001good evening my name is peter light i'm the superintendent of schools and i am very very pleased to be welcoming you to the class of 2034 kindergarten registration night this is a district-wide presentation i just want to let everyone who is in attendance tonight and our panelists know this is being recorded and we will be making this available after the presentation to our families so i can only imagine what it's like to be sitting at home as i was thinking about a few remarks at the beginning i was thinking back to the last few years when we've done this presentation and we have an audience full of nervous parents um who at least are all in the same place with each other and can be just a little bit nervous together and so i'm sure
002being at home you have a lot of questions around what kindergarten will look like needless to say we're in the middle of a pandemic that has impacted our schools greatly this year and i'm sure you're all wondering what will happen next year as your kindergarteners think of entering school and have questions around that and then you're just probably overwhelmed especially if this is your first experience with your children going into school i can still remember my own son's first kindergarten registration night and that was the first time we did this as a family um and i still remember that feeling of sitting in the audience listening to what was happening um and leaving with just as many questions as i had had answered during the presentation so hopefully we can do a little bit better
003job than that and get to a number of your big questions i am so pleased to be here with a number of my colleagues across the district we will let them introduce themselves um in one moment but i'm going to actually turn this over to mariel terry who is our deputy superintendent of schools and she has been doing this presentation for a few years now as you will be able to tell she has mastered this and she runs our entire kindergarten registration process through her office so please welcome mariel terry and we will get our program rolling good evening everybody it's so great to i was going to say see you but to have you here with us this evening welcome welcome to acton-boxborough we're so happy you're here and that we can welcome you
004to our schools and to talk about all the excitement that is ahead for you and your family and your little one in some respects it may seem like you've waited a long time to get here but this is just the beginning of what we hope will be a very exciting journey my name is mariel teary i'm the deputy superintendent for the school district our registrar karen cole is here karen could you give a wave together we're responsible for registering and placing students in our six elementary schools as you can see we have many other staff members and principals here for you to meet so i'm going to ask them to introduce themselves given that we're on zoom here um i'm going to just call you as i see you and have you introduce yourselves and
005i'll also ask folks to maybe put their title next to their name so that our audience members can remember um so damien welcome everyone i'm damian chagru principal of the conant school debbie hi everyone i'm debbie dixon i'm the interim special director here lynn i am lynn newman and i'm the principal of the gate school diane diane spring you're muted yeah sorry struggling with the technology hi everyone i'm diane spring and i oversee nursing services for the elementary level erin everyone i'm erin betez i'm the director of community education chris hi i'm chris whitbeck i'm the principal of douglas school kate hi everyone i'm kate murray i'm the director of the extended day program the before and after school program here in the district juliana hi everyone i am juliana schneider the principal of miriam
006school deb hi everyone i'm deborah bookes the assistant superintendent for teaching and learning jd good evening everybody my name is jd head and i am the director of school operations dana good evening everybody i'm dana lab principal of blanchard memorial school jen good evening my name is jennifer lasham transportation manager for the active box drill school district i have to say jen you get the award for the best background i love it i take kids to school imagination takes them everywhere else awesome don marie just as we're going on it may be helpful if you stop sharing your screen for a minute because i don't think the audience can see everyone i am sorry that's okay good evening i'm don bentley assistant superintendent for diversity equity and inclusion welcome david good evening i'm david crane
007the principal of mccarthy town school and joe hi i'm joe gibowitz uh acton-boxborough's early childhood coordinator all right we got everybody thank you i shared stop sharing the screen way too late all right go back all right so this evening um sorry as you embark on this adventure you are surely experiencing a wide range of emotions i actually live in acton and my kids have gone through the ab schools i actually remember what it was like sitting in your seats and the anxiety involved with choosing a school that feels right for your family please try to make this as fun and interesting as you can here at acton-boxborough we do not have neighborhood schools as parents you are able to pick which school you believe is the best fit for your family that is what
008you're looking for simply the best fit once everybody registers and enrolls we will have a lottery for any school which is over subscribed over the next few weeks of attending the virtual information nights for each school you'll have an opportunity to learn a great deal about education and acton-boxborough here is the timeline for tonight and for the kindergarten registration process tonight we will review the kindergarten curriculum and the process with plenty of time for questions and we'll end by 8 30 at the latest after that starting next week you'll have an opportunity to attend a virtual information session for each school we have two sessions scheduled on the tuesday nights between now and february 12th you'll get the full schedule a little bit later you'll register online anytime between tomorrow and february 12th that's when
009registration will close so you have between now and then to visit the schools virtually visit the websites and then make the best decision you can about your preference for schools we'll then spend time after that processing all the registrations and in may we'll do the lottery and school assignments and you'll be notified what school your child will be attending i wanted to take a minute to just sort of talk about covet 19 and what that has meant for kindergarten i'm going to tell you sort of what we did this year with the understanding that our hope is that we'll be in full session for kindergarten in september as we all know things aren't quite a straight line with kovids so we will adjust if we need to to um possibly some other options so just
010so you know normally we have um a half day kindergarten option and a full day kindergarten option fully in person given the way things went this year we were not able to offer all-day kindergarten so we had half-day kindergarten for any students who came in person and we had half the kids in the morning and the other half of the kids in the afternoon our schooling this year in person we basically could only have half a class in at a time to maintain the six foot distancing so this year's kindergarten we had morning session or afternoon session four days a week in person and wednesdays were remote families also had the option to choose to go fully remote and we created a remote learning program for that and as i said we did not have
