For your calendar:

Friday, September 9: Tamale orders due

Wednesday, Sept. 14 5:30 – 7:00: PTA meeting

Saturday, Sept. 17, 10:00 – 3:00 pm: Car Wash, BBQ and Swap Meet

FIRST PTA MEETING

Our first PTA Meeting is Wednesday, September 14th at 5:30 to 7pm. Dinner will be [...]]]> Sept 7, 2011 • ¡Tamale! edition

For your calendar:

Friday, September 9: Tamale orders due

Wednesday, Sept. 14 5:30 – 7:00: PTA meeting

Saturday, Sept. 17, 10:00 – 3:00 pm: Car Wash, BBQ and Swap Meet

FIRST PTA MEETING

Our first PTA Meeting is Wednesday, September 14th at 5:30 to 7pm. Dinner will be provided by our own John Demicas – Thank you John! At this meeting we will be asking the community to support the 2011/12 Program Plan and Budget, forming new committees and Mr. John will come to talk to us about the new Enrichment Block.

CAR WASH BBQ AND SWAP MEET Sept 17

The Starr King Annual Car Wash BBQ and Swap Meet will be Saturday, September 17th from 10am to 3pm. We need volunteers to help wash the cars! Next Wednesday information packet will have volunteer forms for you to sign up for a shift. Soon an email announcement will be sent to invite you to invite your friends and neighbors! This is a fun event.

LUNCHROOM HELP

11:25am – 12:10pm

Come help out in the lunchroom for the first week of school. This is especially nice for the Kindergartners, who often need help opening their lunches and figuring out where to go. A great way for new parents to be involved in the hectic first week of school. If you can open Tupperware, you’re needed!

BULLY BOXES

In the ongoing effort at Starr King to create a caring school community, Mr. John will be putting out six Suggestion Boxes for students around the school. They’re meant for students to drop in anonymous notes. Four will be for bullying reports, two are meant for positive notes about students or other things around school that are going right.

ELECTIONS: SCHOOL SITE COUNCIL (SSC) &
ENGLISH LEARNER ADVISORY COUNCIL (ELAC)

Next Wednesday, September 14th, nomination forms and detailed information on these two school governance committees will be sent out with the weekly newsletter. We have two open seats for parents and/or community members on the SSC. And we have an unlimited number of seats for parents on ELAC.

TAMALES = NEW UNIFORMS

Ms. Evangeline, one of our Wellness Team Members, is selling organic tamales to raise money to buy school uniforms. 50% of your purchase will be used to buy new uniforms for our children at Starr King. The deadline to place your order is Friday, September 9th. Please leave your order form with Ms. Evangeline in Bungalow A or in her mailbox. Tamales can be picked up on Monday, September 12th.

Last year many families enjoyed Ms. Evangeline’s delicious variety of tamales: Beef, Chicken with Pesto, Chicken with Red Sauce, Fish, and Vegetarian. The cost is $3.75 per piece or $3.50 per piece if you order a dozen. Checks can be made out to Evangeline Abouabdalla. Click here to download a PDF of the order form. Please print out, fill out and send in. Thank you for supporting the children of Starr King!

SAN FRANCISCO BOYS CHORUS

On Sept. 6, staff from the San Francisco Boys Chorus came and auditioned several promising boys from Starr King for the Chorus. These students, if they are selected following the audition process, will receive full scholarships for the chorus from a fund established by former San Francisco Mayor Willie L. Brown and Federal Court Judge Marilyn Patel. The program provides support for musically gifted boys from socio-economically disadvantaged neighborhoods. Since 2005, the Program has covered tuition, summer camp, uniforms, transportation to and from rehearsals, and parent concert tickets for as many as 26 boys and their families annually.

Paying for lunch

The San Francisco Unified School District has an online prepayment system, Mealpay Plus. Parents can not only make prepayments, but they can also view and monitor what their child has been eating. The website is www.MealpayPlus.com.

And please, fill out the annual application for free or reduced priced meal online! Even if you don’t think you’re not eligible for free or reduced lunch, fill it out as you might be. Remember: If your family income undergoes a big shift during the year, you can reapply. The website is: https://schoolmealapp.sfusd.edu/ If parents submit their application online, they do not have to submit a paper application.

