March
2012
Dear
Families -
March
brings us the Annual Whitmore Variety Show on Thursday, 15 March.
This is a delightful evening of student entertainment in the MPR!
We also have the monthly PTA meeting on 7 March, our spring Campus
Clean Up on 24 March and our Spirit Night dinner out on 29 March!
Be sure to read the article about the blue address forms - VERY
IMPORTANT!!! As always, be
sure to read your child’s classroom newsletters weekly for “up to the
minute” information regarding both classroom and school news.
Enjoy reading!
Ms Hansen
We will
continue to award
the trophy for best
attendance by grade level monthly, awarding the trophy for February at
our courtyard announcements on 9 March. January’s
trophy was awarded to our second graders!
All children should be on campus daily by 7:45 a.m.
and in school every day unless they are sick.
We not only miss them
when they are gone, but they miss
out on a great deal of irreplaceable
learning and our schools lose a significant
amount of funding from the state legislature.
It is also extremely
disruptive to have students leave class prior to dismissal; we ask
that children leave prior to dismissal only for emergencies – thank you.
Our January PTA
meeting is on
Wednesday,
7 March, at 6:30 in the
Library. See you there!
Our next
Family Movie Night is Friday, 11
May. The PTA will be selling delicious pizza, soda, licorice, popcorn
and raffle tickets – the movie is free and will start promptly at 6:30.
Bring a blanket, lawn chair or sleeping bag and enjoy this
wonderful opportunity to be with your child AND their friends.
Congratulations to our Be
Kind Be Cool
recipients for the month of
February.
These Wildcats have been nominated by the Whitmore community for
doing an excellent job of being kind as well as respectful, responsible
Whitmore Wildcats and are truly representative of our community – CONGRATULATIONS!
Alex Rios
Elena Rios
Teresa
Chapa Hailey
Meade
Adam
Seger
Alexis Schurter
John
Cataline
Raylee Onan
Payton
Sindelir
Sonja Chana
Michael
Testa Abigail
Ibarra
Preston
Young
Amber Rozakis Benoit
Connor
Faber
Our next Spirit Night will be on Thursday, 29 March.
Plan on joining us for an evening free from
planning dinner, cooking and cleaning up afterwards!
We are beginning to plan for next year and to help us be as accurate as
possible, you will be receiving a form asking about your plans for your
student for next school year. Please
complete and return this form to the office to help us accurately plan for
next year. Thank you!
A special announcement from our district:
Dear
Parents/Guardians:
As
part of our efforts to provide school programs that are valuable to
students and their parents/guardians, we would like to know what is
important to you when deciding which school is best for your child or
children. We are asking all Tucson Unified School District parents
to participate in a web-based survey that should take about 10-minutes to
complete.
All
parents/guardians with children in Tucson Unified School District are
invited to participate and you can begin by going to the following web
site www.tusd1.org/survey
and click on the start button. If
you do not have access to the Internet in your home, visit your local
public library or your student’s school to take the survey. Thank
you for your participation. Your opinions are valuable to us!
The TUSD School Board approved the school
year calendar for the 2012 –
2013 School Year. Students
will return to school next year at all TUSD schools on Thursday, 2 August
with school ending on Thursday, 23 May.
There will be a one week vacation the first week of October and a
one week vacation in March.
Congratulations
to Amelia Neumiller who was published
in the Bear Essential News for Kids! Her
entry was selected from more than 1000 entries; in addition to being
published, she was also a Young
Reporter and was broadcast on KVOA
TV! Congratulations
Amelia!
We celebrated Love
of Reading week with door decorations, a reading challenge and Reading Trivia questions. Congratulations
to the following students whose names were drawn with the correct answers
to our trivia questions as they received a new book:
Abigail
Ibarra, Acacia Reeder, Sage Antone, Elena Hanabergh, Lynn Her, Naythan Joe
Villarreal, Tristan Kissel, Melody Acosta, Tony Infascelli, and Emme Cota
Robles!
Our Chess Club continues to
provide wonderful opportunities for our students.
We had 4 students, Gregory Ingram, Alex Parmar, Conor Flint and Matthew Rinker take FIRST
PLACE at the chess tournament on Saturday, 4 Feb.
Congratulations
Four Whitmore students, Rhianna
Boivie, Kenedy Jackson, Christopher Echeveste and Alex Parmar entered
the St. Michael’s Science
Challenge, with Christopher and Alex taking FIRST
PLACE in the laser competition, out of 39 teams.
Congratulations to these students!
Don’t forget to update and return the blue
address forms to the school no later than 15 March, and let us know if
your address changes AT ANY TIME. The
school board has changed the distance that we
will be offering district transportation for students.
Beginning next school year, students who live beyond 1 mile of
their elementary schools will be offered transportation and this will be
automatically routed based on student addresses in our district data base. This
is also true for all current fifth graders as some of the
transportation changes may affect some middle
schoolers. All transportation
will be in place based on current addresses, on the first day of school.
If the address is not either current or correct, it will take 3 to
4 weeks to add transportation for students; therefore, it is imperative
that these address cards are not only returned but that you keep the
school informed of any changes of address.
The first week in January, after a great deal of consideration, I
announced to the staff, PTA, and site council that I will be retiring
at the end of this school year. I
have thoroughly enjoyed every day at Whitmore; I admire the Whitmore
community focus on children and its support of the children, the staff,
and of me personally. As a
child, once I realized I really couldn’t be a horse, I wanted to be a
teacher. I am so fortunate to
have had the career I have had and there couldn’t be a better place than
Whitmore to bid it farewell. I
will keep you informed of our district’s method of filling the Whitmore
Principal position. Thank you
again for working with me to insure every decision made at Whitmore is
always about putting children first.
The district is conducting interviews to fill
the elementary school principal vacancies for next school year.
The interviews for Whitmore are tentatively scheduled for either 22
or 23 March and the site council facilitator, Ms Cashman, is the site
facilitator for this process. Thanks
to Ms Cashman for all her endeavors with site council and this process!
Although we
have “early dismissal” every Wednesday at 1:19,
there are four exceptions during the school year.
This year there were two occasions when that was changed to 11:19
to allow for conferences (once in September and once in February) and
there were/are two occasions when the Wednesday
dismissal time is 2:19 (once in February and again on 18 April) to allow for a full day for AIMS testing in both High
Schools and Elementary/Middle Schools.
Don’t forget to let your caregivers and others who pick up your
children know of these changes as it creates not only chaos for children
and staff, but also creates a great deal of frustration on the part of the
caregivers. Thank you!
Our
annual Variety Show is on
Thursday, 15 March. Thanks to
our tremendous PTA and volunteers for making this happen for our students!
Dates
to Remember:
5 - 19 Mar
Butter Braids fundraiser!
7
Mar
1:19 Dismissal
PTA: 6:30; Library
8 Mar
Site Council; 3:00
14
Mar
1:19 Dismissal
15 Mar
Variety Show, MPR
16
Mar
Planning & Grading
Day;
NO
SCHOOL
Kinder Round UP; Library; 9 – 10:30
21
Mar
1:19 Dismissal
28 Mar
1:19 Dismissal
Donation
of the Month:
Pencils and Erasers
Office: 232.8000
Attendance:
232.8002
Many thanks to everyone
for continuing to recycle their
cartridges at Whitmore!
