August 7, 2010 Happy August Hawk Staff! I hope this letter finds you well and enjoying summer with family and friends. Even though I’m not ready to let go of summer, I am very excited about getting back to the rewarding and exciting work with our Firgrove students and families. I feel truly blessed to work with such an amazing team of educators and support staff.

I want to give you the details (as best I know them at this point) of key dates and events as we approach the second half of August. As you will see we have a compressed timeline to get ready for the arrival of students. I believe we can “hit the ground running”! Go Hawks! Our focus on our building days will be nuts and bolts, powerful classroom instruction, and school safety. There is always more content than time, but I think this will give us a solid start. I know you will want team time as well so as we prepare agendas we will work to provide you with as much time as possible. Key Dates FRI 8/20: Building reopens MON 8/30: Supplemental Day #1 Focus: Cultural Competency and Social Justice

• You will want to be at PHS for registration at 7:30 am, speaker begins at 8:00 am

• We will leave PHS at 10:00 am, and will start the building portion of our training at 11:00 sharp.

TUE 8/31: Supplemental Day #2 Focus: Building Data and Nuts & Bolts • This is our Open House Meet n’ Greet Day from 4-6 pm so

we will start our day at 10:30 am WED 9/1: Supplemental Day #3 Focus: School initiatives and powerful instruction THU 9/2: First day of school! MON 9/6: Labor Day NO SCHOOL

If you recall at the end of the year we had discussion at both CSIP and our last staff meeting about modifying our building CSIP structure by moving to content committees. The committees are as follows: Literacy Math/Science Fine Arts Positive Building Support Systems (building wide student management and support systems) Diversity Safety Here are some general guidelines for this model: ~Everyone will choose 1 committee to serve on. ~Each committee will have representation from primary and intermediate for balance. ~Each committee will have a chair or co-chairs that will sit on CSIP (co-chairs could rotate) ~Each committee will lead the work of school wide improvement initiatives in their area using data and research based best practices as a foundation. ~If funding allows a stipend will be paid to the committee chairs for their extra time and service

Please think about what committee you would like to serve on, and. When we come

back together we will provide opportunity for discussion, Q&A, and committee selection. Almai and I are really excited about this model. This will enable us to harness the power of teacher leadership, as well as provide for greater input on school wide initiatives. Now more than ever we need to come together, and pool our knowledge, time and talents to support our students. Enjoy the rest of August summer fun and sun!

Char