Happy Winter Break! I sincerely hope this season brings you the period of rest and revitalization that I'm sure you require... I certainly feel as though I do... And I trust, after our long holiday-away-from-here, we'll all be ready to return to work prepared to dig in and get-er done, like we always do.Merry Christmas, Bon Solstice, Gleeful Festivus, Happy New Year, and a Joyful Whatever-crumbles-your-cookie to you and yours.
Thanks for being Awesome!
Here's a thing...
At about 5:00 PM during our holiday party at Paulsen's house last Friday evening, I returned an urgent call from FACTS coordinator, Erin Walton. On the phone she told me that the father of a Marshall first-grade student had arrived at FACTS moments before to check out his son and found that the boy had never enrolled in FACTS after school. She told me that the dad was very upset about this and passed his number along to me.
I immediately called dad who told me, through clenched-teeth, that he was stuck in traffic en-route to his house and that he had already called Flagstaff Police and a neighbor to check on the well-being of his six-year-old son who he feared had been at home alone for about five hours.
"What really has me upset right now," the father told me in no uncertain terms, "is the fact that we left a note in his planner this morning, instructing his teacher to send him to FACTS after school, which she obviously ignored, putting my son in great jeopardy." I apologized for the situation, sympathetically, asked him if he would like me to come to his house (he declined), and assured him that we would do everything possible to thoroughly investigate the situation.
Their neighbor found the boy safe-and-sound at home.
Fortunately.
Later, when I asked the boy's teacher about his planner, she told me, "I check every planner every morning, but when I asked him for his on Friday, he told me he didn't have it, that he'd probably left it at home. It wasn't in his backpack,. desk, or cubby when we looked for it."
Obviously, it's become glaringly apparent that simply writing a note in a planner when a child has a change in route-home plans is a grossly inadequate means for communicating such crucial information between home and school. Backpacks and planners too often get left at home, on the backseat of mom's car, on the bus, in the cafeteria, on the playground... you get the idea. And if they get left anywhere but where they're supposed to be, and they contain a key piece of information about how that child is supposed to get home, we're not going to get that message. Period. And that's a major problem.
The solution's pretty simple, however.
We need to encourage all of our parents to call the office any time there's a change of any kind in their child's route-home plan. That's going to mean more a lot more parent phone calls coming in to the office, and many more calls and notes sent out to you from the office each day. Nevertheless, I think this is the sole and surest way to guarantee that nothing like this situation ever occurs again.
I intend to include a comment to this effect in our weekend robo-call this week.
After the break, I'd like you also to please pass along to your parents a message that conveys something like the following:
"Thanks for using your child's planner to communicate with me about homework progress as well as your nightly discussions about classroom and playground behaviors and things like that. But please remember, if you are changing your plans for what your child will do after school, it's essential that you call the office with your change in order to ensure the message is received. It's fine to leave a note to this effect in the planner, but it's not sufficient. Planners get lost. Please ensure you've called the office whenever you're changing your child's after school plan. Thanks!"
Report Cards
Please remember: report cards will go home after the holiday break on Friday, 10 Jan. Special area teachers should have their grading completed today, Friday, 20 Dec.
Calendar
Week B
- Tuesday, 07 Jan.
- FUSD School Board member, Christine Fredericks, site visit, 10:00
- Thursday, 09 Jan.
- Coe @ Jury Duty (maybe), all day
- Friday, 10 Jan.
- Second Quarter report cards go home
