Hawk Happenings

Mrs. Jamie Basignani, Principal, jbasignani@bcps.org

Mr. Andrew Sands, Assistant Principal (grades PK-2, Transportation, and Special Ed), asands@bcps.org

Mrs. Angela Cooper, Assistant Principal (grades 3-5 & ISDM), acooper@bcps.org

Dear Hawk families,

Thank you for a fantastic first week. Our students showed up rested, prepared, and ready to go! It was wonderful to see their smiling faces!

As you may have seen on our social media pages, we were honored to host Superintendent Rogers, Board Chair Lichter, and several other members of BCPS and local leadership. They were impressed with how our students demonstrated our Hawk values of helpfulness, accepting, hard-working, kind, and respectful. Check out our first day album linked below!

On Friday, we completed our first fire drill of the school year. We completed the drill with one of our best times, showing that our practice has paid off. We are so proud!

Finally, I encourage each adult family member to complete the BCPS Volunteer Training as soon as possible. The training is required EVERY year, and anyone who wishes to attend a field trip, school event, or volunteer must have a completed training on file at least 48 hours in advance. The training and application are linked below.

Wishing you a pleasant week!

Mrs. Jamie Basignani

Principal

Click the photo of Vinny to access our Flickr album, and be sure to watch the video below for a sneak peek of our first day!

Last year, our Farm family made great strides with our attendance rates. We decreased our chronic absenteeism rate from 20% to 14% and our yearlong attendance rate was just shy of the MSDE 94% goal rate with 93.8%.

This year, our goal is to meet the 94% rate and decrease students who are chronically absent from 14% to 10%. These are lofty goals, but with your support, we will make it! Last week, we hit the mark with 97% attendance and EVERY grade level at 94% or above!!

September is Attendance Awareness Month, a national event that elevates the importance of attendance and the impact regular attendance has on academic progress and student success.

VFES will join Team BCPS in celebrating Attendance Awareness Month and recognizing the importance of on-time, regular school attendance by participating in a county-wide spirit day each Friday in September.

We know that 1 in 6 U.S. youth aged 6-17 experience a mental health disorder each year and 50% of all lifetime mental illness begins by age 14, and 75% by age 24 (NAMI, 2022). The graphic below shows some of the warning signs to watch for. Additional resources on how to respond are linked below. Our school support staff, including our counselors, school psychologist, and school social worker are all available if you need support.

· Risk Factors, Protective Factors, and Warning Signs

· 12 Things Parents Can Do to Help Prevent Suicide

If you haven't already, we encourage you to setup a Talking Points account. We will use TP to communicate announcements, reminders, and more throughout the year. It has been a useful tool so far!

As a reminder, smart watches are not to be worn to school. This includes, GPS trackers, Gizmos, Apple Watches, etc. Thank you for your support!

Classroom volunteers and field trip chaperones must have this completed in advance of the event. You must complete the process each school year, even if you did it last year. If you have any questions, please contact Ms. Nicole in the front office @ nwolf@bcps.org