Keep your face always toward the sunshine - and shadows will fall behind you.
- Walt Whitman
Dear Charter Families,
It has been very rewarding to see how our programs are slowly integrating with each other when possible during the days when they are here together. Some ways we are seeing this:
All K-8 programs now have Lunch/Break at the same time. Homeschool teachers, along with our campus supervisor Tina Mulhall, and I walk around, supervise, and help with any communication/play issues that may come up. CRHS students sometimes come down to eat breakfast and lunch. Seeing the various age groups interact is wonderful. Parent Volunteers too, are interacting with various groups of students during this hour. It’s great to see parents in various programs talking together while they are waiting for their students to be done with their classes.
Master Gardner Melanie is combining students from various programs based on their grade levels to work in the various gardens. All programs now have worm bins and all the middle school students will be gathering data and having projects making use of the new weather station. Garden data and projects will be shared throughout the year.
Ocean Guardian: Teachers Cindy Pressley and Alex Leovic are leading the school in an action project around the waste that will also have K-8 sharing data, activities, and events.
Student Advisory: The teachers and I have met to discuss the framework for our upcoming Student Advisory Council. There will be student representatives in grades 5-8. Involvement in activities will include Spirit days, special events, campus beautiful (think murals as one idea), and of course learning leadership skills, communication, and conflict resolution. The CRHS will be developing their own Student Advisory Council, given that the high school most often has different needs. They will be integrating with our K-8 Student Council when appropriate.
Speaking of upcoming events: A few of the unifying events coming up include the K-5 Halloween Costume Parade, our first-ever Halloween Bash for all our 6-8th grade students. We will also be able to have our annual Winter Craft Fair. Please continue to read your teacher’s newsletter for more details about these events in the weeks to come.
Thanks for sharing your family and children with us.
~Rhonda
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From our Mental Health Counselor: Hi Charter families! There are some great things developing here to support the mental health needs of our students!
My hours have increased this year, so I am now available Mondays, Tuesdays and Thursdays from 8-4, and my office is located in our Coast Redwood High School building. My confidential voice mail number is 831-850-002 and you can still also email me at [email protected].
Along with my visits to all of our classrooms to present and facilitate learning of mental health topics, there are some social groups for middle and high schoolers that are available. These are drop-in zoom groups and just places for students to come in and connect.
Also, onboard this year is our first counselor trainee, Charlotte Warren! Charlotte worked in our district last year as an intern and I got to know her in our mental meetings and was very impressed with her knowledge and warmth. She is a wonderful addition to our support team here at the Charter. Stay tuned for a zoom art group that she is preparing to offer our younger students.
Middle Schoolers Art and Lunch Bunch
A lunchtime social/art/check-in group
Tuesday@11:45 at a table outside - Bring lunch if you want to!
“The HIVE” Online Middle Schoolers
Stay connected with peers and check-in weekly in this 45 min zoom group. Make new friends, share your interests, strengths, and goals. Or just listen and relax!
Tuesdays @ 3 pm Zoom Link
“The Unwind” Highschoolers
Back due to popular demand! This was a fun group last year, and we’re going to keep it going! Connect and have fun with fellow high school peers in a relaxing zoom group.
(Our goal is to eventually change this group to in person meetings)
Thursdays @ 3pm Zoom Link
Robin Bates, LMFT
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Parent Advisory Committee: Our first meeting will be: Tuesday, October 19th at 10:30. Please try to attend! If you would like to join via Zoom, please email me and I will create a link!
After a long wait, we will be starting our monthly Parent Advisory Committee meetings. They will be held every 3rd Tuesday at 10:30 on-site (with an online opportunity for parents requesting to participate via Zoom). The Parent Advisory Committee is open to any and all parents who would like to learn more about the inner workings of the SLVUSD Charter School. We want to have representatives and hear perspectives from every Charter program.
We will start in front of the Charter Administration office. This is an important year to be involved!
These meetings are designed to ensure we have parent input into critical documents that are the backbone of the
Charter. Yearly this committee gives input to our Local Control Accountability Plan (includes our school goals and
funding) School Safety Plan, Annual Parent Survey, as well as our 5 year Charter Petition Renewal and Western
Association of Schools and Colleges Accreditation review.
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New This Year: Student Council. This is an exciting opportunity to develop now that our programs are all on one site. We have a great group of students this year in all grade levels and I am excited to have them more actively involved in creating their school community. Teachers and I are meeting and will be planning the initial student meeting very soon. We have interest from students in all grade levels and programs to step up and lead in this way.
