Greetings, Van Allen Families -

Starting next week, our school community is focusing on practicing "Safe Hands" as part of our October focus around building positive self-management skills. To help our students practice making safe choices every day, teachers will be highlighting these habits during morning meetings lessons, using helpful visual reminders around the school, and engaging in read-aloud stories. You can help reinforce these positive habits at home by asking your child what practicing safe hands means to them.

As a quick reminder for families, students are permitted to wear smartwatches to school, but personal devices—including smartwatches—may not be used for communication during the school day. To help maintain an engaging learning environment, if a device becomes a distraction, teachers will follow our standard sequence of consequences. You can view our full personal device policy linked in our student handbook. Thank you for your support in keeping our classrooms focused and distraction-free!

Finally, please help us keep our parking lot and car line safe for everyone. To protect our students, any children walking in the parking lot must be directly supervised by an adult. If you choose to park, please walk your child across at either the east playground or front entrance crosswalks. When using the car line, remember to pull all the way forward to keep traffic moving smoothly. Please review our comprehensive procedures linked here—abiding by these rules ensures the safety of our students, staff, and entire school community.

The Iowa City Community School District will once again offer influenza (flu) vaccine clinics in our schools this year. This service will be provided through a partnership with Walgreens Pharmacy.

You can view the full clinic schedule and make an appointment on our district website.

On the day of your appointment:

Arrive at the school at your scheduled time.
Bring your pharmacy insurance card.

Individuals without insurance may qualify for a vaccine voucher through Walgreens and still receive a flu shot.

Children under 18 must be accompanied by a parent or guardian.

If you have questions about the influenza vaccine or need help registering for the clinic, please contact Walgreens Pharmacy at (319) 341-6153.

PTO's Fall Blast Off Fundraiser

Less than a week to our Fall Blast Off Fundraiser! Please consider volunteering or donating via our SignUpGenius link below. We're looking forward to see you all there!

Fall Blast Off Fundraiser is happening on October 15th from 5:30-7:30p in the Van Allen gym!

It’s going to be a fun evening filled with activities, a silent auction, prizes, and plenty of opportunities to spend time together as a school community.

Tickets will be available for purchase at the door using cash, check, or Venmo.

We also need your help to make the event a success! Please use the SignUpGenius link to volunteer or donate items needed for the event

https://www.signupgenius.com/go/10C0E48A8AD23A4FCC43-65924788-fall#/

Fall Blast Off is the PTO’s largest fundraiser of the year, and your participation directly helps support our students, teachers, and school throughout the year.

We hope to see you there on October 15th!

At our school, we aim to provide every child with the resources and encouragement necessary to thrive academically, socially, emotionally, and behaviorally. To help us identify and address potential challenges, we are introducing a new Guardian Referral Form. This form gives you a direct way to nominate your child if you feel they could benefit from additional social, emotional, behavioral, or attendance support at school; it will be available for you to use throughout the school year.

Who We Are

Our multidisciplinary Student Support Team meets weekly to collaborate, brainstorm, and problem-solve around individual student needs. Our team includes: Principal, Instructional Coaches, School Counselor, School Family Advocate, Behavior Interventionist, School Facilitator, School Nurse, as well as contributions from our School Psychologist and School Social Worker.

How We Help

When strong Tier 1 classroom and/or schoolwide strategies aren’t quite enough to remove barriers to a student's learning, our team identifies student strengths and opportunities for growth through a Multi-Tiered System of Supports (MTSS) framework. We look at the whole child—focusing on attendance, behavior, and social emotional well-being—and then select targeted, evidence-based interventions to implement.

Partnership with you is essential to this process. Once a referral is submitted, our team will collaborate directly with families and teachers to map out next steps, implement tailored support strategies, and regularly evaluate your child's progress to ensure that they get the help they need.

How to Refer Your Child

If you have noticed changes and/or if you have concerns with your child's behavior or their social-emotional well-being, we invite you to complete the Guardian Referral Form: https://forms.gle/BBbayQcsmDrPQZ8FA

Once submitted, our team will review the information and then someone will reach out to discuss how we can best partner together. Thank you for your partnership with us to keep our school community supported and thriving.

TalkingPoints is a two-way multilingual family engagement platform that allows staff to communicate with families across language barriers. The platform translates messages back and forth into over 100 languages, allowing for staff to be able to reach families in their preferred language, which in turn increases parent engagement in the classroom and school communities.

You are automatically subscribed to messages from your child's teachers and administrators via SMS text using the cellphone provided during registration.
Download the TalkingPoints for Families app to receive messages through the app.
For more information about TalkingPoints for Families, click here.

Did you know we serve breakfast every day?

We invite your children to join us for breakfast daily! We know how busy mornings can be for families, and our school breakfast is a convenient, nutritious way to ensure your child is ready to learn. Eating a healthy meal at the start of the day is vital for student success; it nourishes young minds and improves concentration, memory, and energy levels. Help your child start their day off right with us!

Breakfast Price: $2.45 full priced, $.40 reduced
Breakfast Serving Times: Starting at 7:30am, through 8:00am

🚨 High Reliability Schools (HRS) Update 🚨

We are continuing to embrace the HRS framework at Van Allen and throughout the ICCSD. Please see this linked form (also inserted, below) that helps us achieve Leading Indicator 1.6, "Students, parents, and the community have formal ways to provide input regarding the optimal functioning in the school."

This will be a standing item in our newsletter. Please note that submitting an idea to this form does not ensure that it will be implemented. Once we have a collection of responses to share, we will plan to include a recurring section within our newsletter dedicated to providing feedback and/or any response in regards to the different ideas that we have received from this form.

Continuous Notice of Non-Discrimination Policy Statement

It is the policy of the Iowa City Community School District not to discriminate on the basis of race, color, national origin, sex, disability, religion, creed, age, marital status, sexual orientation, gender identity, or socioeconomic status in its educational programs, activities, or employment practices. There is a grievance procedure for processing complaints of discrimination. If you have questions or a grievance related to this policy, please contact the Student Success Office at StudentSuccess@iowacityschools.org for programming, or the Human Resources Office at HR@iowacityschools.org for employment (2255 N. Dubuque Rd, Iowa City, IA 52245, 319-688-1000). If you are unsure how to proceed or would like assistance in discussing your options, you may also contact the Ombuds at ombuds@iowacityschools.org or 319-688-1312.