Mustang News

A tremendous shout out to our nurse, Mrs. Lashkari, and parents, Mrs. Mallott, Mrs. Brosnan, and Mrs. Warshovsky, for assisting the optometrist in the hearing and vision screenings administered on campus last Friday.

The district school nurses conduct health screenings throughout the school year—these screenings aid in identifying possible barriers to learning. Mrs. Lashkari retests those who do not pass the initial screening. Parents are notified and referred for further follow-up only when a problem is identified. Parents may submit a written request for exemption from any of the above health screenings. By California State Ed Code, the following screenings are conducted (Ed Code §49455, §49456, §49452.5):

• Vision: Grades K or 1, 2, 5, 8 and first year in the California public school system
• Color Vision: Grades K or 1 boys only
• Hearing: Grades K or 1, 2, 5, and 8, and first year in the California public school system

Students who are being assessed for initial and three-year review for special education services and students referred by a teacher or parent will also be tested for vision and hearing.

Indoor lunch last Friday was a success! Thank you to the parents, teachers, and staff for the quick shift when the air quality grew worse right before lunch. For the rest of the year, the office staff will text all families immediately after deciding on indoor lunch in the MPR due to unhealthy air quality or inclement weather. These notifications will be last-minute as we prefer lunch outdoors as much as possible. Parents could contact the office if they wish to pick up their children for lunch.

We wish everyone a wonderful Labor Day Holiday weekend. We pay recognition to American workers and all of their many contributions and successes through the years. Labor Day honors the men and women who fought tirelessly for workers' rights.

Respectfully,

Principal Salazar

August 31 Family Reading Night, Virtual, 6:30 PM

September 1 Principal Chat 5:30 PM

September 6 Labor Day Holiday- NO SCHOOL

September 8 Odyssey of the Mind Informational Virtual Meeting, 7:30 PM

September 14 Staff Development Day - Minimum Day, Dismissal K 10:30 AM, GR1-5 12:00 PM

September 14 Polling on Campus - MPR (CA Gubernatorial Recall Election)

August-September 3 Calendar

2021-22 SRVUSD Instructional Calendar

2021-22 Bell Schedules

My name is Rebecca DaValle and I am excited to join Alamo Elementary as a reading intervention teacher. I received my undergrad and teaching credential from Cal Poly, San Luis Obispo, and then taught first grade for three years.

After surviving six moves, my husband’s two military deployments, and raising five daughters, I am now transitioning back into the workplace. With two daughters off to college, I am excited to have more time to come back to the elementary school environment.

I look forward to meeting everyone and supporting our students!

Rebecca DaValle

Reading Intervention Teacher

I come to Alamo with over 15 years of experience. I have an inherent enthusiasm for teaching and learning and a firm foundation of curriculum development, common core standards instruction, assessment practices, and effective interventions. I continue to remain at the forefront of technology innovations for improving classroom instruction and have a standard of high expectations.

I have worked to develop many instructional programs and practices. My classrooms have served as models for training teachers from many districts, and I've worked to educate teachers throughout Northern California in mathematical practices and instruction.

I grew up in the area and graduated with a Master’s Degree in Marriage and Family Therapy from the University of San Diego. I eventually transitioned into a career as an educator and began teaching just down the road at Vista Grande Elementary. My husband and I have twin 9-year-old girls and a 10-year-old son. When not at school or taking my children to Jujitsu, you can find me at a Sharks game or hiking with my family.

Rebecca Wilson

5th Grade Teacher

The class is working on building gross motor skills and learning to follow directions! Gross motor skills enable children to perform everyday functions, such as walking and running, playground skills, and sporting skills. However, these are crucial for everyday self-care skills like dressing (where you need to stand on one leg to put your leg into a pant leg without falling over), climbing into and out of a car, or even getting into and out of bed.

ThinkWorks: In-person after school enrichment classes are back for fall! Opportunities include a pollinators gardening class with the amazing Ms. Flores, Spanish, chess, sewing, and a new Budding Entrepreneurs class. Classes start the week of September 7 and are sure to fill up, so please register today HERE.

2021 Annual Giving Campaign: We are now at 89% of our goal for this fundraising drive--we are almost there! There is still time to contribute to Annual Giving - you can donate online anytime here. See how your donation is used here.

*Corporate Match: Don’t forget to take advantage of any corporate match program offered by your employer. Many require submissions within 30-60 days of donation. We hope to raise an additional $22,500 through corporate matching, but we can’t do it without you! Check here to see if your company matches.

FUNd parties: FUNd party planning is starting and we need your input. Please click here to complete a poll so we can see which fun adult-only or family events you would most like to attend while also supporting our students and school. Thanks for your help!

