MacArthur Messenger

Dear MacArthur Families,

We hope this message finds you well and filled with excitement as we embark on another exciting school year! It is with great joy that we extend a warm welcome to all of you as we open our doors and welcome your children back to school.

Here are a few important points I’d like to highlight:

Safety First: The health and safety of your children remain our top priority. Our staff is well-prepared to handle any health-related concerns that may arise. Students need to feel safe in our schools and we do all we can to make sure that this feeling is present. Drills and other safety precautions are taken seriously and practiced with intent.

Open Communication: We believe that open and transparent communication is key to a successful school year. Please feel free to reach out to our teachers, administrators, or staff if you have any questions or concerns. We are here to help.

Engaging Curriculum: Our dedicated educators have been hard at work crafting an engaging and stimulating curriculum that will challenge your children while fostering a love of learning. We can't wait to see the growth and development they will achieve this year.

Parent Involvement: We value your involvement in your child's education. There will be various opportunities for you to participate in school activities, parent-teacher conferences, and other events throughout the year.

Community Building: We believe that a strong school community is built on trust, collaboration, and mutual respect. We look forward to fostering this sense of community throughout the year through various events and activities.

Let's make this school year a memorable and successful one! We can't wait to see all the amazing things your children will achieve.

In closing, we want to express our gratitude for entrusting us with your child's education. Together, as a team, we can create a positive and enriching learning experience for our scholars.

Warm regards,

Mr. Gonzalez

We loved welcoming our wonderful scholars back last Friday! Enjoy a small taste of the smiles that were had below!

Thursday 9/14: PTA Meeting, 7pm

Friday 9/15: Last Day to Order Spirit Wear

Friday 9/15: PTA's Kickin' Pizza Party (5:30-8:00pm) - please note the start time change from previous communication

Tuesday 9/19: Girl Scout Recruitment Night, 6-7pm

Thursday 9/28: Packer Day! (Wear your Green Bay Packers gear to school!)

Friday 9/29: No School

Thursday 10/5: Picture Retake Day

Tuesday 10/10: Destination Imagination Try Outs

Thursday 10/12: PTA Meeting, 7pm

Friday 10/13: Fall Festival and Trunk-or-Treat at MAC (in the evening)!

Tuesday 10/17: Destination Imagination Parent Night

Wednesday 10/25: Evening: Parent-Teacher Conferences

Thursday 10/26: No School / Parent-Teacher Conferences

Friday 10/27: No School / Professional Development Day

Welcome to the 1st month of school! Once everyone has settled into a routine, the PTA would like to invite you to a few events.

• The Welcome Back To School Kickin’ Pizza Party will be on Friday, 9/15 from 5:30 – 8:00 PM. Come hang out with families and teachers to have some pizza and play some kick ball! You should see flyers come home today with more information. Pizza tickets can be purchased here as well.

• We typically put out a directory each year that families can use to contact each other, plan birthday parties or meet their fellow classroom parents. We also want to ensure that we respect each families privacy decisions. Please fill out this form to let us know if you would like to participate in the directory and the level of disclosure you are comfortable with.

• We are currently running our Spirit Wear sale!! You can order your gear from now until 9/15. Make sure you take a look at what we have here and get your order in!

• We also wanted to remind you that we will be having our annual Fall Festival / Trunk-Or-Treat event on Friday, October 13th. We will have inflatables, games, Chick-Fil-A, and a chili cook-off in addition to the trunk-or-treat activities. We are always amazed at the creativity our families show in decorating their cars and having car games for the kids. If you would like to get in on the fun and hand out candy to the kids, please sign up for a parking space here. Last year we discovered that people love a wide variety of chili flavors and that we have some great cooks as part of our school family! If you are interested in showing off your chili, please sign up to compete in the chili cook-off here.

• Our first PTA meeting will be held on Thursday, 9/14 from 7:00-8:30 PM. If you would like to join us in person, we will be in the school library and there will be child care provided. Along those lines, if you have a child who is interested in babysitting for the PTA meetings, please reach out to us at ptamacarthur@gmail.com or sign up here. If you can’t attend the meeting in person, we encourage you to join us online here. Get a chance to listen in to the information being passed, schedules being discussed and how we can help the school this year. Please join the PTA here.

