Weekly Newsletter Pinktober 22, 2020

• Picture Retakes

We have scheduled picture retakes for Wednesday, November 4, 2020 at 8:30 a.m. Students may be out of uniform for retakes. Parents should send the photos they want returned back to school on retake day or if new photos are needed we will have photo purchasing packets available. 

• Dine to Donate Nights

The PTO has a Dine to Donate Night planned for Tuesday,  November 17 at Rib City (746 NW Washington BLVD) from 4:00 to 8:00 PM.  More information will be provided shortly.

• Booster need treasurer and VP

Help is needed with our SJCS Bluejays Boosters Board.  At this time we are in need of a Vice President and next our current treasurer will be moving on(she has an 8th grader).  Katie Smiddy is happy to have someone shadow and be trained for the position.  Please contact the boosters at sjcsboosters@gmail.com if you are interested in either of these positions.

• 2020-2021 Calendar Revisions

We are updating our 2020-2021 School Calendar to reflect 3 additional days when we will not be in school. Several Covid-related factors entered into this decision. Please mark the following “no school” dates on your calendar: 

Monday, November 23

Tuesday, November 24

Monday, January 25

Traditionally, we have conducted a Children’s Festival on the Tuesday prior to Thanksgiving. Obviously, this change impacts that tradition. Of course, in this Covid year, we would not be able to conduct that event as we have in the past. The PTO is working on a new event to take the place of the Children’s Festival. This new event will be held on December 18, our final day of school before Christmas Break. They will be providing more communication regarding that event in the days ahead.   

• Veteran’s Day

St. Joseph Consolidated School will once again be celebrating our Veterans  this November.  Due to the restrictions with COVID this year our plan is to send cards and letters as recognition to these folks.  Please use this form to share the names and addresses of your family members that you wish to recognize.  We ask that you have these to us on or before Friday 10/30/2020 so they can be mailed in a timely manner.  You may submit as many names as you wish for the cards and letters.  Please do a separate form for each person.  We will do our best to match up the family members with student classes.

Veteran's Day Sign Up

• Parent Teacher Conferences

St. Joseph Consolidated School normally has parent teacher conferences in the month of November.  This year we will once again have conferences, but we will be handling these in a new manner.  There will be no in person meetings, in place of the regular meetings,  teachers will hold zoom or phone conferences with parents.  Teachers will contact the families with whom they wish to have a conference.  If you are not contacted but still wish to speak with your child's teacher you may email them to request a conference.  Please make sure to regularly check your email for communication from your child’s teacher.

• Marketing Team

With this communication, I am reaching out to anyone in our school community who may have an interest in joining or supporting our school marketing team. In past years, we focused a great deal of our marketing effort around a one-day-a-year Open House. Over time, many elements of our marketing plan (yard signs, banners, postcards, billboards) became automatic. With COVID-19 impacting so much of what we can and cannot do, we are challenged to step back and take a look at our marketing efforts and create a plan that makes sense in this environment. If you have marketing experience or an interest in helping us take a look at marketing our school with a new set of eyes, please consider joining our team. This need not be a long-term commitment. We’ll take any amount of help you have to offer. Please contact me via email bhicks@sjcshamilton.org or phone 513-863-8758 if you are interested.

• Lunch Menu

We are happy to announce that the USDA has decided to extend the free lunch program until the end of the 2020-2021 school year for all of our SJCS families. Hopefully this will help a lot of our families! 

Here is part of an email the school received:

The U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) announced Friday that it is extending regulatory flexibility in light of the pandemic to allow schools to offer free meals to all children through the current academic year.

Lunch Menu 10/26/2020 to 10/30/2020

• Morning Dropoff - Avoiding Gridlock 

Those of you who drop off your children in the morning have no doubt experienced periods of gridlock on 2nd Street and Hanover Streets. We apologize for not having foreseen this.  We have reviewed the problem and are making some adjustments in our procedures. There are two main adjustments: 

• Bus drop off has been moved further down Hanover Street. Bus riders will now enter the building at the Hanover Street door. This change should eliminate the problem of busses backing up and blocking the exit where cars are trying to get out of the parking lot. 
• We are also keeping an eye on cars coming north on 2nd Street and trying to make a left turn into the parking lot. When there is a line of cars coming south the left-turning cars are stuck and back up to and through the intersection creating gridlock. We will be directing north-bound cars to not turn left when this occurs. We will be asking you to continue north on 2nd Street and turn around to join the line coming south to make a right turn into the parking lot. This will require some patience and cooperation from time to time. Thank you in advance for understanding.