages, strong foundations result in better comprehension, an ability to tackle complex content area reading and academic success.
This school year, MCPS has adopted a new curriculum, Core Knowledge Language Arts or CKLA. CKLA is a comprehensive language arts program that incorporates the four domains of literacy; reading, writing, listening, and speaking. The curriculum is distinguished by its deep knowledge building, systematic foundational skills and fluency, and access to challenging texts. Some topics include science, history, literature and arts. Students will engage with complex texts and daily read-alouds where they will dig deeply. Daily writing is tightly connected to the texts and topics students explore.