Happy Friday

Hello Viewlands Families!

Happy Friday! We welcomed our youngest orcas to school this week, with the start of kindergarten Monday. We love getting to know our kindergarten Orcas! We continued this week learning classroom routines and school-wide expectations that support individual learning and community building. Being part of a classroom community and a whole school community, requires routines and shared common expectations. Our school-wide common expectations for Viewlands orcas are safe, kind, and responsible.

Our students are all learning and growing their skills at their own pace and starting place. As a public neighborhood school, every Viewlands learner has their own unique stories and their own baseline of skills, strengths, and areas of growth. We will work to differentiate learning opportunities for students, while also honoring the importance of learning from and with one another and the importance of being in community. We will support students talking and listening to each other, understanding the impact they had on the community or another individual, and then problem solving together when needed.  We know conflicts will arise, that is part of being in community together. We try to emphasize that consequences are part of every action. We support learning and growing their knowledge, academic skills, social skills, emotional regulation skills, independence, and communication skills.

Together as families, students and staff at Viewlands, we can all appreciate the idea of creating community that honors the richness of the diversity of life story that is present at Viewlands. Every student has their own unique identity, strengths, and areas of growth. Every family has their own family story. Our diversity is our strength.

Dismissal Safety

If you are pulling up along the west side of 3rd in the 5-minute pick-up zone, please enter from the north. It is important that cars are not doing U-turns on 3rd Avenue or in the nearby intersections to get to the west side of the street. This is a safety issue. Parking enforcement was also present recently and witnessed this, reporting it to the school and the Seattle Police Department, due to the safety concern.

Home-School Red Folders

Today important beginning of school forms came home in the red home-school folders. There are important forms that need to be returned and some informational. In addition, we were provided Puyallup Fair tickets for K-4 students. We didn’t receive them for all students so only K-4 received them. We asked for more but were told they didn’t have more tickets. The picture day information was also sent home in the beginning of school packets. All students will take a photo for the yearbook unless a family has requested no photo. Photos are available for purchase if families want to purchase these photos.

Forms That Need to Be Returned for ALL Students:

• Purple Walking Field Trip form –Every student needs this form completed, signed and returned.  
• Blue FERPA form – Every student needs this form completed, signed, and returned.
• White Laptop (3rd through 5th grade students) and iPad (K-2 students) Agreement forms –Laptops and iPads will stay at school unless there is a specific need requiring them to be home, but these forms are still required for use of the devices.
• Bright Green Attendance Agreement form – This needs to be signed and returned by all families.
• Orange After School Plan form – This needs to be completed and returned by all families.

Other Forms that Need to Be Completed IF Applicable to Your Student:

• Yellow Free and Reduced Lunch Form – This is Important. If your family is potentially eligible given income, this form is important. Schools with a higher percentage of students that qualify for this, provides federal Title 1 funding that is critical. The funding provides additional staffing resources and materials, in addition to the free meal program.  
• Pink Annual Health Update form – This is only applicable if your child has had changes to their health needs and does not have a health plan. If you child already has a health plan or there aren’t any changes that would require different actions at school, this form is not required.
• Green Emergency and Student Release – This is only applicable if there are changes to what you have previously provided or if Kindergarten or new to Seattle Public Schools, what you previously listed during enrollment.
• Yellow McKinney Vento (MKV) form – This is applicable to any families that are unhoused, living in a shelter, living in temporary housing, or doubling other with another family temporarily.

Not all grades/classrooms will need to send home things every day. Please make it part of your family routine to check the red folders when they do come home. Please return completed forms in the red home-school folder in your child’s backpack.

Breakfast and Lunch Update

Students can bring lunches from home or get a school lunch. Starting Monday, every student that is getting school lunch will enter a pin. Every student can have 1 breakfast and 1 lunch at no cost. The pin number is required for dietary allergies or restriction, as well as tracking the number of students eating school meals. We will be helping our students learn their pin numbers and helping our younger students enter the pins. We will continue to support students in this process. Most of our older students are familiar with this and can independently remember and enter their pin numbers. We will keep practicing with our younger students.

Viewlands is a school that receives Title 1 supports. As a Title 1 school we can offer a breakfast (typically one breakfast item, one fruit and one milk) and a lunch (one entrée item, one fruit, one vegetable option and a milk) to any child that wants one.

