Parent Newsletter 8/25/22

Congratulations to our lucky Bethel Bypass “ain’t gotta sit in no car line” winners:

Tasha Jones, Juli Rogers, Morgan Trull, and Kelli Willis. We raised $612 in this fundraiser and we will be selling tickets again in November/December for next semester. Thanks so much to everyone who bought tickets!

Tomorrow, Friday 8/26, we are having a Back to School Bash for our 1st-5th grade students in celebration of a new school year and having successfully made it through the first week. We will have inflatables in the gym, the rec center’s Base Camp On The Go at the track, and an icy pop for everyone. Please make sure your child wears clothes and shoes he or she can be active in. Thanks to everyone for a great first week!

As I’ve mentioned in an earlier newsletter, we are part of a grant and all of our BES students can have free breakfast and lunch. In order to keep this grant, we have to keep our participation numbers up. This is especially true with breakfast; fewer students eat school breakfast than lunch. I encourage you to look at the lunch menu calendar and ask your child if they would like to try eating breakfast at school. They never know until they try…most kids like the biscuits best, but I personally love the little maple pancakes and the Cinnamon Toast Crunch pastries are yummy, too.

Since Covid quarantines are (almost) completely in the rear view mirror, we will once again be diligently tracking absences, tardies, and check outs. If you are checking your child in tardy, we ask that you use the Identakid computer and the child takes the orange slip to their teacher. Then (this part is new) please open the Bethel Tardy Tracker notebook to the grade level for your child and start a page for him/her. Each time your child is tardy, you’ll add it to that page with a time and reason. Last year we had students with upwards of 50-60 tardies…we’re hoping that if parents can see just how much instructional time their child has lost due to being late, they will work hard to get their students to school on time. That being said, please remember that school starts at 7:50 am. A child is considered tardy after 8:00. Please don’t get angry with us at 8:01 and say, “But we’re only 1 minute late”. In reality, you’re 11 minutes late at that point; 7:50-8:00 is the 10 minute grace period.

We understand that there are doctor and dentist appointments that can’t helped as well as cars that don’t start and tires that are flat. That means your child will have a page with just a few entries and not much lost instructional time. It’s all good:)

As far as absences go, please be in communication with the teacher about why your child is out. In the next parent newsletter, I’ll give guidance about when to keep kids home and for how long depending on what kind of sick they are. We will be communicating with parents personally and individually if absences begin to add up.

It is understandable that students get checked out sometimes. Please note that we do not do check outs after 2:30!! If your child has an appointment at 3:15, you need to check them out at or before 2:30. The reason for this is because Ms. Sherry is making sure all transportation changes have been communicated to the teachers and there is typically a lot of activity in the office area between 2:30 and 3:00 for different reasons. Checking students out during that time is dangerous and if one person does it, then others want to do it, and before you know we cannot keep up and we don’t know who got what child…not safe!! Thank you in advance for not asking to check your child out after 2:30. Of course, there are emergency situations (younger sibling just threw up in the car, grandmother just got rushed to the hospital, etc.). By all means, let us know you’ve got an emergency and we’ll get your child for you. A 3:30 dentist appointment in Asheville is NOT considered an emergency.

Both morning and afternoon car line have gone pretty smoothly this week. Remember that kindergarten students start coming next week, so please be patient and know that things will slow down a bit until our youngest students learn the ropes with the help of our teacher assistants.

In the afternoons, please have your yellow tag in a visible spot with the child’s (or children’s) first and last name in bold marker and the grade level. This will speed things up significantly. Thanks in advance for your help with this! Please stay in your car and we will make sure your child gets to you. No cars move until all folks in the line give us a thumbs up that they’ve got their kids.