I am hopeful that everyone has had a wonderful week thus far. Welcome to February. We have had a lot of wonderful things happen since I last wrote. I would like to start off by celebrating our Spelling Bee winners from Adams Campus. Emilia Constantyn (7th Grade) First place, Liam Roberts (5th Grade) Second place and Divya Gomaa (7th grade) Third place. All three students will be moving on to the Cluster competition on February 7th. Please congratulate these students and encourage them for the next round of competition later this month.

I wanted to thank the OCC for their support of our recent teacher celebratory event this past Friday January 26th.  As far as I can tell our teachers and staff had a wonderful time as they were able to enjoy wonderful appetizers and learn some new dance moves from our professional dance teacher Mario Cervantes.  A special thanks to Oyster Adams 6th grade parent Silvia Alexiev, who partnered with us to provide the dance instruction.  Please reach out to her at Salsa with Silvia if you would like to take a class from her or her amazing staff.   Additionally, the management at Retrobottega on 19th street were amazing at coordinating with us and the food was amazing.  Special thanks to Mrs. Rodriguez and Mr. Turcios-Lovato for planting the seed and helping to organize the event.

In the next week, the LSAT will send out a survey related to the SY 24-25 Budget. Please complete the survey (about 5-10 minutes) so we can make more informed decisions for this upcoming school year. I aspire to have a very transparent and shared budget experience this year that is reflective of all stakeholder’s voices.

I wanted to thank Mr. Moreno for providing a wonderful experience for our students in 4th grade Science. I had the opportunity to visit the class presentation on Tuesday afternoon and the prosthetic legs students created were amazing. The project pushed students to use engineering process as they worked to identify a problem, explore various solutions, test them and then improve on their products. What was most impressive was how the students were able to make connections to inclusivity and this project.

On Thursday evening we will be holding a solution-oriented working session with the community to propose possible alternative solutions to the Deputy Mayor of Education proposal to decrease the Oyster Adams school boundary.  If you are available to attend in person at the Oyster cafeteria @ 5:30 pm on Thursday, please do so. We would love your input. The virtual option can be accessed using this LINK.

Mrs. Carla Ferris has been working with a group of students at OA in a Math Counts club. The club has been working extremely hard and will being competing in the Math Counts Chapter Competition on Saturday February 10th from 8:00 am –noon. Please send positives vibes their way. If they do well, they will be eligible to compete in the Citywide competition in March. Suerte Tigres.

The Oyster campus of Oyster-Adams Bilingual School has been chosen to undergo a comprehensive evaluation of the road infrastructure surrounding the school by DDOT's Safe Routes to School Program (SRTS).  This study will review walking and bicycling travel patterns, traffic signs, traffic and pedestrian signals, and pavement markings.  The blocks surrounding the school will be evaluated and recommendations made on what DDOT can install to make these spaces safer for children, families, and staff. After an engineering feasibility review, some of the items that we may install include:

• Flex posts (to tighten vehicle turns or protect crosswalks/no parking areas) 
• Speed humps or tables (to slow speeds) 
• Raised crosswalks (to make crossings more visible and slow traffic) 
• Flashing school zone speed limit signs 
• Automated traffic enforcement (to discourage car drivers who run red lights and/or speed in school zones) 

Wishing you all a great rest of the week.