This year, we’ll continue strengthening the partnership between school and families. We’ll create additional and more equitable opportunities to engage in school activities, be part of the decision making, and stay informed. We intentionally use the terms “school family” and “community” when referring to this partnership because these terms are borrowed from Conscious Discipline (the social emotional framework used at school).

We believe in the positive impact this partnership has in the development of the social, emotional, and academic skills of our tigers. Below is a list of some of the family engagement opportunities throughout the year. Some of these will be in person and some will be virtual. We’re also committed to keeping a balance in language (Spanish and English). Please let us know what other forms of family engagement you’d like to see in our community and your preference for formats (in person or virtual). See form for feedback below.

• Escuela de Padres: We’ll host at least three during the year, starting with the in person early biliteracy nights in K (10/2) and 1st grade (10/4) from 5:00-6:00 p.m. at the Oyster campus. We’ll announce the rest shortly.
• Cafecitos with the administration: This monthly gathering will provide updates and create spaces to answer questions for families. This year, we’ll continue doing one for each campus. We’re considering hosting them in a specific language (only English or only Spanish) because we’ve noticed that we tend to communicate more in English. Finally, per request, we will explore different formats (virtual or in person) and times (in the morning or in the afternoon).
• Showcases: This year, we’ve created grade level expectations for showcases to ensure equal opportunities for families across all grade levels. We want to invite families to see what our tigers are doing and can achieve in different classes.
• OCC-sponsored community building events: We continue working with OCC in those amazing community building activities that we hope we can bring back every year: La Noche, Fiesta, Black History Month, soccer games, ice cream socials, etc.
• Parent Teacher Conferences: This year, we’ll host parent teacher conferences in a hybrid model. In the next weeks, each grade level will share the way to sign up for the first round of PTCs during the third week of October.
• Mix and Mingles: This is another opportunity for families to meet other families and teachers at the beginning of the year in person and in small groups.
• LSAT: This is an advisory group that meets monthly to support the school administration on some decision-making.
• OCC: This is the Parent-Teacher organization that that meets monthly to help support many of the dreams and needs that we have as a school community.

This brief list does not capture all we do as a school, and we know we can do more. This is why your feedback is important about ideas and preferences for formats, times, and type of events that will be useful for us to strengthen our partnership with families. Please take a few minutes to share your thoughts by completing the following form.

Staying the same

• Required assessments in the subjects of ELA, math, and science
• Alignment with state content standards
• Number and types of questions
• Testing platform for students
• Multiple reviews of all items by DC educators and OSSE staff
• Comparability to prior years of PARCC administration - the tests will be managed and scored by the same vendors

What's New?

• The name of the assessment system: DC will no longer participate in a multi-state consortium
• The educator-facing assessment management platform: this means that there will be new training for test administrators

In the past two weeks, the school administration, LSAT, OCC, and a group of parents and teachers have engaged in conversations about the allocation of teacher partners (educational aides) at school level.

At the beginning of the year, to address a gap in the number of teacher partners at the Adams campus, we reallocated two teacher partners from Oyster to Adams. While our intent was to best utilize existing resources, we’ve decided to return to our traditional allocation of 18 teacher partners at the Oyster campus. I will work together with LSAT, OCC, and teachers on both campuses to figure out the best way to close the teacher partner gap at Adams. The Adams campus currently will have five teacher partners.

In an educational space with finite resources and wide student needs, resource allocation can be a challenging conversation. I deeply appreciate the full community for showing up the way that you do and continuing to put our students first.

The next SIT meeting is on 10/27 and is a virtual meeting. The team will talk about the playground for the new Adams building.

This is all for now--I hope you all have a great week.