011all day kindergarten available this year our plans for next year are to go back to our normal kindergarten program which would be the choice of the parents to have all-day kindergarten or half-day kindergarten and to have kids attend fully in person if we're not able to do that completely we'll be in touch as we go we'll let you know the plans and um if whether there could be partial remote or some variation all right as we get ready for school starting at the end of august or the beginning of september we don't have the first day of school voted yet the school committee is looking at that they're in the process and when they do decide it will be posted on our website and we'll send it out through email our district is a fully
012comprehensive pre-k to 12 school district and this year we have almost 5 300 students we have an early childhood program the carol hebner preschool which has 73 students we have six elementary schools with roughly twenty five hundred students we have one junior high school for grade seven to eight with 831 students and we have our regional high school for grades nine to twelve with 1751 students and then we have some students attending school outside of the district our six elementary schools are in different locations in acton and boxborough um blanchard is the one school in boxborough it's on route 111 mccarthy town and miriam are also on 111 on the main school campus um close to route 2 and route 27. mccarthy town and merriam share one building and they're on the campus with the
013junior high and the high school miriam i'm sorry conan is across route 2 um on taylor road and douglas and gates are both in west acton douglas is on elm street and gates is on spruce street in a minute i'll tell you a little bit more about that so here's a picture of mccarthy tandemarium again it's on the main campus conan is on taylor road near route 2. lanchard is in boxborough on route 111 right next to the sergeant memorial library gates and douglas are in west acton they're about a block away from 111 and eight is on spruce street and douglas is on elm street but they connect the playgrounds kind of face each other and there's a little brook between them you're probably aware that we're in the process thanks to the generosity
014and approval of the citizens of acton and boxborough we're in the process of building a new elementary school that will replace gates and douglas um so the new school is being built next to the current gate school it's actually well in progress we're about to put steel in the ground um it is anticipated to open a year from september so september 2022 um and it's going to have gates douglas as well as the district's early childhood pre-k program in different portions of the school the pre-k is actually going to be on the first floor along with a lot of the shared spaces cafeteria the gymnasium the library not the library but the cafeteria in the gym the second floor is going to be where gates is located and the third floor is going to be
015where douglas is located and there's a beautiful library multimedia center that's going to span the second and third floor for both for all three schools so this is a picture a rendering of what it's going to look like um and you can drive by there and kind of see it in progress so again it will be open a year from september so um our school district i didn't use this year's enrollment numbers because it was so different with covid and we had some people remote and some people in person but last year we had 306 children enrolled and we had 17 sections so roughly 18 students per class our class size guidelines for kindergarten are 18 to 20 students and we have had somewhere around 300 each of the last few years when you register
016you're going to register online if you haven't found it yet there's a full registration website off of our school district website theabschools.org um and on that registration website there's lots of information everything we're talking about tonight will be there um we'll post the video from tonight somebody asked that yes we will share the video you'll be able to watch it afterwards but when you're ready to register there is a link there where you start to put in your information and as part of that registration process you're going to specify the six elementary schools in your order of preference and we do ask you to list all six because the way the lottery works um it could be that certain schools are full and then it ends up going down further on the list um the
017lottery will be held in may and about 95 of families are placed in their first choice so we have on any given year we have between 15 and 25 families who do not receive their first choice at the time of the lottery um what we do at that point is we create a wait list of for your first choice and if you're not in your second choice you'll be on the waitlist for your second choice and as new families register between now and september we go down the wait list and we place families in schools that have seats in them and then that can open up seats in other schools and we can move people into their first choice school um so we often get some number of those 15 to 25 families into their
018first choice sometime between may and september so we're constantly working our way through it once school starts we do not move families off the waitlist so we move as many as we can through august and then um once school starts everybody stays where they are and then the next summer if you still want to move um we contact you and we see if we can find space at that point so here you'll see throughout the presentation some great pictures of our kindergarteners we chose to use pictures from before kovid we have a couple pictures of kids with masks obviously our kids in classes today have masks on but most these pictures are from the year before in each of our schools you'll find caring experience principals a rich curriculum teachers who are dedicated and caring
019diverse engaged students parents who are incredibly committed to their children in their school community and as a result you will see children who thrive let's take a minute to look through a typical day in the life of a kindergartener one of the most exciting new things your child will experience is the ride to school on the big yellow school bus our bus drivers are amazing in their ability to make each child feel safe and to get them to and from the right locations every day when the children arrive at school they're greeted by a staff member who brings them to their kindergarten classroom typically the kindergarten day begins with the morning meeting and choice time the class comes together i'm sorry the class comes together for morning meeting this is a time for children to
020practice listening and sharing skills it's also a time when children are actively engaged in an important elements of the kindergarten curriculum morning meeting might include a teacher read-aloud students greeting one another a turn-in talk sharing and reviewing the day's events children have roles as classroom helpers which provide them opportunities to develop responsibility for themselves and for others choice time is a chance for children to transition into the school day to explore the classroom and to interact with their peers it is typically structured as guided play as you will see there's plenty to do endless fun to be had and so much to learn instruction occurs in whole class and small group and sometimes one-on-one settings the kindergarten curriculum provides opportunities to learn social skills as well as all the academic areas in kindergarten students learn