Box Tops for Education: Scan your receipt and earn $$ for our school. All you need is your phone! Download the Box Tops app, shop as you normally would, then use the app to scan your store receipt within 14 days of purchase. The app will identify Box Tops products on your receipt and automatically credit your school’s earnings online.

See all “Free Money” retail opportunities here.

• Stay up to date with Ed Fund News by visiting us on Instagram @alamoedfund

• For all Ed Fund news and events: https://aes-srvusd-ca.schoolloop.com/edfund

• NEW E-mail this year: alamo.edfund@srvef.org

We thank you for your continued support of the Ed Fund’s fundraising efforts and programs.

Shout out to Meredith Maffeo for organizing the Emergency Kit fundraiser and delivering all the kits to the school!

Lauren Cymerys
Ed Fund President

Thank you to all who were able to join us for a second cup of coffee at our General Association meeting on Thursday! It was wonderful to see so many new faces. At the meeting we had an open discussion about how things are going, answered many questions and introduced a buddy system for new parents. If you are interested in having a buddy, please email Nicole Rocca nicolerocca@gmail.com and she will connect with one of our fantastic Board Members. Kudos to all board members for offering their time to support newer parents! For working parents who were not able to attend this meeting, we will be having a social night in September. Stay tuned!

Family Reading Night - August 31st at 6:30pm

Please join us for our first Family Reading Night of the 2021 school year on August 31st at 6:30pm! Alamo families are welcome to connect over Zoom to hear stories read by parents, teachers, and staff. This is a casual event - relaxing and pajamas are welcome. The book theme will be: Funny Favorites (the ones that make you laugh out loud). Please contact Bridget Williams at bridgetwilliams4@icloud.com if you would like to read.

Join Zoom Meeting:

https://us02web.zoom.us/j/84527327203?pwd=djZzazRSRlVzNVJyT0NhbGYyT05Jdz09

Meeting ID: 845 2732 7203

Passcode: 562418

Principal Chat - Wednesday, September 1st 5:30pm

Please join our first Principal Chat of the year with our Principal, Monina Salazar - Wednesday, September 1st at 5:30pm. Our Special guest is Pediatric Doctor and Alamo Parent, Ling Chih Liang who will talk to us about Covid. Due to Covid and air quality concerns, this meeting will be held through Zoom. Pre-registration is required. After registering, you will receive a confirmation email containing information about joining the meeting. Register in advance for this meeting HERE

Odyssey of the Mind Informational Meeting Wednesday, September 8th at 7:30pm

Please join us for an Odyssey of the Mind informational meeting via Zoom (details below). Odyssey of the Mind is a problem-solving competition for students in kindergarten thru fifth grade which aims to foster creative, original and divergent thinking. Teams of students select a problem, create a solution, then present their solution in a competition. By working in teams, participants learn to appreciate and understand others and that a group is a more powerful thinking force than an individual. We are looking for interested students to participate, as well as interested parents to coach student teams. Please come join us to learn more about the opportunity! You can find more information about the program ahead of the meeting here: https://www.odysseyofthemind.com/learn-more/ If you can't make the meeting or have any questions ahead of September 8, please email Dina Warshavsky at dusya@hotmail.com

Join Zoom Meeting:

https://us02web.zoom.us/j/82230898373?pwd=OTVmdGN5ZTNlQWtsTGNQcWUxUG5ZQT09

Meeting ID: 822 3089 8373

Passcode: 985791

Kudos

Huge kudos to Bar Mizne and Kelly Bowes for their continued work on registration. Thanks to their hard work, we have all but a few parents registered. Thank you to all PTA Board Members for their dedication to the PTA. Thank you to Tim Petersen for researching shade structures for lunch and recess and a special thank you to those that donated to the PTA to allow us to purchase these structures. As mentioned above, thank you, Anita, Dina, and Lauren for helping our school nurse with vision and hearing screenings last Friday. I am so grateful to all our parent volunteers!

SAVE THE DATE- the Run for Education is Back October 9-10!!! Learn more HERE Thank you to Michelle Parkinson for her dedication to this important revenue builder for our school. Did you know, Alamo School receives 70% of all sponsorship dollars and this money goes directly to our school discretionary budget? This money allows our Principal flexibility in spending power on things we need like water refilling stations, hand sanitizing stations, permanent shade structures and so much more. If you want to learn more, email Michelle Parkinson at michelleparky@gmail.com and please consider being a parent volunteer for this program!!!

Be up to date and in the know!!! Follow us on Facebook @Parents of Alamo Elementary School and on instagram @alamo.school THANK YOU Doris Tam for keeping us in the social media mix!

