Meet the Teacher night

Last night’s “Meet the Teacher” Night is always one of my favorite school events – partly because it gives you as parents a chance to connect with your child’s teachers but also because it gives us a chance to connect with you. We had close to 150 parents, grandparent, aunts, uncles, brothers and sisters, and guardians here last night and I had a chance to visit with many of you about your child’s progress and start of school. The conversations were uniformly positive and I kept hearing over and over about how wonderful the teachers have been, how much you appreciate the extraordinary educational assistants that are working with your son or daughter, and how excited you are to be at Taylor. These are heart-warming exchanges and always make us feel that we are making a difference in the life of your child. Thank you to all those who attended and we look forward to continuing this partnership throughout the school year.

One of the bright spots this year has been the increased parent volunteerism at Taylor. We lost a front office secretary last year due to budget cuts. This cut left us very short-staffed and frankly worried about our ability to manage the overwhelming amount of phone calls, walk-ins, and paperwork that we deal with every day. Thankfully, many of you parents have volunteered to help us in the office sorting forms, shredding old documents, entering data in the computer, and answering phone calls. Every day it seems we have two and sometimes three parents helping Ellen and Suzanne in the office. We are so grateful for your support. If you are interested in helping out, please come by the office and we gladly train you. If you want to volunteer in the classroom, we can also use help there. We will even pay the $18 fee to have you fingerprinted. Even if you think you don’t have office skills, don’t worry. We will train you.

Finally, I am pleased to report that Technology Integration Group delivered 16 new Promethean Boards to our classrooms yesterday. This new interactive smart-board technology will allow our teachers to create more interactive and challenging lessons for your students. It’s a very cool and powerful instructional tool.  We are grateful to the APS voters for approving the Bond Levy last year which is paying for these new machines. Thank you!!!