021mathematics through many hands-on activities and manipulatives these include working with counters and geometric shapes kindergarten students also work on a variety of early literacy skills including letter sounds sound symbol relationships they listen to stories at listening centers and most importantly experience the joy and love of books and stories science in kindergarten is a chance for students to improve their observational skills and to become more aware of the world around them they investigate weather and changes and patterns in animals and plants the kindergarten curriculum includes art music physical education as weekly specials and integrated into the classroom curriculum these are critical components to the development of well-rounded students it is a wonderful time in students development the kindergarten day also includes many opportunities to make friends to collaborate with other students and problem solve to play
022in and outside of the classroom to create be curious and to learn social and emotional skills that will carry them through their education the kindergarten day also includes snacks and recess field trips and special activities play time and creative time all of these are important components of learning for five and six-year-olds children will be offered transportation on the school bus when you choose a school please consider that some routes take longer than others crosstown bus routes for example an acton student attending blanchard school could mean an allotted 45 to 60 minutes of travel each way so just keep that in mind as you select your schools you don't always need to pick the school closest to your house but if the further away it is the more likelihood there is that there'd be a longer
023bus ride this picture has some maps that help you kind of visualize that so the map on the left shows blanchard and you can see the white dots are the students who attend blanchard and the yellow dot right in the middle is where blanchard is so you can see there are many students very close but we have a few students way over in northachton you can see where that arrow is as you can imagine it takes quite a bit longer to pick up those kiddos over there and get them to blanchard and we end up having to run a longer bus route to pick up enough kids to get over there the picture on the right is a picture of conant and you see sort of the opposite thing happening so the yellow dot in
024the middle of the blue is conant and again many kids in the area quite a few kids in northacton but the handful of kids that live in boxborough um are going to be riding a bus where they have to pick up all those kids and it's going to take quite a bit longer just something to think about another thing we want to point out is how important it is to have regular attendance in kindergarten many absences cause children to fall behind missing even one or two days a month makes it harder to learn and it's a struggle to catch up so please do what you can to have your kids attend regularly plan vacations during the school holidays check the school calendar we will be finalizing it in the next couple of weeks um so
025you'll be able to plan well in advance um regular bedtimes are good for kindergarteners and sort of having things prepared the night before so that they're ready to get on that bus all right so some nuts and bolts about kindergarten um children must be five on or before september first to enroll in kindergarten younger students may not enroll so if your child turns five on september 1st or before then they would attend kindergarten this year we actually say september 1st is the parent's choice you can go either way but they cannot attend kindergarten if they're not five by september first we offer half day kindergarten in the morning and we offer all-day kindergarten it's a fee based program it costs 3750. for the year we pay that in 10 monthly payments of 375 dollars and
026the first payment is due june 15th second payment is due august 15. um might be august first i could be wrong about that um so you'll make a choice whether you'd like all-day kindergarten or half-day kindergarten um the tuition had been four thousand five hundred dollars the school committee worked hard to be able to bring it down to make it more affordable there are scholarships available for families in need and you can contact our registrar karen call for the scholarship application at whatever point you're ready to enroll in all day kindergarten so here's the schedule um the sample schedule so half day kindergarten is mornings only starts at 10 minutes of nine in the morning 8 50 and it goes to 11 50 and transportation is provided both ways all day kindergarten starts at 8
02750 and goes to 3 20. that is the same as the school day for students in grades one through six all day kindergarten has lunch and some kind of quiet time and recess or two recesses built into the day so that kids have a lot of variety in their activities we are also likely to have what we call hybrid kindergartens so in order to provide all-day kindergarten to everybody who wants all day and half day kindergarten to everyone who wants half day some of our all day classes will have some half day students in the class we call that a hybrid kindergarten so it would be a class that goes all day but half day students are in the class and would leave in the middle of the day at 11 50. so the core
028academic subjects are taught in the morning and the all-day k students have their lunch and their recess and snack and some enrichment activities in the afternoon that's we call that a hybrid kindergarten by doing this we're able to grant everybody their choice around half day and all day we used to have pretty extensive wait lists for all day when we tried to just have separate classrooms in each school for half day and for all day if we have enough students to fill a half day classroom in a school we'll run a half day classroom in that school by itself but most of our classrooms will be hybrid with some combination of half-day and all-day students we have an early release day once a week it will be on wednesdays we started with wednesdays this year
029we're going to carry that going forward it used to be thursdays but early release wednesday is for all students kindergarten through sixth grade and the wednesday dismissal time is at 50. so whether kids are in half day or all day on wednesday they're going to be there from 8 50 to 12 50. monday tuesday thursday friday half day is 8 50 to 11 50 and all day is 8 50 to 3 20. so you'll have this all written out in a document and um it'll make more sense at that time um so now how do we decide sort of where to place students everybody makes their first choice second choice pick all six schools in the order you prefer once one of your children is in a school your younger children will automatically be able
030to attend that same school one of our core goals is to keep families together in a single school so siblings of students currently in grades k to 12 attend or attended that elementary school may attend they get their first choice no matter what so again once your oldest child is in a school your younger children will have priority to go to that school some children will have priority to attend a specific school if they are students with disabilities but only if a team determines that the child must be placed in a specific program in a school so you'll know that if your child has an iep and then the team will meet sometime this spring and the team decision says that they really have to attend a particular school to have a particular program most
