Important Dates 

September 6 -  PTA Movie Night in the Upper Field, 7:00 pm

September 16 - Back-to-School Night, Grades 3 & 4, 6:30 pm

September 17 - Back-to-School Night Grades 1 & 2, 6:30 pm

September 24  - Back-to-School Night, Kindergarten, 6:30 pm

September 30 - Rosh Hashanah,  school closed

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CET Newsletter September 6, 2019

http://www.chufsd.org/schools/carrie_e_tompkins_es

Message from the Principal, Mrs. Kelly Maloney

Dear CET Families,    

We have had a great start to the 2019-2020 school year! It was great to see our returning students and to meet all of our new kindergarteners and their parents!  In addition to our kindergarteners, we had twenty new students join our CET family.  Thank you to our PTA for organizing playdates in the park to help our new enrollees meet their classmates.

Our school building looks beautiful!  The new windows and blue exterior makes it look like a brand new school! Our teachers have done a wonderful job setting up and decorating their classrooms. 

The serving line in the multipurpose room has been completed; we had a Ribbon Cutting Ceremony this morning.  The “Child Nutrition Program” will begin on Monday, September 9. Everything you need to know about the lunch program can be found on our chufsd.org website. Go to the “CET homepage”, scroll down to “Quick Links” and click on the “School Meals”  tab.  You will need your child’s student ID number to enroll. This ID number is the same one that is used to access the eSchool Parent Portal. Student ID numbers were sent home via backpack to all kindergarten families this week. If you need your child’s Student ID, please contact Jean Flandreau in our main office at Jean.Flandreau@chufsd.org  or 271-5184 x3215.

A lot of information has been sent home this week.  Please be sure to check your child’s backpack for information from the PTA as well as the Computer Use agreement form, and the Tiger Cub Student Handbook. 

In an effort to keep you updated with what is happening at CET, we will continue to send out our CET Newsletter biweekly via the K12 Alert System. This is the newsletter you are reading now. Additionally, your child’s teacher will keep you informed through their own newsletters and emails.  Each faculty member also has a webpage linked to our CET homepage. The CET PTA website can also be accessed through our homepage. Another great way to stay connected and see what is happening is to follow us at #CETelementary on Twitter.  If you do not want your child’s picture publicized, please be sure to complete the “Withholding of Consent to Appear in School District Media Releases (Policy 1130-E)” form. This policy can be found on our website under “Forms”.

Just as we are providing you with communication, there will be times that you need to communicate with us. We expect that most of your communication will be with your child’s teacher however you might have a question or concern that may be best answered by someone else. We do make every attempt to respond to you within 24 hours. If for some reason you do not get a response, please reach out again. Occasionally emails get buried or sent to SPAM.   Please note that dismissal plans should be communicated to your child’s teacher as well as to our Welcome Center aide, Laura Sherry.

Mrs. Bianchi and I look forward to seeing you all at the upcoming Back to School Nights. We will begin the night with a general meeting in the Multipurpose Room. Afterward, you will go to your child’s classroom to meet their teacher and hear about grade-specific curriculum, student expectations, and special events. Our PTA will be selling Spiritwear. Our first School Spirit Day is Friday, September 27. 

Please consider attending the first PTA event of the school year.  Tonight is Movie Night- Mary Poppins Returns!  A free event for all families. The movie will be shown in the multipurpose room.

Warmly,

Kelly

News from the Assistant Principal, Mrs. Kerri Bianchi

Hello CET families!

Each year I like to focus my first newsletter article on the importance of Social Emotional Learning.  At CET we strive to create a community of accepting and empathetic staff and students.  This year we will continue to revisit our REACH expectations and acknowledge students who display Respect, Effort, Acceptance, Cooperation and Honesty.  Over the next week or so, Mrs. Fitzgerald, School Psychologist and Mrs. Woolley, School Counselor, and I will spend time talking with each grade level about how REACH should look in various parts of the building.  I would like to share the expectations with you so that you can feel comfortable reinforcing these expectations at home.  Students show respect by listening and following the directions of their teachers, teacher aides, lunch monitors, and other adults in the building and by using kind words, using equipment and materials correctly and treating others the way that they would like to be treated.  Students show effort by, always doing their best and trying to include others.  They demonstrate acceptance by taking responsibility for themselves and their actions and by embracing differences in others and getting to know them.  Our students show cooperation by taking turns, following directions and helping out when needed. Finally, CET students demonstrate honesty by being truthful, taking responsibility for their actions, playing by the rules and showing good sportsmanship.  During the grade level assemblies we will also reinforce the concept of our CET Buddy Bench which is located in the center of the playground.  We will explain to students that the Buddy Bench is a place that students can go if they are feeling lonely or having difficulty finding someone to play with.  We encourage students if they see someone sitting on the Buddy Bench to go over and ask the student to play with them.  By fostering and reinforcing these positive behaviors we are promoting a positive school environment where everyone lives by the Golden Rule.

P lease spend some time reviewing and discussing our Student Handbook at home and remember to have your child sign and return the Tiger Cub contract to school. Looking forward to a great year!