In general: A Student Council is a group of elected and volunteer students working together with an adult advisor within the framework to provide a means for student expression and assistance in school affairs and activities, give opportunities for student experience in leadership, and encourage student/faculty/community relations”. Through projects and activities, student councils work to; -Promote Citizenship, Leadership, Scholarship, Cultural Values, Human Relations. A student council is a group of student leaders who work with an adult advisor to collaborate with others to impact their school community, which impacts their city or town, which impacts our state, which impacts our country, which changes the world.” https://www.tasconline.org/what-is-a-student-council
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Charter Middle School Charter Band: Here’s our band update:
This week we worked on our Call and Response for the Art Blakey and the Jazz Messengers Tune - Moanin’; individual students would play the call and our band would respond. We also read from our standard of excellence method book for our beginners: pg.6 #1, #2, #3, and pg.8 #15. Our students began learning a new tune that utilizes the first three notes from this page. We meet in the Multipurpose room Wednesdays, and Thursdays from 8 am-8:40 am. There is a modification of the lesson for beginners and the more intermediate musician.
For families that have signed up previously but did not make it to our first week, please confirm your student's participation with this form. And, if you haven't signed up but would like to join us, band instrument options are: Flute, Clarinet, Alto Saxophone, Bb Trumpet, Trombone, and Percussion (Snare drum and Mallets.)Here's our informational pdf and a link to our Band google classroom.
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Middle School After School Sports: Report 10/18 - 10/22 Andrea Bytheway: SLVMS Athletic Director [email protected]
Congratulations to the boys soccer, girls basketball and cross country teams! All of our athletes worked extremely hard to improve throughout the season.
Coming Up:
Girls Soccer Tryouts - Monday, 10/18 through Wednesday, 10/20; 3:15 - 4:45pm at the middle school soccer field. Teams will be posted on the SLV Middle school website's girls soccer page Wednesday evening. Practice starts Thursday, 10/21 3:15 to 4:45pm.
Boys Basketball Tryouts - Monday, 10/18 through Wednesday, 10/20; 6th grade - 2:45-4pm, 7th grade - 4-5:15pm, 8th grade - 5:15-6:30pm. Teams will be posted on the SLV Middle school website's boys soccer page Wednesday evening. Practice starts Thursday, 10/21 (same times as tryouts).
Running Club - Starts this week! Tuesdays & Thursdays 2:45 - 3:45pm *For cross country team members.
From our Charter VAPA Booster parents: Below you will find the updates for All Charter VAPA after school enrichment opportunities:
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Charter Play: The current Covid restrictions require social distancing and mask-wearing, as much as possible, for all performers during rehearsals and performances. Our Charter Play has always been an opportunity for our entire community, K-12, to perform together in a large cast of 60-80 students. At this time, this is too large a group to manage and maintain proper social distancing, particularly backstage in the PAC. In keeping with the spirit of the Charter Play, we want all actors who audition to be included. Therefore, here is the current plan:
- Change the Performance week from the first week of February to the last week of April (Monday, April 25-Sunday, May 1).
- Auditions will be the week of January 31-February 4
- We will explore the option of an outside performance venue if current Covid restrictions still inhibit proper social distancing in the PAC in April
- If Covid restrictions continue to be too prohibitive, a Musical Review, instead of a full production, may be considered as an option. This would enable more social distancing and grouping of students.
- Instructor: Amber Walker and others To Be Determine
All Charter Talent Show: Friday, May 20, at 7pm Coordinator: To Be Determined
Thank you!
Your Charter Theater Booster Club
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Charter Library Help needed: If you are interested in volunteering in the library, please contact Clara Elliott at [email protected]. Help is needed bar-coding, entering books into our system, and shelving. Your help is greatly appreciated!
Here is a link to the library to give you a little taste of what is being developed: https://bit.ly/3yCnPlY
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Gardening News: Many of you may not know yet that we have a Master Gardener, Melanie Burgess, who works with all of our students monthly, teaching the Junior. Master Gardening curriculum and working with them in our various garden areas around our new campus. She is a wealth of knowledge and an inspiration to our students. Here are some examples of the curriculum that the students is working with her on this week:
- 2nd Grade (Plant Needs, Nutrients, Diseases, and Perennial Veg/Fruit):
- 3rd Grade (Insects and Life Cycles, Beneficial Flowers):
- QHIA 6th Grade (Plant Hydrology, Water Cycles, and Drought Tolerant Tea Making Plants):
- QHIA 7th Grade (Plant Ecology, Landscape design, processes and principles, and Perennial Herbs):
- CRHS Environmental Horticulture: Students discussed the 7 benefits of companion planting.
What’s happening in SLVUSD: Student-Directed Production of The End of the World
Come see our talented thespians perform in the SLV Performing Arts Center
Dates and times: October 15-24 Fridays & Saturdays @ 7:00 p.m. Sundays @ 2:00 p.m.