031of our students with disabilities can attend any school we give priorities to walkers as long as there's room in that school if they live less than one mile safe walk from the school so if you think you're a walker you check that box on your registration for the school you want to attend if you're within a mile of that school a safe one-mile walk we then look at all of them and verify them so please don't say that you're a walker to miriam if you live in northachton we're definitely looking at all the requests and lastly there is a hometown guarantee if you live in boxborough and you would like your child to attend blanchard you have a guarantee that they can attend blanchard if you live in acton there's also a hometown guarantee if
032you would like but all it means is that you can attend one of the five schools in acton you don't have a hometown guaranteed at any one school so siblings some students with disabilities and walkers have priorities to their first choice school or in the case of students with disabilities to the school in which um the team recommends their placement excuse me um this just explains a hometown guarantee which i just did a cute picture of the kids on a nature hike there though a couple of questions we sometimes get um what if i have twins um if if you're registering twins for school and um one of them gets into your first choice school the other one will also get into that school so basically it falls under the sibling rule same thing with
033all day and half day if if you enroll your children in half day they'll both get half day if you enroll them in all day they'll both get all day whatever you choose but whatever school one of them gets into the second one will also be able to go to that school we have many children who are english learners and we have support programs to help um and we have screening for any potential english learners and we have services available in every school so you don't need to pick a specific school if you're an english learner if your child is has a disability as i said before most students with disabilities can be placed in any of the six schools if your child requires a specific special education program located at a specific school your
034child's iep team will discuss it at the transition meeting right so we have parent information meetings um at each school we're doing everything remotely of course so next tuesday evening at 6 15 will be the merriam virtual information meeting each of these will last an hour um so merriam's is next week 6 15 to 7 15 gates is next week from 7 30 to 8 30. the following week on february 2nd we have blanchard at 6 15 and conan at 7 30 and lastly on february 9th two weeks from tonight we have douglas at 6 15 in mccarthy town at 7 30. so you'll be able to see all six schools um in the next three weeks and each school will put on a webinar there will be some faculty there um to help tell
035you about the school and um i really encourage you to try to tune into those it's a great way to get the feeling and flavor and curriculum and everything about each of the schools yeah you don't have to attend all six some people have already done some research on the websites and they know there are two or three that they're thinking about please just attend the ones that you want um but they'll be really um informational and helpful to get to know the people in each school community all right to register go to our website av schools and um select student registration which is right on the top of the main screen for the what for the school district and then kindergarten registration if you haven't done this yet it's really important we would ask
036you to do it we want you to sign up to receive information including information night webinar links this isn't actually registering for kindergarten this is signing up to receive information this gives us a full email list of incoming kindergarten parents and throughout the process we will email you with information with reminders about the meetings um with letting you know the dates for the lottery and when you'll hear about the lottery and anything else that happens relative relative to kindergarten um over the next number of months so on that website there's a link that says sign up to receive information if you haven't done that yet please do registration opens tomorrow you can register tomorrow you can register february 12th or anytime in between um those of you who have older siblings and know that you're
037going to attend a particular school you can register right away those of you who are going to be visiting the other schools on their virtual information nights probably want to wait till the end of that process which is february 9th please make sure you do it by february 12th in order to register you're going to need a student birth certificate and you need to fill out a proof of residency affidavit and that includes an item either a mortgage bill or a rent bill or electrical bill phone bill all all different there's a list of things that you can provide you will also need to have a record of your students your child's immunization immunizations and physical that needs to be done within one year of september 1st 2021. so if you have their immunization record
038you can upload it when you register if you have a physical since last september you can upload that if you have another physical between now and september you can upload it at that point in time our nurses are amazing once you're placed in a school they're going to be going through all those records and contacting folks who we don't have up-to-date physicals from so upload what you have when you register and then if you take your child for an updated physical between now and september just uploaded at that time you can register without having that up to date physical yet you just need to get it in certainly by the time school starts the lottery will be run in the spring we're targeting early to mid may we place as many students as possible in
039their first choice school and it's an automated lottery program and it will place everybody that can be placed in their first place school so if we have 60 seats in a school or 55 seats in a school it'll place up to 55 students in that school let's say there's 55 seats and 60 people chose it as their first choice then five people would be placed on the wait list for that school and those five people we would then go and look at their second choice schools to see if there's room their third choice schools if necessary etc and so that's how the lottery runs love these pictures you can see some happy kindergarteners we know many families have a need for child care outside of the school day we have wonderful programs run by the
040acton-boxborough community community education department community ed is part of the school district and there is child care available in every elementary school it's available before school from 7 to 8 50 which is when school starts so you drop your children off for extended day um we don't do bus transportation for extended day um so if you needed care before school you bring your kids to school any time between 7 and 8 50 and they would be part of that program and go to their classrooms at a little before 8 50. we also have it available after school from 3 20 to 6 p.m and again you pick your children up at whatever point between 3 20 and 6 p.m as i said before we have early release on wednesdays where school ends at 12 50.