One thing that is important to note. The way this is funded is with federal and state funds. There are rules around accounting what is served. This means students that bring a home lunch, can’t get only a milk for free. If a student wants only a milk, it costs $0.50 per milk. Funds would have to be loaded into the student account or paid for onsite. If the child is getting school lunch, a milk comes with their entrée choice, at no cost.

Culinary Services

 The choices are highly limited in general. Right now as the kitchen is still being set-up, the options are even more limited.

Please talk with your child about what they are eating. We have noticed that some of our younger K-1 students that are getting school lunch aren’t always eating as they don’t like the offerings. We have more of the kitchen items, so have started to have the hot lunch entrée option, along with the grab and go option.

Our 1st and 2nd grade learners, helped model the lunchroom song to our kindergarteners this week. We are coaching into lunchroom expectations, staying seated, eating, keeping hands to ourselves and out own food, and raising our hand if we need help.

K-2 Lunchroom Song:

“Keep your bottoms on the seat, on the seat” Two claps

“Keep your bottoms on the seat, on the seat” Two claps

“Keep your bottoms on the seat, keep your table nice and neat. Keep your bottoms on the seat, on the seat.” Two claps

Feel free to sing it together at home!

Bring Your Family to School Night

Viewlands will host a Bring Your Family to School Open house on Thursday, September 28th in the evening. This is for all current Viewlands families. Every Viewlands student will be giving a Viewlands Passport. We will also provide maps. The passport will have places to visit that are the spaces your child goes to during the school day, including your child’s classroom, the art room, the gym for PE, and the lunchroom. Hopefully this will also be the grand opening of our library. That is the goal. You will have the chance to see the spaces and meet the educators that are part of your child’s elementary experience this year. There will be other optional places to visit, including the multilingual team, special education team, VEPTSA, and the building design team.

The event is an open house style. Typically, in past years, families were here for 30-45 minutes to visit the different spaces. The event will start at 6:00pm and end at 7:30pm. Please plan to arrive no later than 7pm so you have time to visit the spaces. Families will need to leave the building by 7:30pm.

The playground will likely not be open for play during the event. We will have some play spaces open during the school day starting next Wednesday, but the playground will remain closed for community events until full completion, including most of the landscaping. You will be able to see it from the many windows while in the school for the event.

VEPTSA

The Viewlands PTSA, VEPTSA, are our school partners. They support the school in many ways, including helping making sure we have volunteers for school events and activities, planning and supporting school events, helping collect donations of items needed, and funding important supports at school, including but not limited to the hourly lunchroom supervision role, art enrichment, and classroom support grants.

VEPTSA’s goal is not only to support the school, but also to increase representation of families in VEPTSA. We greatly appreciate the partnership with VEPTSA!

Message from our VEPTSA Partners:

Join VEPTSA today!  The Viewlands PTSA (VEPTSA) supports our school community in a variety of ways.  We will have fun community connections, will fundraise to provide students with critical resources, and will advocate for each student at Viewlands.  Everyone is welcome!

Viewlands PTSA

Join the PTSA

to help support our school community!

School Pictures

Viewlands will have school pictures on Tuesday, October 17th.  The school pictures will be available for purchase. More information on school pictures will come home in a few weeks as we get closer to the date. Every student will take a photo even if the family is not purchasing photos. These photos will be used for the yearbook unless a family opts out on the FERPA form and doesn’t want their child pictured in the yearbook.

There will be a photo retake day for students that were absent on picture day or need a retake for other reasons.

Important School Calendar Dates

• Thursday September 28th 6-7:30PM – Bring Your Family to School Night
• Friday October 13th – No School, Staff Professional Development Day
• Tuesday, October 17th – School Picture Day

A few highlights from my visits in classrooms and with students this first full week include: playing some card games or learning new card games with 3rd, 4th and 5th graders at lunch; listening to 4th and 5th graders do artifact presentations in their classrooms; singing and looking at books with kindergarteners; and talking about math related to the playground construction with some of our 2nd and 3rd graders.

Your children are bright, inquisitive, and creative thinkers. We will continue to seek ways to make every student feel known, valued, and empowered through the year.

In Partnership,

Carrie Wheeler | Viewlands Principal