The Bulldog Bark

Welcome back! We are excited to welcome students back into the building on Tuesday. As we begin the new school year, we wanted to share some reminders with our families.

In order to ensure the safety of students and staff, parents are not permitted to walk their child to the classroom. The start of any school day is extremely busy, but the first few days are even more so. All car riders enter through the cafeteria doors where we have staff ready to assist if they need help finding their classroom.

We LOVE to have visitors at lunch throughout the school year, however, we will not be allowing lunch visitors during this first week of school. It is important that we get students into the routines of the cafeteria and often our lines and timing are off at the start of the school year as students forget their lunch numbers, causing back ups in the cafeteria. Thank you for understanding and we will see you for lunch soon!

To keep the car rider line safe and moving quickly, please follow these guidelines:

• Please stay in your car. If your child is capable of exiting the car on his/her own, please allow them to do so.
• Display your car rider number at all times. If you need a car rider number, visit the front office to sign up for one.
• If you are changing your child's transportation for the day, be sure to send a note. The earlier we have that notification, the better. If we do not know your child is a car rider that day, it slows down the line as we wait for your child to come to the car rider line. Unfortunately, there have been times when we did not know a student was a car rider and they had already left on the bus before we were notified.

Our car rider line follows the path in the diagram. Remember - no cars should be pulling into the school entrance during arrival time unless you are parking and visiting the front office. Thank you to the BCPS maintenance department who paved the back gravel road over the summer! I know our parents will appreciate a smoother, drier ride.

This year LJES has the same bus numbers as last year. Please be patient as buses tend to run later than usual at the start of the year as we load slower to ensure students are on the correct bus and drivers learn new routes. As each day passes, the timing for pick up or drop off should become more consistent.

By law, we must practice all of our drills during the first 2 weeks of school. We will explain these and walk through the purpose of each with students before we do them, but for younger students, drills can be scary that first time, especially with the loud alarms and sirens in the halls. You can help us by discussing these with your child at home to better prepare him/her. Drills we must practice include fire, earthquake, tornado/severe weather, lock down, and bus evacuation. If your child comes home talking about "hiding" in the classroom or having to get under a desk and cover their heads, this is why.

These drills will be completed later this week:

• an earthquake drill (hunkering under desks and covering their neck)
• lock down drill (hiding in the classroom in case of a dangerous person in the building)
• severe weather drill (otherwise known as tornado drill)
• fire drill
• bus drills (completed second week of school)

Volunteers are permitted in the building during the school day. All volunteers must have a volunteer background check on file and must show their ID at the front office upon arrival. Lisa White is our Volunteer Coordinator and can help to find a place where you are needed as a volunteer in the building.

Last year, BCPS began using the Thrill share app for classroom teachers to communicate with parents. That will continue this year. If you did not download that app previously, you will want to do that soon so you can see classroom updates, news from your child's teacher, and much more. After the school year gets started, the app will also be used for behavior (similar to what we used to use Dojo for previously). Parents will have instant notifications of behavior points and how their child is doing throughout the school day. Thrillshare really is a one stop shop, and if you have students in multiple schools you can access each of their schools through this one app.

Interested in viewing previous editions of the Bulldog Bark? Click here.