041the extended day program is available from 12 50 to 6 pm so there is an extended day program in each of the six schools and there's also one in the school administration building is on the main school campus and it's sort of next to um the meriam and mccarthy town elementary schools and um you know people love programs in their home school or in the administration building the administration building has three or four dedicated classrooms and kids are are grouped by age by grades so whereas in the school-based programs they tend to be more in the cafeteria and all the kids are kind of in the same location although they also play outside at on the playground and do lots of wonderful activities um so it's community education extended day and um we have wonderful
042teachers and really good varied program for all of our kids if you enroll in extended day this is just a technical tax thing [Music] you can use your flexible spending account if you have one through your employer you can use money that's in your flexible spending account for extended day you cannot use it however for all-day kindergarten because all-day kindergarten is a school program during the school day program but extended date does does qualify the registration for extended day is going to happen starting june 1st um so we'll have the lottery in the middle of may you'll get notification about what school your child is going to and then if you would like to sign up for extended day you can then um enroll on june 1st and you'll know what school you're in and
043all of that there is a website where you can go and also sign up to receive information so you can either get there from ab schools by selecting community ed or you can go to this link that's here by the way we will send out this presentation as is the powerpoint um so any links or any specific information you can reference that way and we'll also um we we're happy to have actin tv here with us tonight and they are recording and we'll be able to send out a recording of the presentation as well with extend today students are placed on a space available basis we can often fit um almost everybody the i think the early release day tends to get the most full [Music] all right almost done with the presentation and then
044we'll be um going through the questions if you have questions go ahead and put them in the q a and um we'll respond to them um so to summarize make sure you sign up to get links to information night sessions at each school the info evenings are tuesday nights starting next week for three weeks again at 6 15 and 7 30. the online registration opens tomorrow it closes february 12th the lottery will be held in may and if you choose all-day kindergarten the first monthly deposit is due on june 15th and we'll send out invoices for that um so then what if you don't get your first choice school like i said 95 of people do there are 15 to 25 families who typically do not um all day kindergarten there's no wait list for
045that anymore it's available for all students who want it we do keep wait lists for each school if you don't get your first choice when you are told your placement it will also tell you what number you are on the wait list for your first choice school as i said before as new families move to town they're placed in schools that do not have wait lists where there are spaces and that makes room for students to move to other schools and we will contact you if a spot opens up in the school of your choice at any point in which that happens please remember to enjoy we want this to be a positive experience for you kindergarten your child will have a wonderful kindergarten experience you have an opportunity to learn a great deal about
046all six schools and our school district and as well as the development of five-year-olds see how happy the kids are in each of the schools you can't make a bad choice when you attend the virtual school information sessions ask about what makes the faculty and parents the most proud what roles do parents play in the life of the school what are the school's goals an improvement plan watch and listen to how people relate to one another you're looking for the best fit for you and your family thank you and i'm going to stop sharing and we will go to the q a all right thank you so much not sure if i'm the only one here is the echo or if it's everyone that's everyone huh does anybody have more than one device on sounds
047like it's fixed well i muted myself so but i think that's okay now so i think we're okay yeah better so um i want to just thank some of our administrators uh we've answered about 20 of the questions that have come in already um so it may be helpful for folks in the audience i know as we answer questions they do become visible to the audience so if you want to scroll through the answered questions we'll continue to try and put answers in as much as possible but we'll get right to some of these questions so one question is we know that there's a form for enrolling from a pre-k program that's out of the district what happens if a child is not currently enrolled in a pre-k program due to covet concerns is there
048a form or do they just register um so i'll start and then i'll turn it to joe gibowetz our early childhood coordinator um but absolutely you still enroll um that form is just to give us a little bit more information about your little one oh do you want to add sure um yes if as marie said if um there is the pre-k assessment form as part of registration that we would like to get but if your child's not in a program then we can't get one if they were in a program previously you could reach out to them and see if they could fill it out based on information that they had pre-pandemic some i know some preschools have already been contacted uh if their child if a child was in the program uh prior
049to the pandemic so um some private preschools are filling those forms out joe just to follow up on that what if um someone wasn't in a private preschool and they don't have access to the pre-assessment form then i wouldn't fill one out because there's no one to provide that information perfect thank you so what's the difference between pre-registration and the registration that opens tomorrow so if i already completed pre-registration do i need to register again when that opens up on january 20th great question okay um there are a couple different things that get a little confusing so there's one link on the registration website that says um provide information um so that you're on our contact list please fill that out that's not pre-registration that's not registration that's simply to give us some basic information
050so we can send you emails about kindergarten as things change we actually call the process pre-registration because you're not actually fully registered until we place you in a school and put you in our student information database so if um the registration process was never actually closed so we do have some kindergarten families who have already registered um even though we're officially saying it starts tomorrow so if you went to our website and went to the pre-registration section and went through that whole process including the residency affidavit and the birth certificate and selecting the six schools in order then that's all you need to do that's the process um i'm just going to check with our registrar karen anything more to add to that was that all correct sorry i'm muted um no that's right once
051you're done with all of that email me uh the email address is at the bottom of that form down there it's registrar abschools.org so that i know that you've done it and then i'll go look through the form and make sure everything's there and that you know everything seems to be filled out correctly and if we have questions we'll get back to you but it is called pre-registration on the website right it is i you know we sort of call it pre-registration until everything is signed sealed and delivered at the end thank you so the next question i can answer and it says you know since we do not know um how school will be in 2122 i'm assuming the same hybrid of remote rules might apply similar to this year so the answer to
