A Piece From The Principal's Puzzle

We are excited and looking forward to seeing everyone either at Camp Panther (July 30 - 4:00 pm to 6:00 pm at the school) or on the first day of school.

In this initial principal message, our goal is to provide some information that will prove to be helpful as your family continues to prepare for the first week of school.

Things for Parents to Do:

• Receive a Car Namecards/Tag - It is good for every family to have a namecard for their car just in case they decide to have their child picked up in the carline on days such as early dismissal, etc.
• Request a PowerSchool Login, which is required for you to check your child's grades, attendance, and managing student attendance.
• Visit your child's classroom and meet their teacher.
• Request bus route information if applicable to your child.
• Join the PTA

Things for Students to Do:

• Practice walking from the carline entrance, bus line entrance (cafeteria entrance), or walker entrance (front door) to your classroom .
• Visit your classroom and meet your teacher!
• Drop off your supplies in your classroom.

As we begin our first week of school, we wanted to provide some specific information related to our carline as well as a copy of the Blossomwood Traffic Map, the Blossomwood Transportation Map Information document, and our Blossomwood Basic Information Sheet which can be found below.

Carline:

• Please seat your child(ren) on the right side of the car so they exit your car on this side. They should not get out on the driver’s side.
• Remember to pull all the way up to the front of the canopy or to the car in front of you before dropping off and picking up. If the car in front of you is about to move, please wait and pull forward. We will send your child to you if this is during pick up.
• Students should be ready to exit your car with their backpacks and lunchboxes when you pull up.
• We ask that parents do not get out of the car to assist their students unless there is a special circumstance. If this is the case, please wait and pull all the way forward to the front of the carline before doing so.
  
• Carline namecards should be visible all the way through the carline until your child gets in your car. These cards are available in the front office should you still need one.
• Please continue to remind your child about how he/she gets home in the afternoons.

Additional Arrival/Dismissal Info:

• We ask that you not bring pets on campus.
• If your child is a walker, one of our teachers will walk with walkers to the edge of campus for Dale Circle, Tennessee, and Olive.
• Please don’t walk through carline to get to the playground. We ask that anyone wishing to use the playground after school do so after 3:00 (or after carline is finished, whichever comes first). This may mean that you need to exit the campus and then return a little later to use the playground.

* Please remember that for safety reasons you must have a namecard in the front dash of your automobile to pick up your student. Anyone without a namecard will be required to drive to the front of the school and show identification in the office to pick up the child.

Bus route information is now available for the 2024-25 school year. Visit the school bus route map link available at huntsvillecityschools.org/bus.

Parents and guardians should log in using their student's Clever login credentials. All bus routes will be locked until Thursday, August 15, 2024, with no route changes during this period.

Please contact your child's school for assistance with your student's login credentials.

Below are a few general safety reminders and updates related to visitors and families I would like to share so your family can plan and prepare for the upcoming school year:

• Any person who comes into the school to see a child MUST be listed in PowerSchool as a contact person for that child. This includes any coming to eat lunch with a child or volunteer in the school. Any visitors/volunteers not associated with a student as a contact in PowerSchool must be approved through Dr. Scott. Please make sure you update your child's contacts at Camp Panther or by stopping by the school office.
• Please remember that ALL visitors and volunteers will need to show an ID and scan it through Raptor to enter our building. The ID will also be used to verify that the person entering the building is associated as a contact with a student. For those wondering about Raptor, it is a system that uses the visitor’s first name, last name, and date of birth that is captured with the ID scan to check only against registered sex offender databases in all 50 U.S. states.
• Visitors will be asked to sign in on a log that indicate where their location will be while in the building. For example, "Lunchroom" if coming to eat lunch with a student. It is important for the safety of ALL people in the building, including our visitors and volunteers, for us to know your location.
• Any visitor who is eating lunch with a student, must check out at the front office at the conclusion of lunch. Visitors are not allowed to go with the class back to the classroom or out to the playground for recess time.
• While we look forward to having help at lunch, the first couple of weeks of school are spent establishing routines and procedures throughout the school, especially in the cafeteria. We welcome parents to eat lunch with us in the cafeteria starting August 12.

Thank you to our PTA for sponsoring a fun Kindergarten "Get to Know" Pool Party at the Blossomwood Pool on the morning of July 26. It was great meeting so many of our new kindergarten students and families!