8/6/08

Dear River Road / El Camino Del Rio Elementary families,

I hope that this letter finds you and your family enjoying this wonderful Eugene Summer. We have busily been preparing for another great year here and are looking forward to the sound of pattering feet and children’s voices in the halls. We have been fortunate enough to land four grants for next year and look forward to these extra resources providing more opportunities for our kids.
One of the grants we got is an extension of the BEST after school grant. We will be able to serve over 90 students in our after school program. The major focus of the program will be to help students who need it in the areas of reading and math. Next year for the first time we will also be able to offer some enrichment activities like Spanish, Strings, choir and sports as well to more students.
We are currently working with the city of Eugene to work out the details for this program. We should be sending more information home with your children in the first couple of weeks of school. We also have a talented and gifted program grant that we will be working with the science factory and other providers to give extra services to our talented and gifted students. All of these programs will be starting in the first week of October.
A third grant we received in collaboration with the national science foundation and the University of Oregon is the Emast grant (Excellence in Mathematics and Science Teaching program). This grant will provide our teachers access to training by regional and state experts in the area of mathematics and science. You should look forward to your students being able to participate in some exciting work in these two areas.
Finally, we were able to partner with the University of Oregon and the federal government to be a part of a federal grant that will be studying and giving assistance to schools creating language immersion programs. We will be working with language immersion schools from all around the state in studying the possibility of implementing a Spanish Language Immersion school starting in Fall of 2009 in Kindergarten here at our school.
We will have our meet and greet on September 2nd from 3-4 pm that we encourage you to attend. Class lists will be posted at that time and it is a great opportunity to see your child’s class room and meet their teacher. School will officially start on September 3rd. The first bell rings at 8:15 am and school starts at 8:20 am. Again we will be serving breakfast in the classroom starting at 8:15 am, free of charge and all interested students are welcome to eat. School ends each day at 2:40 pm, except Wednesday when it ends at 1:40 pm. Creative care will again be available for both before and after school for parents who need extended child care.

We look forward to another great year and hope to see you at the meet and greet.

Paco Furlan and The River Road / El Camino Del Rio Elementary Staff