052that is at this time we're actually planning for a full return next year based on all of the information we have about the course of the pandemic we believe that planning for a full return is going to be the most appropriate program for our students next year however we know that the first rule of this pandemic for us has been that we need to be flexible and that information can change quickly uh so we would certainly have backup plans but no we are not planning to have hybrid and remote programs next year we are planning for a full return to school next question does the registration also include transfer of student from one school to another within the district no you don't go through the registration system to make a transfer request you email registrar
053avschools.org if you want to make a request to transfer from one school to another school so the registration system is simply for a student who's not enrolled yet to be enrolled and i'm going to look at karen will you not was that all correct yes okay um so if you have a child in school already that you want to consider transferring to another school just email registrar at abschools.org great thank you so if you have enough students at one school that want half day k will you make a full day full half day classroom or will it be hybrid regardless of the numbers uh that want the half day program yep so we wait till we get the final numbers in to decide for sure um but yes if we had a full class of
054half day students at a school we would run the complete half day classroom all right next question we know that we need to provide students medical records including the school health record form and certification of immunizations but in the pandemic we are not comfortable to make an appointment with our doctor for an exam so the latest physical record is from i mean in the record we have a physical exam and resultant immunization records can we provide the 2019 records or do we need to update these before the year go ahead diane thank you thank you for the question i can understand why you'd be concerned um i'll say two things on this matter first of all if you haven't already check with your child's primary care provider many practices have already taken your concerns into
055consideration and they see ill students ill children at one facility and do well checks at another facility so they may be able to ameliorate your fears but if they're unable to do so the requirements um that the state give us in a regular year is that they understand it's difficult to get appointments you have 30 days from the beginning of school to have an updated physical that is within you know the 12 months this year because of the pandemic the state department of public health extended that to 90 days after the start of school so again we can't say what the department of public health will do next year but um in a regularly year you have 30 days from the start of school to have that updated physical and again talk with your doctor's
056practice i bet you they'll be able to reassure you with accommodations they've made thank you so next question last year we registered our son for the district's kindergarten program however we decided to defer enrollment for a year because he would be relatively young for his grade because of this will we need to upload all of the documents again and go through the whole registration process karen do you want to answer that so um in a nutshell you will have to complete a new registration but because you're already in the system a lot of the information from last year will pop back up what you need to do is go into the you know online pre-registration following all the links that you'll find on the website and then um click add a student and add your
057child even if they're already in there add them in again because last year's file has been sealed and we can't unseal it so you have to add in you have to add them in as if they're a new student and then fill it out a lot of the information will pop back up some of the information in there like a birth certificate doesn't have an end date so you know if we can access those you're all set with those but for any of them that are time sensitive or the ones that are to prove residency that kind of thing we'll need new ones great thank you um if we register for all day k is it possible to switch to half day later when school starts or in the middle of the year um so
058the answer to that is it depends um so if you're in a school where there's a dedicated half day classroom and you're in the half day classroom so i guess it's all day yeah if you're in an all-day classroom and all the half-day students are in a separate classroom we don't move kids between classrooms in the middle of the year so you would not be able to drop out of all day into half-day if you're in a hybrid classroom you might be able to do that in consultation with the teacher we try not to make a lot of changes once school starts but in in extreme circumstances sometimes we'll allow that you'd work with the principal on that great um next one say there are you know two friends from the pre-k program um and
059they wind up at the same school what's the likelihood that they could be in the same classroom how about one of our principals take this one hi um i'd say if there's two kindergarten classrooms you got a 50 50 shot and if there's three kindergarten classrooms you have a 33 in the third percent shot um when we're building kindergarten it might happen but when we're building kindergarten classrooms we're trying to make the best balance classes we can um you know if we know about a good healthy friendship you could always let us know and that's something we can keep an eye out for but it's it's nothing we could ever guarantee but there's always a chance great um if we choose to homeschool do we fill out the form or only a program deb do
060you want to take that sure so i think the question is if we homeschool do we fill out the form um i think dawn's answering it at the moment and i think the question then is if we're homeschooling right now for kindergarten because this is for kindergarten home schooling i think the question is if they were going to homeschool next year would they have to fill out the registration form or is that a different process that's a different process and they can contact me um and my office and we will help them through that process great thank you um are there any restrictions on a child repeating kindergarten how about one of our principles so um the the idea in coming to kindergarten is that um you would expect that your child would be participating
061for the year if you have concerns about whether kindergarten is a good fit for this year i would encourage you to talk to the preschool and maybe meet with the principal prior to the school year beginning but um you know generally the the idea is that one would begin the kindergarten year and at the end of the year proceed to first grade so if if your child is very young or if there's some lagging skills it would be worth a conversation to see whether it's good to to start this this upcoming year or to defer to the following year great thank you let me just add a little bit um if if people if anyone is unsure about whether or not to send their kids to kindergarten we generally go by the age so if
062they're going to be five by september first you would enroll them in kindergarten um if for some extenuating circumstance you really are unsure or you think they might not be ready um you could email our registrar she'll put you in touch with joe gibbowitz joe is our early childhood coordinator he'd be happy to talk through it with you to talk through any previous preschool experience that kind of thing and then once they're in kindergarten um almost all our kids then go on to first grade i think that was part of the question was retention in kindergarten it does not happen very often um and it would only happen with you working with the teacher and the principal and and really identifying some concerns that would make that something to be considered but it's it's very
063rare so i would just do if i could just say you know joe's our expert on early childhood development but i think that um any one of the principals would be happy to sit down and talk with families about this if they're if they're unsure about what the next steps might be for their child and i'll just add one more thing um with the pandemic nobody had a full year of school this year nobody had a full year of preschool so all of our kids we're going to be meeting them where they are on the first day of school next year and working with all of them and bringing them forward and they're going to do great um but it isn't like if they didn't have a full year of something this year they're not