LOST AND FOUND

There is a surprisingly HUMONGOUS pile of jackets, lunch bags, backpacks, sweaters etc. in the lunch room (to the right of the stage as you walk in). Lots of cute stuff that you probably just bought a few weeks ago so please take a moment to rummage through the pile when you are at school. Even if you don’t think you are missing anything—give it a go. I wouldn’t be surprised to find at least one jacket per kid in there.

We need a couple parents who can get stuff out onto the benches as you walk in on Monday morning before assembly so that people could peruse it. Please make a sign to remind groggy parents. Afterward, it either needs to be donated or we have an account at Chloe’s Closet in Bernal if someone would wash it and drop it off there. Then we can all buy it back and lose it again and again.

It’s the circle of life.

COOKING CLASS

Sprouts Cooking Club is a non-profit organization in the Bay area that strives to teach kids of all socioeconomic backgrounds how to cook, hands-on, with real chefs, using real ingredients.

Sprouts will hold a class on Potrero Hill on Sept. 10, at Whole Foods, 450 Rhode Island Street, from 11:00 to 12:30.

This will be a hands-on cooking classes aimed at 7–12 year olds, taught by UC Berkeley student counselors. We teach the kids fun, easy, and healthy techniques and foods in a hands-on cooking class. After the kids craft their creations, we sample their concoctions to Whole Foods customers.

The Potrero Hill class is coming up on September 10th, at the Whole Foods, from 11-12:30. The topic is “I scream: Ice Cream!” The guest chef is Devon Boisen from The Terrace Room. The cost is $20 per student.

For more information: erika@sproutscookingclub.org, www.sproutscookingclub.org.

POTRERO WALK

The Starr King community is invited to “Unite Potrero: A Community Walk” on Sept. 17th at 2:00 pm. This event has been organized by a group of Potrero public housing residents and surrounding neighbors with the goal of bringing the community, from all sides of the Hill, together on a walk through the neighborhood. It will be a chance to hear stories, share personal anecdotes and visit areas of the Hill you may not have seen before. The walk will conclude with free snacks, arts and crafts activities and a free movie at the Potrero Neighborhood House.

Below is a schedule for the day and the invitation is attached with more information about the walking route.

2:00 – Kick Off at the Potrero Hill Library (1616 20th St.)

2:30 – Community Walk and Talk Begins–follow the route at your own pace!

4:00 – Snacks and Activities at the NABE Begins

5:30 – Free family movie at the NABE: Rio

Compiled by Elizabeth Weise, Starr King PTA Newsletter Chair. If you have items you’d like to have in an upcoming newsletter, please email me at weise@well.com or call 452-0311.

The recently release reports also pointed to the need to adjust how the school teaches English Language Arts. While some students did [...]]]> Starr King Elementary School’s recently released student performance scores gave staff and the school community cause to celebrate successes in Science and Math scores. Both areas showed gains over the past several years.

The recently release reports also pointed to the need to adjust how the school teaches English Language Arts. While some students did make gains in this area, the gains were not shared across the whole school. The link below will take you to www.greatschools.org so that you can see additional detail on our academic performance compared to other schools in the region and the State.

http://www.greatschools.org/california/san-francisco/6435-Starr-King-Elementary-School/

We have much work to do! I want to extend a special thanks to the Parent Teacher Association for supporting two additional days of planning time for teachers this year. We put it to good use. In our planning work prior to the start of the 2010-2011 school year, we re-shaped the structure of the instructional day to bring additional focus to the English Language Arts block.

The biggest change was in shifting the scheduling for Unification activities at the 3^rd and 4^th Grades to times outside of this core academic block. This revised instructional schedule will be posted in the 1^st Floor Bulletin Board case this coming week. As a staff, we believe the revised schedule will allow us to achieve both academic and unification goals with greater clarity and increased impact.

We also signed on to participate in an every-nine-week assessment process at grades 2 through 5 called MAP (Measuring Academic Progress). This cycle of assessments will give us frequent updates on the impact of teaching strategies in English Language Arts and Math.

This list of changes is only a partial one. I will be touching on the next steps for our school in greater detail during Back to School Night on September 3rd. At this point I want to restate the obvious: Everything we do as a staff and school community is done so that students learn at progressively higher levels. The most powerful and important thing we can do as a school community is to support a sustained focus on academic achievement. Our strategies and investments in student wellness, school technology, community building, unification, attendance, and school safety are done so that students can learn well.

