 | |
FAIRMOUNT FOCUS EXECUTIVE BOARD For additional coordinator info, FAIRMOUNT ELEMENTARY
CARD FUNDRAISER CLICK HEREfor detailed information about how the reloadable grocery card fundraiser works and how to get your cards today! GROCERY 2016–2017 A big thank-you to everyone who purchased or reloaded their grocery cards last year.
Our King Soopers/ Safeway reloadable gift card program was a smashing success! For the 2016-2017 school year, we raised nearly $45,000! Half of that money goes directly to fund PTA projects, while the other half goes directly back to our families to help pay school fees. The reloadable grocery card fundraiser is the easiest way to make money for our PTA and our families. It costs nothing extra! Please check out our web site for all the details on how you can get a King Soopers or Safeway reloadable gift card. If you already have a card from last year, keep using it! Total earned: PTA's earnings: Earnings back to families: Welcome, Fairmount families! I want to let you know of some changes in the lunch program. The new price for lunch is $2.85, a .10 increase from last year. Also, with the integration of 6th grade into middle schools in the district, I am no longer able to give lunch loans to the 6th graders. We are excited to have some new lunch choices this year with a gluten-free choice offered daily. Every other Wednesday there will be pizza from Pizza Hut or Black Jack. You can access the current month’s menu on the Fairmount Web site, under Family Resources. The a la carte snack program will be offered to students of all grade levels with all snacks meeting the Smart Snack guidelines. If you have any questions or concerns, please call me at (303) 982-5393 or stop in the kitchen and I’ll be happy to help you. Thank you! Dates to Remember AUG. 25: Assessments by appointment, no regular classes | INSIDE THIS ISSUE: PRINCIPAL'S MESSAGE —Sally Mills
Welcome to 2017–2018! Welcome to a great new school year! The staff has been working hard preparing for the return of our students! I would like to take this opportunity to welcome our new staff members: Ms. Adria Maestas – Assistant Principal, Mr. Chas Heaviland – 6th Grade Teacher, Mrs. Danielle Gibson – 3rd Grade Teacher, Ms. Kellie Manson, Learning Specialist, Mr. Mark Griffin – Art Teacher, Mrs. Darci Smercheck – PE Teacher, and our 1st grade AMP team from Three Creeks Elementary – Mr. Jerry May, PE; Ms. Joey Higgs, Music; and Ms. Aimee Pickar, Art. We will also have the following new paraprofessionals join us: Mrs. Michelle Marrone – Kindergarten and Ms. Nikki Koss – SPED. Assessments We will be assessing all students on August 25 and 28. Teachers use the results of these assessments to determine students’ skill levels and how they can best meet each student’s needs. Regular classes are cancelled these days, and students attend by appointment only. You will get more information about these appointments at the Meet Your Teacher event on August 16. Kindergarten Orientation and 1st through 6th Grade Curriculum Nights Please join us for kindergarten orientation and 1st through 6th grade Curriculum Nights! These are important times for parents to receive detailed information about your student’s curriculum and classroom expectations. I will also provide school and district information in the gym that evening. Kindergarten Orientation is August 14 at 6:00 p.m. Curriculum Night for 1st through 3rd grade is August 30, and Curriculum Night for 4th through 6th grade is August 31. Details about the specific times for 1st through 6th grade will be sent home in a Sunday email as we get closer to the end of the month. Communication I hope everyone has found the communication we have been sending home to be valuable and timely. I plan to provide weekly Sunday updates to everyone via the method you selected on Jeffco Connect. This is the same way you would receive any emergency information from the district if that’s ever needed. So, if you have not received communication from me on Sundays, you should check your Jeffco Connect preferences (you may have inadvertently blocked our messages) or call Sue Bobroske in the office at (303) 982-5422. Sue can help walk you through your communication selections in Jeffco Connect. Please feel free to communicate with the office staff and me directly if you ever have a question, comment, or suggestion. You may call the office, email, or stop by. We are here to answer your questions and concerns every day! NEWS FROM THE LMC —Andi Johnson Welcome Back! Oh, it’s great to be back after lots of fun times with family and friends! I hope your kids spent time outside enjoying beautiful Colorado, and I hope they also spent some time exercising their brains by reading! This will be my third year as Fairmount’s Digital Teacher Librarian. Two of my passions are helping students use tech tools to enhance their learning and fostering a love of reading, an important key to being a lifelong learner. I look forward to building on the programs we have in place and to getting to work with all of our students. Here’s to another great year at Fairmount! Save the Dates — Wild West Book Fair: Saddle Up and Read! Our fall Book Fair is coming soon! It will begin on Friday, October 6 and wrap up at noon at Thursday, October 12. There is no school on Friday, October 13. This is a great way for students to buy books they are interested in as well as pick up a holiday gift or two! Both the fall and spring Book Fairs are HUGE events that are integral to the funding of many important resources for all of our students. Here is an overview of what the all-important Book Fair proceeds help purchase:
Please consider helping with our Book Fair . . . we would be SO GRATEFUL!! Please use this link to our SignUp Genius to book a slot or two on your calendar. Thanks! Welcome back, Fairmount families! We hope you had a great summer and are raring to get back into all things school. Last year’s fundraising efforts were the most profitable we have had thus far, and that allowed us to achieve so much for the school. We are so excited to build on that success. There is a lot we plan to accomplish, and we are fired up about the year ahead! As mentioned, last year was a very prosperous year in fundraising. All our fundraisers together raised $71,000!!! The Fairmount Firebird 5K Chase raised over $32,600! This is a record high for the race. The King Soopers grocery card program raised nearly $45,000, returning over $22,000 back to our families in the form of PTA purchases and school fees. The Silent Auction/BBQ in the fall raised $11,600. With the huge success of our fundraisers, the Fairmount PTA was able to purchase $25,000 worth of technology (Chromebooks, charging carts, iPads, and learning apps) for our school! We owe a HUGE THANK-YOU to everyone who participates in and coordinates our fundraising activities at Fairmount! Please see below for the events, programs, and other support that our PTA is able to provide to our students with your help.