Michelle Petersen & Nicole Rocca
PTA Co-Presidents

Our school needs your help! We are looking for parent volunteers at lunch each day to help with lunch recess: https://www.signupgenius.com/go/30E0D45A8AB28A6F94-lunch. Volunteers must be cleared through the Be A Mentor program. Parents, please have patience with the school lunch process as the lunch school staff is very understaffed. Please check the menu for each day. Picky eaters or those with restricted diets may want to pack a lunch option for their child for the first few weeks while the District works out its kinks. Thank you in advance for volunteering!

-PTA

Attendance Procedure

If your child is going to be absent, please email AlamoAttendance@srvusd.net , giving your child's name, and the reason for the absence, as soon as you are aware he/she won't be in school. Additionally, if you know your child is going to be late for school, please follow the same procedure. Please copy your child's teacher on these emails.

Student safety is our number one priority. In order to ensure that every student is safely where they are supposed to be at the beginning of each school day, we are implementing a new attendance safety protocol. Our priority is to make contact with families for any absent students within 30 minutes of their arrival time at school.

Within the first thirty minutes of your child’s start time, if your student is not at school, you will receive an automated message alerting you to the fact that your child has been marked absent. If you receive an automated call alerting you that your student is absent and you sent your child to school, please call the school office right away.

Per our school’s regular guidelines and protocols, we ask that you email AlamoAttendance@srvusd.net as soon as possible and provide a brief explanation of why your student will be absent that day, including a list of their symptoms if they are sick, as this helps us with our Covid tracking. Please copy your child’s teacher on the email to Alamo Attendance.

Please keep in mind that if your student is tardy, you may receive a call, because it takes time to update the information in our system from absent to tardy. For some, an automated message may be a change from past practice, but we know you will understand that this is the most effective way to ensure the safety of every student.

We ask for your patience as everyone gets accustomed to this new process. There may be times that you have already called or emailed about your student’s absence, but you may still receive a robocall, as the school office has not had the time to input that information in the system.

We appreciate your support and partnership in keeping our students safe. If you have questions about the new process, please contact your school office.

Tardy Policy

Rationale - Tardiness is unacceptable because:

• Tardiness reduces the instructional time of the student who is late.
• A student's tardiness interrupts the class he or she is coming into, resulting in a loss of instructional quality and time for all students.
• Punctuality is a practice valued by business and society; students should be trained in this practice while in school.

With the above as a rationale, the following is our policy:

1. Tardiness is defined as arriving after 8:00.
2. The student must go to the main office for a tardy pass before going to class.

OFFICE HOURS: 7:30 - 4:00 PM (925) 855-4800

Additional Resources

More information about the importance of sleep can be found here.

PBS Kids for Parents has great articles on returning to school. You can find it here.

Contact Me

Christina Byers

Email: cbyers@srvusd.net

Phone: (925) 855-4819

Our Head Coach Matt Struempf and staff are excited to run the Livorna 2021 Fall swim

clinic! Fall clinic will run Monday to Friday from September 7th to October 29th 2021. It will be 5 days a week /8 week session.

We are a spirited, family- based team committed to providing a well-rounded swim

experience; balancing community, sportsmanship, and overall enjoyment with high quality

instruction, individual skill development, and a competitive team-oriented environment.

Registration is available for Livorna pool and non pool members.

Children are intended to focus on technique and endurance and have a great time swimming with their friends!

Swimmers should register and swim with their summer 2022 age group. They may be

moved at the coach's discretion with the swimmer's best interest in mind.

Location:

Livorna Pool, 2533 Trotter Way, Walnut Creek

Practice Times:

Sept 7-Oct 1

4:00-4:45pm (7 & under and new 8)

4:45-5:30pm (advance 8, 9-10)

5:30-6:30pm (11-12, advance 10)

6:30-7:30pm (13 and ups)

Oct 4- Oct 29

4:00-4:45 (7& under, new 8)

4:45-5:45 (9-10, advance 8)

5:45-7:00 (11 and ups)

Other information/requirements:

At least one year of swim team experience or ability to swim multiple laps without

assistance is required. There are no in water helpers for Fall clinic.

A refund minus $100 cancellation fee may be given prior to September 1st. No refunds will be given for cancellations

Please visit https://www.teamunify.com/EventShow.jsp?id=1275694&team=recdsaldst

For more information and to register.

Contact our membership with any questions: andrea@livornadolphins.com

Board meetings are typically held twice each month on Tuesdays at 7:00 p.m. Meetings are held at the SRVUSD Education Center located at 699 Old Orchard Drive in Danville. All meetings are open to the public. Board Meetings are live-streamed on the District's YouTube channel: SRVUSD Board

Board Meetings (Agendas, Minutes, Audio & Video)

Email: ghughey@srvusd.net
Website: https://aes-srvusd-ca.schoolloop.com/
Location: 100 Wilson Road, Alamo, CA, USA
Phone: 925-855-4800
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/groups/142092245882817/
Twitter: @AlamoMustangs