064going to be ready for kindergarten next year that's just not where we're going to be great so marie i know you have the answer to this one ready um with a good statistical data point what's your expectation for enrollment in kindergarten next year are you expecting more six-year-olds than normal due to the pandemic so that is such an important question i'm gonna bump it to the superintendent because it's above my pay grade so you know in all honesty i think we really don't know quite what to expect uh for kindergarten enrollment this year i do believe we will have some higher numbers than what we saw this past year for the current year we did see a dip in kindergarten enrollment with some people electing to keep it home we don't yet know from all
065of those families whether or not they elected to homeschool their children and they'll be going into first grade or whether or not they elected to defer um kindergarten enrollment so that is a process that's going to have to play out through this kindergarten pre-registration and registration process and certainly something we're watching closely thank you peter let me just say um what i did not say in the presentation was how many classrooms we're going to have next year for this very reason um we really need to see how many kids enroll and then we'll we'll establish the correct number of classrooms for those that number of students so it is a little unpredictable we don't always know how many five-year-olds there are in the community anyway because they're not already with us and then we do
066know some withheld this year and that kind of thing so um we will set the right number of classrooms based on however many kids register great now i'm going to ask a follow-up question to that so my child is a late summer kid and if we register now but for any reason covin is not getting better over the course of the year would she be able to transfer to the program next year in other words defer a year and then enroll so our recommendation is that that kids go by their age but you know in any given year we'll have a handful of families who feel that way and might withdraw their students so it would basically be a withdrawal and then you would re-register next year it's not really a transfer to next year
067um but you're already in the system so next year you would register um again so if you have questions about that um talking to joe gibowetz or deborah bookus or even one of the principals to kind of talk through that you know getting a recommendation from a preschool teacher if the child is in preschool this year but um almost particularly this year we feel like bring the kids in and put them in kindergarten and we're going to really work with all the students we get at the level they come in great thank you so next question how are gifted children handled if a child is significantly ahead of their peers what does the school do one of the principles or deborah sure so i'll start there's a question further down to ask if there are
068gifted child programs at any of the school so maybe we can answer both of those questions at the same time we don't have specific gifted child programs i think again working with the principal looking at your child what their specific needs are and creating opportunities for them to continue learning along their own progression is really what we strive for um it's a former kindergarten teacher in the district um and first and second grade teacher and we see a wide range of learners and um pretty much for them we are able to meet our students needs and so i can certainly throw it to any one of the other principals who might like to also respond i think this comes up pretty regularly from year to year we try to incorporate enrichment and extension opportunities where
069applicable i think we find that when we enter these discussions with families we take a look at the whole child both social emotionally developmentally academically behaviorally and you know we look for areas where we can help um incorporate some of the strengths that an individual may have but also always seem to find areas um where it might be helpful to be in the environment with students from their current grade and and be able to understand that having those experiences and interactions with students from multiple backgrounds of different developmental levels actually is a benefit to everybody great thank you um so diane i think you mentioned this before but what is the due date uh for the immunizations and physical record again before they well the immunizations the state supports um you know no entry without
070a complete vaccine record so even over the course of the summer we will work with the enrollees to make sure their families are set the physical again we have historically uh 30 days from the start of school to have an updated physical but we need to have at least the old one and was 90 days this year but we're not expecting that to be continued into the new year great thank you this is a good one and i see damian you might be typing a little bit of an answer but i'm gonna just ask this one out loud because i think it comes up a lot what if the bus stop is eight or ten minutes from the house from a walk um is there enough flexibility in the busing program to pick up outside
071someone's house i was just typing away i thought you would yeah um you know it's uh i think you've heard this a couple times it really depends uh on the location of the home uh the the surroundings the roads that you live on um it is not necessarily a guarantee that there will be a bus stop right at your house if you have a safe walk and we have criteria uh for a safe bus stop and we've got them all thoroughly and um i would say to some degree bus stops do migrate a bit with kindergarten aged children but again i don't want you to leave here thinking that uh that there is a guarantee that you will have a bus stop right outside your front door it just depends on how safe it is
072a 10-minute walk it would probably be a little bit far for a kindergarten student but again it depends on the situation and once you're enrolled uh every child will be rooted on a bus route and every one of those stops will be vetted by our staff great um here's a just a general question can we download a copy of this q a and be able to make it available for families i don't know peter do you i have not done a webinar where we've done that so i'm i'm not sure i believe we can after um and we will certainly try to do that but i don't want to promise something if i'm not 100 sure um do kindergartners get homework no our homework policy doesn't have our kindergartners uh assigned homework however and they're
073often some family engaging activities for students to do at home that just connects their school learning to their home environment great thank you if my child attended a private kindergarten and is closer to six years old five years and 10 months are they eligible to apply to first grade instead of repeating kindergarten if we can provide the assessment from the previous school so it sounds like they will be one more time so if my child yeah if my child is going to be just under six years old say five years and 10 months but attended a private kindergarten can they skip to first grade or do they attend kindergarten i'm sorry we're very strict about the age you can't go ahead um so no they would need to enroll in kindergarten okay and um what
074is the overall homework policy uh for elementary school the person's understanding was that there was no homework through sixth grade no there's no homework assigned from k2 and then three four there occasionally and then it continues to build into five six more frequently in grades five through six and so um it's a progression of time um and what we really strive for is to be very meaningful homework for students to be able to again extend their learning practice their learning um from the school experience but the only grades that don't have regularly assigned homework is k2 and again those are just family engaged engaging kinds of activities and then it becomes more frequent we assigned in grades three four and then five six um for homework good thank you um the next one i'll take
