Dear Hardy families,
It was great to welcome our students back this past week!
With each PTO newsletter, I will include a principal letter that will include highlights from the previous week, information about upcoming events and other miscellaneous information. Here are a few updates for this week.
Parents/Guardians dropping off/picking up students or dropping off belongings
As a reminder, in an effort to promote the health & safety of our community, at least for the time being, WPS is limiting access to all WPS buildings for visitors. If you are bringing your child to school late or picking up your child early, you are invited to ring the buzzer at the main entrance. Our school secretary Janet Rixon will speak to you through the intercom system and then send a staff member to help support escorting your child to/from the exterior door. If you need to drop something off for your child, you are also invited to ring the doorbell at the main entrance. Our school secretary Janet Rixon will speak to you through the intercom system and then direct you to leave the item by the door (in a drop-off bin). This will be retrieved and delivered to your child’s classroom.
Free School Lunch
To ensure children have continued access to nutritious meals during the pandemic, the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) has extended the nationwide waiver allowing school Food Service sites to offer free meals through the 2021-2022. All students, regardless of a family’s financial means, will be offered No Cost meals.
Promoting health guidelines with students using RISE
As a way to help promote proper mask wearing and hand washing, we created a slides presentation that is tied into our school’s commitment to RISE (Respect, Include, show Safe behaviors, and Encourage). Classroom teachers shared this with students this past week. See links below:
For K-2nd graders: https://docs.google.
For 3rd-5th graders: https://docs.google.
School Council Parent representatives
We have two parent representative vacancies on the School Council. The School Council meets monthly on the first Thursday of each month (Oct-May) from 7:45-8:30 AM over Zoom. The Council is comprised of the principal, a community representative, and an equal distribution of teachers and parents. Councils are tasked with assisting the principal by reviewing the school building budget and the school improvement plan. The Council also helps to support overall school improvement initiatives. We do have two parents who have expressed an initial interest, but if there are other parents who have an interest, or if you have any questions about this opportunity, please email me directly at smithg@wellesleyps.orgby next Friday, September 10th. There will be an election to determine these representatives. Stay tuned for more information on this election in the coming weeks.
Car line reminders
Please see this helpful video that was created two years ago to help teach community members about car line procedures. https://drive.
Hopefully by everyone following these rules, we can make the car line efficient and safe for our students!
Room Parent Volunteers Needed
Thank you to those who have already volunteered to be a room parent this year! We very much appreciate the support it provides to our teachers and to each class as a whole. At this time, most of the classes do have one parent volunteer but two parents per class would be absolutely ideal. Please email Courtney Hunnewell (ckhunnewell@gmail.com), the room parent coordinator, if you would like to sign up or if you have any questions about the role.
Special Thanks
A special thanks goes out to the PTO for providing the Hardy faculty & staff with a special luncheon on the first day of school. We are grateful for your ongoing support!
Have a great week!
Respectfully yours,
Grant Smith
Principal