The Maple Glen Gazette

Happy Friday! One month of school has flown by. As we roll into September, we will begin our lunch visitor sign up. Each day on the Sign Up Genius, we will have four spots available for visitors for each grade level. There will be two tables located in the cafeteria for the student and their special visitor (tables will be marked). Please remember that in order to have lunch with your child you must have a SafeVisitor background check on file. Please check with the office if you are unsure about your SafeVisitor status. When you visit, we ask the following in order to keep our students healthy and safe:

• Only bring food for your child.
• Please refrain from posting pictures of other children on social media.
• We have lots of friends in the lunchroom, so we ask that it be just you and your child at the visitor table.
• Please encourage your child to follow cafeteria expectations such as staying seated and following lunchtime procedures.

The link is listed below.

Maple Glen Lunch Visitor Sign Ups

I hope you all have a great long weekend and get a chance to enjoy this beautiful weather.

Go ROCKS!

Tiffany Buzan

We are happy to announce that we will continue to offer food support again this year for families who can benefit from this assistance with the Back Sacks Program! Through this program, our goal is to help feed our kiddos on the weekends when school breakfast and lunch is not available. We are so thankful to Open Doors of Westfield for helping make this happen.

At the end of each week, your child will receive a small sack of food in his or her backpack. The sack will have two small breakfast meals, two small lunch meals, as well as a couple of snacks and drinks. All foods are shelf-stable, which means they do not need to be refrigerated. Examples of items are cereal, granola bars, macaroni and cheese, spaghettios, dried fruit and crackers.

The food is collected and distributed by Open Doors. If you have a concern about allergies or the quality of a product, please remove the item from the sack and contact me. We will do everything we can to assist you.

If you would like your child(ren) to participate in the Back Sacks program, please fill out this GOOGLE FORM. If your child(ren) participated last year, they are already on the list! If you do NOT want your child(ren) to participate this year again, please let me know.

We look forward to having your child participate in the program! If you have any questions or choose to no longer participate, please contact me at 317-896-4700 ext 17006 or NewmanN@wws.k12.in.us.

Dear families,

This year I will continue to offer small skill-based groups for our students. Group counseling is an excellent way for children to learn new skills, develop self-confidence, become more aware of others’ views, practice new behaviors, and better understand how to deal with problems life presents. Groups will be based on skills that have been identified as a need, such as coping skills for anxiety, friendship skills, resilience, and regulation.

The first group I will offer is called F.I.S.H. for K-4 students who are coping with Families In Separate Homes. This group is geared towards students whose families have recently gone through a separation or divorce. We will discuss feelings related to family changes as well as connecting with others who have had similar experiences. The groups will run for 6-8 sessions, each lasting about 20 minutes during the school day at a time that works best for the teachers and students. If you would like your child(ren) to participate, please fill out this FISH Google Form by August 29th. Fill out one form per child.

Please let me know if you have any questions!

Thank you,

Nicole Newman

NewmanN@wws.k12.in.us

Mrs. McClelland needs old CDs for a STEM Project! Please send them in, no cases needed! Thank you!

If your child will be absent or late - Please call the attendance line and leave a message (317) 896-4700 ext 17001, or email mgesattendance@wws.k12.in.us

Please do this even if you let your child's classroom teacher know about the absence. This will ensure that our attendance secretary receives the information.

If you have a dismissal change, please let the front office know by 1:00pm. This gives the office enough time to notify your child is where they’re supposed to be at the end of the day! Please DO NOT leave dismissal changes on the attendance line.

To notify the front office of a dismissal change, call (317) 896-4700 ext 17011, or email:

mgesattendance@wws.k12.in.us

We are opening up the opportunity for family members to join their child/children for lunch! For student safety and to accommodate our limited cafeteria seating, we are allowing our families to visit once a trimester. To be prepared for our guests and to check the Safe Visitor Registration of incoming visitors (this is required for every visitor) please make sure you register 24 hours in advance.

A new application must be completed each school year. The Application for Free or Reduced Meals and Other Benefits is now available on-line by clicking the button below. You can also come to the Administration Building between the hours of 7 am - 4 pm to complete an application on-line. Please feel free to contact Stacy Luedke, at (317) 867-8000 or email at luedkes@wws.k12.in.us.

In an effort to constantly improve and enhance school safety, we use a visitor management system at all nine WWS schools. This comprehensive system will enhance our school entrance security and better ensure that every visitor to our schools is permitted and authorized to be in our school buildings.

Background checks are good for four years at any school in the district. These background checks will cost $12.95 and can be acquired via the link below.

Westfield Washington Schools usesTalkingPoints to communicate with families! TalkingPoints allows for seamless multilingual two-way communication between teachers and families. Families can choose to receive messages via SMS text messaging or through the free FAMILIES | TalkingPoints mobile app for Apple or Android.

This platform has enhanced translation capabilities, so families can receive and send messages in their preferred language. Additional tools like speech-to-text, text-to-speech, and closed captioned videos make this program accessible to all of our Westfield families.

The most important thing you can do to ensure you are receiving messages from your child’s teacher is to make sure your contact information for the “Father” and “Mother” fields in PowerSchool is correct. When a teacher sends out a message, TalkingPoints will automatically use those two phone numbers. If you’d like to add additional contacts, please reach out to your child’s teachers.

Website: mge.wws.k12.in.us
Location: 17171 Ditch Road, Westfield, IN, USA
Phone: 317-896-4700
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/Maple-Glen-Elementary-153896671714866/
Twitter: @shakeleaves