Why join the PTA? We work closely with the school staff to ensure each student gets a Best In Class education. We provide material support, community growing events and learning opportunities for all of our students. Here are some of the things we have done recently:

• Purchased playground equipment and gaga pits
• Renovated the gym with new paint, new backboards and basketball hoops and a rock wall
• Purchased new Smart TVs to ensure state of the art equipment is present at the 2nd grade and above level
• Enhanced the specials curriculum with art drying racks, monitors and A/V equipment for music and the gym improvements
• Pay for two field trips per year for every full day grade

Your $8 membership allows us to continue to be a National PTA membership organization. This allows us to have a non-profit charter and to raise money to continue to support our kids and our teachers. Please join the organization, take a little time to listen to our meetings on Zoom (or join us in person if you have the time). If you have even 1 hour this year to volunteer for one of our events, it will go a long way to making us more successful.

We look forward to a great year!

Robert Sanchez: President - robkiana@gmail.com - 858-663-8819

Nicole Christensen: VP - nicoleriege@gmail.com - 414-379-1600

Coral Kline: Secretary - coralrae.kline@gmail.com - 608-658-0475

Alexis Melby: Treasurer - leximelby0110@gmail.com - 414-331-4102

Please make sure that emergency contacts are current in your family access account. We always call the guardians* first, so reserve the "emergency contact" section for individuals we can contact in the event we cannot reach you. If someone other than a guardian or emergency contact needs to get your child from school, you need to notify the front office directly. If you anticipate someone needing to get your child on a regular basis, please add them to your emergency contacts. It is important that emergency contacts are current. In addition, be sure to notify anyone coming to get your child during the school day to bring a valid I.D. when coming to the office.

*Please contact the front office if your phone number has changed. This was a field that could not be changed during online verification.

• Registration fees and food service payments can be made by check (payable to "Germantown School District") or cash at the MacArthur office. They can also be paid online via credit card, through your Skyward Family Access, with a service fee applied.

• Your registration fee balance is found by clicking "Fee Management" and your food service balance can be found by clicking "Food Service" on the left hand side of your Family Access Skyward Account. Please note that we are past due on registration fees. If you have not paid them, do so as soon as possible.

• Please see menus for breakfast and lunch by clicking the buttons below.

• Breakfast will be served from 8:50 am until 9:06 am for all students. (Students purchasing breakfast should be dropped of at Door 12 if they are not bussing to school. Please do not drop your child off at door 12 before 8:50am; food service will not accept students in the cafeteria earlier than this designated time).

• If your child is going to be coming in late to school, we need to know whether lunch will be purchased that day. Teachers take lunch counts along with attendance first thing in the morning. The lunch counts are sent to the high school no later than 9:30am so they can deliver the food to MacArthur in time for our lunch periods. Therefore, if you would like a lunch available for your child, you need to make sure to have the order in the office when you call your child in late by 8am (if you did not send in an eagle note indicating the lunch choice ahead of time). If you do not make your order, please send along a lunch with your child when they are arriving late to school. Please note that there are two choices of lunch this year, so when ordering, please specify which choice your child would like. This is also important for Eagle Note communication. On the Eagle Notes, there is a spot inquiring on whether lunch is needed. If you check YES, please put the main item of the lunch choice next to it, so we make sure to have the right lunch ordered for your child.

• Families can find answers to many Food and Nutrition questions by looking at our Germantown School District webpage, by clicking on INFORMATION, then under DEPARTMENTS (in the center of the page), you will see Food and Nutrition.
  

Thank you for your patience as we work to get students safely to and from school. Your partnership in abiding by our arrival and dismissal procedures is appreciated. We continue to work closely with Riteway as they are ironing out the routes. If any bus is still at MacArthur at 4:28 (this is more than a 15 minute delay on when they plan to depart our school), you will receive a Skyward notification of the delay.

Please remember that if you need to change bussing transportation at any point throughout the school year and either the pick up or drop off address is something other than the home address for the student in Skyward, a Special Transportation Request form needs to be filled out. The average processing time for a new route to be approved and planned for is 3-5 days, but it can take up to 2 weeks.