Our fundraising goal this year is $67,000, and these funds will go toward building a new sandbox/shade structure that we installed over the summer. This will further enhance the learning landscape on the east side of the school. Other funds have been allocated toward the purchase of another set of Google Chromebooks (36 total), the Read Naturally program, Multicultural Night, and all of the programs noted above. We will also continue to put aside money for sidewalk and parking improvements to be coordinated with Jeffco Schools on improvements currently underway. As the new school year begins, we would like to ask once again for your volunteer time and support so that we can continue making resources and learning opportunities available to our students. Please go to our PTA website at www.FairmountPTA.org. In addition to being able to volunteer to help with the many activities and fundraising efforts listed above, you will also be able to become a PTA member, join our online Student Directory, purchase Fairmount Spirit Apparel as well as tickets to various events held throughout the year, keep up-to-date with important PTA happenings such as meetings, monthly PTA newsletters, and national/state/district legislative educational updates, and more! As PTA board members, we spend a lot of time behind the scenes making sure the above programs and events run smoothly. We are grateful to have such a wonderful team, and we have a great time doing it. But our PTA is most successful due to the time and dedication YOU have made to our school. Thank you! Visit www.fairmountpta.org today! Programs & Events to Watch For
A BIG THANK-YOU TO . . . Marty Eckert and the Eckert family for excavating the site for the new sandbox/shade structure. Stephanie Helmer and Kristi Mladenovic for seeing the sandbox/shade structure through to completion. Liz Bravman, the Learning Garden Committee, and all family volunteers who maintained the Learning Garden all summer. Looks beautiful! Kendra Mauger for arranging all the great food that was served at the Staff Welcome Back Lunch. Earns MOO-La! Thank you to those families who have contributed to the continued success of our partnership with Longmont Dairy for the “Milk Caps for Moo-la†program. We receive 5 cents for every cap we collect! With your support this past 2016-2017 school year, we collected 13,350 caps, raising $667.50 for our school! How can you help if you aren’t already participating? Just start saving Longmont Dairy product caps if you already have products delivered to your home (or sign up with Longmont Dairy if you wish to be part of their delivery program http://www.longmontdairy.com/sign-up.php). Collect caps from family, friends, and neighbors, too! Clean caps should be placed in bags with the student’s name, grade, and number of caps enclosed written on the outside of the bag. Please place bags of caps in the “Milk Caps for Moo-la†container right inside the main entrance of our school. The Fairmount PTA sponsors the monthly prize drawing from students who have collected and contributed caps. To compete in the monthly drawing, students must place caps in the collection container by the last school day of each month. The monthly winner is then revealed the next week during the morning announcements. This past school year’s “Moo-la†monthly winners each received a $5 gift certificate to Little Caesars Pizza: August/September: Nieve Hooyer Be sure to have your caps in by Sept. 29, 2017, for the first drawing of the school year! Feel free to contact the Fairmount “Moo-La†parent volunteer, Kim Wheeler, at afwheels4@gmail.com, with any questions you may have.
ACCOUNTABILITY COMMITTEE REPORT The Accountability Committee met for the last session of the past school year on May 18, 2017. After introductions and approval of the minutes, Mrs. Mills gave the Principal’s Report. All staff positions have now been filled. Mrs. Gibson was hired for third grade, Mr. Heaviland will be the new sixth grade teacher, Ms. Manson is the new part-time Learning Specialist, and Mr. Griffin will be teaching art. The evacuation drill, where the students walked to the Denver Kickers Club, was very successful. Afterward, the Jeffco Sheriff and safety representatives from the school district discussed some issues, including where new sidewalks should be placed on the school grounds. Fairmount won a grant for a new sidewalk that will be constructed between the school and McIntyre Street, but dates for construction have not been announced. Starting July 1, Jeffco Schools have had a new superintendent, Dr. Jason Glass. In other district news, the transition to three-year middle schools is moving ahead as announced in the Jeffco 2020 Vision Plan, and Fairmount’s current fifth graders will be the first class to attend Drake. Mrs. Mills shared a presentation about the benefits of having three-year middle schools, which included getting to know the students better, building greater school community, and having more tools to deal with the social and emotional development of students. Elections were held for Accountability Committee officers. Molly Given will be the new Chairperson; JoAnna Wagner was re-elected as Secretary; and Mia Coffing and Allison Eckert will be the new Voting Members. The next meeting of the Committee will be September 21, 2017, at 5:30 p.m. in the LMC. The Fairmount Community is welcome to attend. |
Fairmount Elementary PTA | |