Thursday, October 21 @ 7:00 p.m. (Community Night)
Tickets: $12 General $10 Student/Senior/SLV Staff $10 Community Night - all tickets
Get your tickets for The End of the World (With Prom to Follow), written by Sean Abley, a contemporary play co-directed by SLVHS seniors Jacqueline Lopez and Shimona Miller. The play is set in Great Falls, Montana. The students of Charles M. Russell High School awake to find no parents, no siblings, no teachers. Everyone but the student body has vanished. It might sound like a dream to some high schoolers, but for these teenagers it is the stuff of reality. There is a Wall of Light encircling their town that is progressively moving inward and their town is steadily disappearing. In the face of this mystery, the students band together...and splinter apart. What can they do to stop it? What's on the other side? Will there still be time for one last dance? An exciting drama/comedy, this play explores mortality, friendship, and the survival of ethics when survival itself is at stake. Performances are at the SLV Performing Arts Center (PAC).
More information and tickets available at SLV Theatre Boosters: https://hs.slvusd.org/apps/pages/theatreboosters
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Charter Parent Volunteers:
Volunteer opportunities will be available on a limited basis at each school site. The registration process for volunteers is as follows:
New Volunteer: You will be required to pick up and fill out the volunteer paperwork from your school site and obtain a signature from the school site administrator. Once complete, please bring your signed paperwork to the Human Resources Office. You will also be required to provide verification of a full COVID-19 vaccination and a current TB result.
Returning Volunteer: You will be required to provide verification of a full COVID-19 vaccination. This documentation can be provided to your child's school site. The school site will forward proof of vaccination to the Human Resources Office. You may also bring the proof of COVID-19 vaccination documentation directly to the Human Resources Office.
Registration packets are available in our Charter Administration Office.
The Human Resources Office hours will accept volunteer registrations on Tuesdays from 7:00-11:00 am and Thursdays from 12:30-3:30pm. The Human Resources Office is located at 325 Marion Avenue, Ben Lomond, CA 95005.
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Student Nutrition Services: New online ordering system: Thanks to everyone who has started ordering their students' breakfast and lunches online. Ordering online saves food and preparation for the SNS staff! This is especially important, given that there is a staff shortage currently.
Parents and Students need to order meals using this link to the online ordering system: https://family.onlineordering.linq.com. Orders are due by 9 am the day before. This means Monday's meals need to be ordered by 9am Sunday. You will need your student’s school ID number to create an account if you do not already have this, please call the Charter office at 831-335-0932 or email us at [email protected] or [email protected].
FREE BREAKFAST AND LUNCH
- USDA has extended free breakfast and lunch to all students through the 2021-2022 school year.
- Meals will be served from our Multi-use Room in the central area of the campus.
- Breakfast will be available in the mornings starting at 8:15-8:40.
- Lunch will be served starting at 11:45 on Mondays, 12:10 Tuesdays-Fridays
- CRHS students can order lunch and it will be delivered to the CRHS building.
- The more students use this service and share what they enjoy eating, the better Alisia and her team can support us.
What’s happening in our Charter Programs: Every once in a while I will share little tidbits about what our various Charter programs are doing on-site as you wouldn’t know unless you are in their email group!
Quail Hollow Homeschool: Robin, our school counselor, visited us and brainstormed feelings and emotions. We talked about our emotional mind and our reasonable mind, and the small part that overlaps (think Venn diagram) the wise mind when we know what is real. and what we feel. We read the story, There Might be Lobsters, and had time to share with a partner and class about a fear we had, then tried something that made us realize we could overcome that fear! We had a short discussion on what used to be known as Columbus Day, and why it is now known as Indigenous Peoples Day, how we can celebrate and learn from that.
Fall Creek Homeschool: Data talk- Favorite Seasons: Students discussed what they noticed and wondered about a Pie Chart showing people's favorite seasons. We also talked about the importance of data collection. “Breaking it Down” about Food Chains and Webs, “Where do Producers get their energy?” “Is sunlight all that plants need to grow?” “Where does the soil get the nutrients it contains?”
Banana Composting experiment: Students placed a banana slice in a bag with yeast, and a slice in a bag without yeast. We talked about how yeast is a decomposer and what differences we might see between the bananas in both bags. Nature Journals
Quail Hollow Integrated Arts: Skittle Art: This has been a tradition for 7th and 8th-grade class and Kenda and Ben want to keep this fun art going with a 6th-8th grade activity. Students will be learning how to pixelate images, how to use a grid system to translate an image, and how to work together to create an art piece of someone they admire.
Coast Redwood Middle School: We are welcoming UCSC student intern, Lauren Bischop into our CRMS community! Lauren will join us each Wednesday afternoon for the rest of the fall. Her specific focus is on learning to teach environmental studies. The Zoom Book Club: This group will have a weekly discussion about the book, Just Under the Clouds on Mondays at 11am, starting next Monday. Students have begun research on their individual projects that they will present in class this semester. They are still reviewing each other's designs on how to arrange their classroom.