The below points were included in the Welcome Letter. We rely heavily on the use of these notes - thank you for following this protocol whenever possible as we work on clear communication and less disruptions to classrooms throughout the day during academic learning.

• This is a very important form we use for communication purposes. It is extremely helpful to your scholar's classroom teacher and the office when these forms are used to communicate planned absences, late arrivals, early dismissals, or changes in dismissal plans. It is imperative to fill out the form completely and accurately.

• After filling out the form, send it to school with your scholar. Your child will hand it in to his/her teacher, and then it is sent to the front office. This process informs all that need to know the change of plans, and limits the disruptions of calls into the classroom when changes are called in during the day of the change. We understand that things come up unexpectedly, but please use these forms whenever possible.

• For unplanned absences/sicknesses, please call the front office by 8am.

• Blue Eagle Notes are available to pick up in the front office. Alternatively, please call the front office or alert your child's teacher of the need for more notes and we will have them sent home. At any time you may need more throughout the year, please let us know. There is also a printable link below if you need some in a pinch. We appreciate your partnership as we work to make our days as efficient and safe as possible.

Photo proofs (if you did not order photos) and picture packets that were ordered for photos taken during Open House are expected to arrive at MacArthur within the next 1-2 weeks. Once we receive them, teachers will send them home in your child's backpack. If you did not order, and would like to, there will be directions on how to do so on the proof that comes home. Note that if you did not order photos by the 8/28 deadline, your photos will need to be shipped directly to your home and shipping charges will be included in the cost.

Picture retakes are taking place on Thursday, October 5th, during the school day. Teachers will be sending children to get their pictures taken. Families will not be attending retake day. If your child did not get their photo taken during Open House, or you would like to have a retake of the photo already taken, please notify your student's teacher directly. We have a list of students not photographed, but direct communication with your child's teacher will ensure that all students needing a photo on retake day get one taken.

All students will need to have a photo for the yearbook, regardless of whether families would like to purchase the photos. Please plan to have your child's photo taken at retake day if they did not get one taken at Open House.

Click the button below for more information on retake day from Network Photography. Please note that fully intact original packets of photos will need to be returned to the photographer on retake day if you already ordered and would like to replace the old photos with new retake photos.

Home-School Connection

Every month, we will have a new "value word" that our scholars at MacArthur are working on as part of our Character Strong program. We talk about this during assembly time and as part of the Monday videos that are shared school-wide. The students continue learning about the value word within their classrooms. MacArthur will focus on specific areas in the school as we teach the students how to practice the value word in their lives. We will keep you updated on what we have been learning about each month in our newsletters!

We have been talking about Kindness and next week, we will begin learning the word Respect.

Definition: seeing value in all people and things and treating them with care.

Focus Area: Lunchroom

• Students will remain sitting at all times during lunch.

• If a student needs a teacher’s attention at this time, they may raise a quiet hand.

• Use the bathroom and wash your hands before lunch.

• Students will not put food directly on the table, play with food, or throw food.

• Students will notify teachers of any spills that need attention by raising a quiet hand. Students may be asked to assist in cleaning up.

• Students will promptly clear their trays when given the signal from the teacher. No food or garbage will be left on the table or floor.

• Students will form a straight line at volume 1 after dumping their trays.

We have some new and wonderful faces at MacArthur! Please read below to find out a bit about our new staff members. We are happy to have them all!

This is my first year as a Special Education Aide at MacArthur. For the last five years, I have been a stay at home mom raising our youngest with autism, which I feel will help me bring a different perspective to the special education position. My husband, two daughters, and I have been in the Germantown community for over 13 years. We have a 8th grader at Kennedy and a 1st grader at MacArthur. I am looking forward to working within this wonderful community at MacArthur!

