Friday, January 21st Family Update

Happy Friday O’Dea Core Knowledge Elementary families!  It has been the longest short week ever!  Thank you for your patience as we navigated the icy road and sidewalk conditions and our late start this week.  It was challenging…yet we made it.

Our teachers have been busy this week covering some serious ground on our grade level standards.  We have wrapped up our middle of the year assessments and are digging into that data on a regular basis to drive our daily instruction.  We are striking the delicate balance of keeping students caught up on things they may have missed...continuing to focus on the grade level standards for this year…and supporting everyone’s social and emotional health as well.  It is a big job…and there are a lot of plates to keep spinning. We appreciate you making sure that your students are here…and on time…and we also appreciate you keeping them home when they are ill…and completing the work that we are sending home as well…thank you.

Next week we will be hosting our School Accountability Committee (SAC) meeting on Thursday, January 27th at 6:30 p.m.  In this meeting we will be sharing information regarding our building budget…staffing…our Core Knowledge professional development plan…facilities planning and the overarching vision of O’Dea Core Knowledge as a neighborhood school.   This meeting is more about the nuts and bolts of our school…and everyone is welcome to join us.  We will have a meeting link posted on our website early next week.

Our Specialists have been busy planning some great activities for your children this month.  I am attaching our specialists’ newsletter here for you to review: Block 5 Specials Newsletter.pdf 

On a Lost and Found note…please be sure to have your child check the lost and found if they are missing an item.  We have so many coats in our lost and found that are looking for their owner.   We will always locate the student that they belong to if their names are written in them…so I encourage families to write their names in permanent marker on the inside…so we can return them.  We will be clearing out our Lost and Found at the end of next week…so please have your child check it if you are missing something.

Our next O’Dea PTA Family Dinner Night is being hosted by Pizza Hut…so if you are looking to order pizza next week…save it for Thursday, January 27th and order it then.  I am attaching the flyer for you here with more information:  Pizza Hut Family Dinner night.pdf 

Thank you…for being you…for being a part of our school community…for sending us your children…and for standing shoulder to shoulder with us through the challenging times.  If someone would have told me three years ago that we would be doing what we are doing today…I would never have believed that we could pull it off…yet…that is exactly what we are doing…together.  It is a consistent reminder that we do not know what we are truly capable of doing…until we are called to do it.  We are stronger now than we have ever been.

Happy weekending to one and all!

With grit and grace,

Laurie

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