Learning is both a privilege and a right for our students. Every single child deserves to be challenged and a chance to be in a position to make his or her own choices in the world that is unfolding before us. Starr King is, in many ways, leading the charge in preparing students for the 21st Century.

I invite your continued partnership in supporting children and the school in staying focused on its teaching and learning goals as this exciting year of change picks up speed.

Friday, August 27th, from 1:30PM to 6:00PM, the playground will be closed so that the lines can be repainted through a corporate-school partnership made possible through Playworks.

What follows is a set of frequently asked questions that may help you know [...]]]> The Playworks Program will be coming to Starr King School on Monday, August 23rd.

Friday, August 27th, from 1:30PM to 6:00PM, the playground will be closed so that the lines can be repainted through a corporate-school partnership made possible through Playworks.

What follows is a set of frequently asked questions that may help you know more about the PlayWorks program and why it’s a great deal for our students. THANKS to the PTA and the School Site Council for making the resources possible for this program!

FREQUENTLY ASKED QUESTIONS

The mission of Playworks is to improve the health and well-being of children by increasing opportunities for physical activity and safe, meaningful play. Playworks currently operates its on-site program in 170 low-income schools in 10 cities across the United States. The organization will expand to serve schools in 16 cities by the 2010-11 school year, and to serve 27 cities by 2013. This FAQ is designed primarily for principals, teachers, parents and others who are affiliated with schools and would like to know more about how Playworks works within the school environment.

How many staff are assigned to a school?

One full-time, caring and consistent Playworks program coordinator implements the entire program. They work Monday through Friday, usually 9:00–5:00, depending on the school bell schedule. (For Starr King, our schedule will be 8:00AM to 4PM to allow for the expansion of our before-school offerings). Through a selective hiring process, intensive and thoughtful training, and an ongoing support process, our staff is provided with a comprehensive set of tools and resources to help them run successful programs.

Who are your staff members? What are their qualifications?

Energetic, fun, and consistent are three words that capture a Playworks program coordinator, or “coach” as they are known to students. A common thread among our staff is a commitment and passion to support the health and well-being of children. All program coordinators come to Playworks with prior experience working with children and generally have worked within afterschool programs, youth leagues and summer camps, or within other youth service agencies in the non-profit sector.

Do we still need to provide supervision at recess periods?

Yes. The role of the program coordinator on the playground is to create structured, safe opportunities for play. They will not be a substitute for a “yard supervisor.”

Does your staff teach PE classes?

No. Our program coordinators are not PE teachers and are not required to have a teaching credential. Playworks does offer 30-45 minute structured physical activity classes. During these “class game times” students and teachers are able to learn and practice the games and physical activities that will be provided during recess periods. The degree to which this physical activity times meet or support California Fitness Standards is determined by the teacher.

How would you work with our existing before and after-school program?

The Playworks after school program model works with the same 20-25 students for the entire school year with the goal of developing a strong, on-going relationship with students and their families. We have found that our format often complements larger after school collaborative programs by working with those students who would benefit from being a part of a smaller community were they will receive greater attention during the after school hours.

Do you work with Kindergarten?

Yes. We work with all grade levels through our recess and class game time components.

Do you work with middle schools or K-8 schools?

We work solely with elementary and k-8 schools in our expansion cities.

Do you provide part-time staff?

No. One of the essential aspects to our program’s success is that our staff becomes a part of the larger school community. By having a consistent presence during the in-school and after school hours, our program coordinators build strong relationships with students, families, and staff, throughout the school year.

Who is responsible for supervising the Playworks staff person?

Playworks provides each school site with an area director, whose role is to supervise and support a group of 8-12 program coordinators. Area directors are responsible for overseeing and maintaining program quality at each school site and serve as the primary contact person for school administrators.

How much does it cost?

The total cost for your school to have the program is $25,000. This covers a full-time program coordinator for the entire school year. We also ask schools to provide a basic set of playground equipment (balls, cones, jump ropes, etc) that usually cost no more than $500 and can be supplemented by existing equipment at the school site.

http://www.playworks.org/make-recess-count/play/playworks-san-francisco