Nature Academy: 6th-grade students have received individualized updates on social-emotional and academic growth in their child so far. All grades will be going to the Skate Rink this Friday as one of their Flex Friday excursions.
Coast Redwood High School: Here are just a few current class details happening at CRHS Literature Through Music Studies: The Untold Story of the Grateful Dead. Students read excerpts from Jack Kerouac's "On the Road," while reading about the Beat Culture with manuscripts from Neal Cassidy, Allan Ginsburg, Joyce Johnson, and Diane Di Prima. Studio Art 1: Students completed their first unit of art starting with Prehistoric Art and the discovery of the painted "bully" bulls on the walls of the Lascaux Caves. After a brief history lesson students moved into practicing drawing lines. Next, we travel deeper into Africa! Marine Science: Having explored global wind and current patterns, the Coriolis Effect, how water cycles around the world's oceans, students are currently working on a science writing response explaining how their local Monterey Bay region is an important contributor to the health of the environment and the community at large
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Transportation:
Students in grades K-8 can use the District’s bus transportation to get to and from the campus. Bus information, fees and schedules can be found at this link. Bus Transportation; SLVUSD
Thank you to all families who have signed up their children and bought a pass. It is important that your student carries their bus pass card with them to show the bus driver every time they ride the bus.
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Covid Protocols to All Families who come on-site: When your child is sick
Important for all of our students enrolled in our programs. We are committed to make sure that we are doing all that we can to mitigate the COVID virus so that we can keep our programs open for those who want to attend classes on our site. One piece that is important is to make sure that we trace any positive case. This is done by accessing any student who comes on site and shows symptoms that may be signs of the COVID virus.
If your child comes on site for classes. Please call our Charter Attendance Line at 831-336-8527 to report when your student is ill. If your student has experienced any covid-like symptoms:
*Cough *Shortness of breath or difficulty breathing
*Fatigue *Muscle or body aches
*Headache *Congestion or runny nose
*Sore throat *New loss of taste or smell
*Diarrhea *Nausea or vomiting
You will either need to:
- Receive a negative PCR Covid Test, be free from vomiting, diarrhea or fever for 24 hours without the use of fever reducing medications and have had an improvement in symptoms.
- Isolate at home for 10 days from symptom onset. OR
- Be seen by their physician and provide a medical evaluator note to verify that an alternative diagnosis has been made and the symptoms are not due to COVID-19.
Parents who have further questions can contact Nurse Sarah Dahlen at 831-335-4452 x142.
Thank you so much to all of you who are wearing your masks properly while you are in the classrooms and outside, close to others. It is by doing so that we can keep the virus at bay and keep learning together in classrooms and on campus.
Proper mask-wearing includes the following:
- Wearing your mask properly, over your nose and mouth, whenever you are inside and there is another person present in the room
- Not pulling it down or taking it off in order to be better heard when speaking in class
- No eating or drinking in class. Breaks during class or stepping outside to take a drink are time to take a drink or eat..
- We have plenty of masks in every room if you need one.
Pandemic Updates, and information on power outages on school days: Please read Chris Schiermeyer’ email for the most recent update not only on the pandemic but important information regarding power outages Parent Communication Update #7
Here are some good links to perhaps bookmark regarding Covid Safety protocols: RETURN TO SCHOOL POLICY.
DRIVE THROUGH COVID-19 TESTING: Exciting News! The County Office of Education is now offering symptomatic & Asymptomatic PCR testing. Cabrillo College in Aptos, Parking Lot K Mon-Fri 2-5pm and Sat 9am-5pm. PVUSD District Office, Parking Lot Mon, Wed, Fri 9am to 5pm. Santa Cruz COE Annex, 399 Encinal St, Santa Cruz Mon-Fri 3-6 pm. Drive Through Covid-19 Testing Sites
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Employment Opportunities at SLVUSD: Are you looking for part-time or full-time work? Interested in joining the SLVUSD Team? We have several job opportunities. You can review SLVUSD job opportunities at www.edjoin.org/slvusd.
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Dates to Remember:
- Monday, November 1: Professional Development Day - No School
- Tuesday, November 2: Picture Make-ups, all grades
- Thursday, November 11: School Holiday, Veteran’s Day
- Monday-Friday, November 22-26: Thanksgiving Break
Key Contacts
Administrator: Rhonda Schlosser: [email protected]
Administrative Assistant: Danelle Matteson: [email protected]
Registrar: Janet Hendricks [email protected]
Mental Health Counselor: Robin Bates [email protected]
Resource Specialist: Melanie Entner[email protected]
HS Academic Counselor: Mary Zilge [email protected]