075and it's a question around what are some of the precautions the schools will be taking this fall knowing covid will still be around um so a couple of things you know we have a lot more information we still need to learn about the course of the virus and you know it does change rapidly i don't know that we will have um children with access to vaccines yet in the fall um i don't i think they're just starting some of the medical trials now so we know that you know children's medical trials typically take longer than adult medical trials too so we're still trying to stay tuned for that um a couple of things you know one of the top areas that we did was to think about the learning environments people are in most um
076so we really focus on our hvac system and making sure there was adequate ventilation in all of our classrooms our classrooms have merv 13 air filters in every room which is the highest grade that's recommended for school settings we also make sure that we have an appropriate number of air exchanges per hour and we installed um a hepa air purifier in every space in our schools uh now as of this winter we also are likely to think that we could be masked at the start of the school year but we're still waiting to hear more information on that but i do think that that's likely at this point you know distancing is something that we're going to be looking at as we learn a little bit more throughout the summer if we do return all
077students to school which is our current plan student distancing would likely be around three feet which is um the current recommendation that we're hearing from the state uh to be able to work toward we're currently at six feet right now because the pandemic is still going very strong but i believe it's likely we'll be looking at three feet of distance for next year so those are the major um you know uh precautions that we have now and will be continuing in the fall but we will have more information that comes out as we progress toward the start of the school year so will the covet vaccine be mandatory for students once it's available i apologize if it's already been answered diane do you want to answer that i could trash i'm hearing some artifact i'm
078sorry i don't have anything going on in the back but um again the district wouldn't be likely deciding that that would be the department of public health the school health unit that would be deciding if that were mandated or not again you know as peter as you said you know they're just beginning the trials as far as the vaccine safety and efficacy with children so i think that remains to be seen and i really would only be speculating at this point but it wouldn't come from us from a b i believe it would be coming you know from the state and um yes that's about all i would conjecture on that point great um so what is the school thinking about in terms of waiting for equal vaccination opportunity for all adults before removing the
079remote option um if the rollout of vaccines continues to be much slower expected not all parents and caretakers would be able to be vaccinated by the fall so you know the current thinking i think that we have is that the viral transmission rates among students are extremely low when compared with adults and the younger the child the lower the viral transmission rate so our plan right now is to return to full education program but as i said we are watching the vaccine roll out carefully and we're going to watch information coming from the state very carefully we have not heard any information coming from the state about expectations for next year you know but i do know that as we get vaccines we would be hoping to begin bringing people back as a place here
080so we're just going to have to stay tuned in terms of any remote option for the fall but the current planning is to have all students back with us all right and i think we are at 8 20 and i oh we just had one more question pop up um do kindergarten students from one school interact with kindergarten students from other schools so i can go ahead on that one so outside of school they may very well but during the school day you know there were really you know the students interact with other students within their school environment um possibly the exception to that could be on the buses i know parker damon building certainly shares buses and some of our other schools may be sharing buses as well in which case some of the
081kindergarten students have some interactions but outside of that it's it's really limited to the school at the park or damon where they share a building there might be sorry i don't know why i echoed um they might be on the playground at the same time they might be in the cafeteria at the same time and they might not be it's hard to know so eventually with gates and douglas that could happen as well great so i think the last one was just a question if we were tracking parents as well as students who had been diagnosed we are not tracking parents and that would be outside the scope of our jurisdiction as a school district so no we don't do that and it's not something that we we would have the ability to do but
082what you know what we do know from a school standpoint um we have no cases uh and we do extensive contact tracing um for any ovid cases that come in this year you can go to our district website and we have a transition to school website that you can go to that has all of our public health metrics and we report publicly on all of our cases so you can have a sense of what's happening in our schools we have zero cases of known in-school transmission this year we had one early case that we suspected but we also had a substantial amount of information that came in later that caused us to believe it may not have been transmitted in school as well so um and there were no cases in which there was student
083to student transmission or student to adult transmission within the school so we're you know we feel pretty confident that is there a transition plan for students who get placed in gates or douglas once the new school is ready in 2022 so the students who get placed in gates and douglas would actually just begin the school year in 2022 in the new building we do not believe that there's going to be much opportunity to transfer into those schools um so if people are looking at you know that new building kindergarten would be the year to you know try and go into those schools and i see maybe kate one last time this has come up a few times and i know we put it in the chat but since it's being asked another time what is
084the cost for extended day uh sure yeah i've answered it can you guys hear me is this that's better okay um so we are working out next year's uh fees and we're putting all that information together it will be on our website i have been giving parents kind of what we charged last year just to give them some idea 5 p.m days per month was 525 dollars and if you were doing am and pm five days a week for the month it was 615 dollars so i think that's a good way for parents to get some idea of what next year's fees will look like and we will put them on our website along with all the other registration materials as soon as those are ready i just also wanted to announce since i have
085the the floor uh our open house will be on february 10th which is a wednesday night right after the last kindergarten meeting and it will be a zoom meeting just like this and so there'll be much more detailed information about about extended day and that zoom link will be posted on our on the community education website great thank you kate marie i don't know if you have anything to add as we're closing up here but i think we're done with questions and answers for the night and we will try to download these uh we just have to make sure the technology supports that um but provided we can download the q a will make sure that it will be available now peter i don't have anything to add thanks everyone on our team for your
086thoughtful contributions and to those who attended thank you and we look forward to working with you and your children in the fall thank you so much for joining us tonight we hope this was a informative session for you thank you to all of our team of administrators nurses uh transportation personnel kate extended day um you know i think we're all very very excited to welcome your students next year and we hope you have a productive few weeks taking a look at our schools and have a good night everyone