Hello, families! I am the Teacher for the Deaf/Hard-of-Hearing. I am so excited to officially be part of the Germantown community and specifically the MacArthur family! I am originally from Rockford, IL, and moved to Milwaukee to attend UWM right after high school. I have had the privilege of working with the Deaf/Hard-of-Hearing population in southeastern Wisconsin for the past 10 years. When I am not teaching our scholars or collaborating with our excellent staff, I enjoy traveling, reading, and bowling. I appreciate the warm welcome I have received here at MacArthur, and I hope your school year is off to a wonderful start!

I am the new Art Teacher here at MacArthur Elementary. I am a painter, art teacher, muralist, and jewelry designer. In my free time I enjoy hiking, camping, making art, cooking, visiting galleries, and spending time with my family and friends. I have a great passion for art and I am excited to make a difference in our school and surrounding community. I look forward to a fun year of teaching art!

I am so excited to be starting at MacArthur Elementary as a Special Education Aide this year. Previously, I have taught elementary music for 23 years and can't wait to begin a new adventure in education. My husband and I live in Hartland and love to travel (note the sloth in my arms from when we visited Roatan, Honduras), golf, attend baseball games and bowl in our free time. We have two children, McKenna (26) and Keenan (22). McKenna lives in Florida and works at Disney World and Keenan has just begun his senior year at the University of Dubuque studying Business with a Marketing minor. It is truly a blessing to be at MacArthur. Go Eagles!!

Hello, I am one of the new Kindergarten teachers. This is my 6th year teaching and my 5th year teaching kindergarten. I grew up in Cedarburg with my 3 younger brothers and recently moved to Grafton. In my free time I enjoy reading, crafting with my cricut, and spending time with my family and friends.

I am one of the 4th grade teachers and this is my third year as a teacher. I received my undergraduate degree from UW-Whitewater in Communication Sciences and Disorders. After receiving my Bachelor’s Degree I received my Elementary Teaching Certification from Concordia University Wisconsin. I grew up in Jackson and am a Germantown graduate. I previously taught fourth grade virtually at County Line during the 2020 school year and taught in a different district as a third grade teacher in 2021. Last year, I had my son, and am excited to be back in the district as a part of the MacArthur family!

In my free time, I enjoy spending time with my family. One of my favorite things to do is to go to my family cabin in the UP of Michigan where we go ATVing and snow skiing.

I'm excited to learn and grow with you this school year!

I am a Special Education Aide this year. I'm recently married so my name will be changing soon! This is my first year in this position but I've been around the district subbing for the past year. If I look familiar, I also coordinate Tyke Site through the rec department in the summer! In my free time, I enjoy being outside, trying new recipes and getting crafty!

I am joining the Reading Room this year as a Reading Aide. After a stint at Amy Belle, I am excited to be an Eagle! I am looking forward to supporting the Mac community in literacy skill development. One of my favorite books is Tops & Bottoms by Janet Stevens. I have been married to my husband for twenty years and I have four children in Germantown schools.

Hello! I am the new English Language Learner (ELL/ESL) teacher at MacArthur Elementary School. I am very excited to be a part of the MacArthur staff and look forward to getting to know your kids. I’ve been in the education field for over 22 years with 8 years in Germantown. I’ve completed my graduate program from Hunter College of City University of New York and am National Board Certified in ESL. My interests include hiking, traveling, and reading.

Hi! I am one of the new Kindergarten teachers! I recently graduated from the University of Wisconsin-Oshkosh and this is my first year as a teacher. In my free time, I love to read and spend time with my friends and family. I also have a dog named Stevie! I am so excited to be at MacArthur Elementary and I look forward to a great school year!

Please complete the DISTRICT VOLUNTEER APPLICATION using the button above if you are interested in volunteering at school or chaperoning a field trip with MacArthur. This form MUST be filled out and the background check needs to be cleared (it can take up to two weeks to clear) if you would like to help. The background checks are good for 3 years, after which they must be renewed.

If you are visiting the school and have an appointment, please bring your I.D. with you so you are able to get a visitor's badge to enter the school.

We plan to post many updates and school happenings on Facebook. Please be sure to follow us so that you can celebrate the student learning and school happenings with us!

Website: gsdwi.org/o/macarthur
Location: W154N11492 Fond Du Lac Ave, Germantown, WI, USA
Phone: 262-253-3468
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/MacArthurGSDWI