News from  Robin Woolley,   School Counselor  

Teaching Children about Personal Safety

As our children grow up, it is important that we have “difficult” conversations with them about things that might be hard FOR US to talk about.  It is easy to talk to them about fire safety because a fire is something that is obviously dangerous and we have a simple strategy to give to them: Call 911 and get away from the fire.  It is much harder to talk about something that is less obvious – we don’t want to mention that there may be scary things in this world like strangers and “bad people” who might hurt them.  After all, we don’t want to scare them.  However, when we have age-appropriate conversations with them about what to do if something dangerous or bad happens, we are actually giving them tools to keep them safer.  

Here are some tips:

• Talk about using a strategy such as “No, Go, Tell” - this is something that our students have learned through Bullying Prevention and can be used for personal safety as well
• Teach your child the appropriate names for their private parts  
• Do not force your child to hug or kiss relatives/friends at get-togethers or parties 
• Teach your child to politely decline to be touched if they don’t feel like a hug from someone: they can ask for a high five or simply say “no thank you” 
• Teach them to listen to their “Uh-oh” feeling and if they are uncomfortable with something or someone - even if it’s a friend or relative - to let you or another trusted adult know immediately
• Let your children know that you will believe them if they come to you with an uncomfortable feeling or tell you that someone touched them in an inappropriate way.  
• Teach your child that when someone says “no” or “stop” to them, they need to listen and stop what they’re doing. 

Below are some books that can help you start these conversations with your child(ren) about stranger safety, personal boundaries/consent and sexual abuse prevention (safe/unsafe/uncomfortable touches).  

My Body! What I Say Goes! By Jayneen Sanders

Never Talk to Strangers by Irma Joyce

The Berenstain Bears Learn About Strangers by Stan and Jan Berenstain

A Little Book About Safety by Samantha Kurtzman-Counter and Abbie Schiller

My Body’s Mine by Kayla J. W. Marnach

I said No! by Zack and Kimberly King

Your Body Belongs to You by Cornelia Spelman

No Means No! by Jayneen Sanders

CET PTA  

Welcome back to school! We hope your children are meeting up with old friends and making new ones. We invite you to join us tonight, at 7:00 pm, in the Multipurpose Room for Movie Night featuring Mary Poppins Returns. It is a free event and popcorn will be available as well as our new CET blankets will be available for sale.

Please join us on September 17th at 9:30 am for our first quarterly PTA meeting of the year at CET. You can sign up to join the PTA on www.cetpta.com or at the meeting. By joining, the majority of your dues go back toward funding requests to benefit the students. You also get to voice your opinions on how these funds are spent at our meetings.

News from Patricia Lynch, Math Teacher  

C.E.T. Loves Math!

I am so very excited to announce that on November 14, National Math Guru, Greg Tang Jr. will be visiting C.E.T.!   Greg and an additional staff developer are spending the day with us.  They will do a Math assembly for EACH grade level AND professional development sessions for teachers! 

Awesome, right?!?!

Wait … there’s MORE!

Greg will run a ‘Family Math Night’ that evening!  You are invited to come to C.E.T. that night to enjoy Math games with your child.  I promise that you and your child will leave even more ‘pumped’ about Math!  Greg’s popularity has been exploding all over the country and we are fortunate to have secured his visit prior to his viral fame.  I would like to send a HUGE thank you to the Croton-Harmon Education Foundation (CHEF) for sponsoring and funding this event.  The support they provide in order to make teachers’ visions and dreams a reality is just phenomenal.  More information to follow!

DISCONTINUATION OF ANNUAL LICE CHECKS

This letter is to notify you of the CET PTA's discontinuation of annual lice checks in accordance with the guidelines set by the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) and the Centers for Disease Control (CDC).

These guidelines stipulate that "Screening for nits alone is not an accurate way of predicting which children are or will become infested, and screening for live lice has not been proven to have a significant effect on the incidence of head lice in a school community over time." They also state that "Several descriptive studies have suggested that education of parents in diagnosing and managing head lice may be helpful. Parents are encouraged to check their children’s heads for lice regularly. School screenings do not take the place of these more careful parental checks."

We encourage parents to check their children’s hair regularly and to ask your doctor to check during annual checkups. Children should be taught not to share personal hair items such as brushes and hats and to limit head to head contact since this is how lice is spread.

For more information, please refer to the AAP website.

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ARRIVAL AND DISMISSAL PROCEDURES

School will begin at 8:00 a.m and end at 2:25 p.m., with the first buses departing school at 2:35 p.m.

• All doors will be locked after morning arrival (8:10 a.m.) and remain locked all day.
• All late students must sign in at the Nurse's Office and obtain a late pass before continuing to class.
• Visitors must enter through the front doors. A video intercom will be used to allow visitors access to the building. Visitors should be prepared to show photo ID.
• Students who are dropped off must be dropped off at the back of the building between 8:00-8:10 a.m. After 8:10 a.m., all students arriving must be dropped off at the front of the building.
• Students who are picked up at the end of the day will need to be signed out in the library between 2:25-2:40 p.m.

Student pickup is from 2:25-2:40 p.m.

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 Updating You and Your Child’s Information in the K12 Alerts System 

To be sure we have the most up-to-date information for you and your child, you may access K12 Alerts by either logging on to the CET Homepage where you will find “Parent Portal/K12Alerts” or by accessing the Croton-Harmon School District’s Homepage and clicking on “Parent and Resident Portal/K12Alerts”. Once you log in to the K-12 Alert System, you will be able to make any necessary changes to your or your child’s information .

If you have any questions please contact Denise Cuomo, 914-271-4793, ext. 4200.