It is my hope that you've had a wonderful summer reconnecting with friends and family while enjoying a wonderful rest for part or all of your summer. We look forward to students sharing their stories with us of great adventures and new experiences. This message should be followed shortly by eNotes with additional details, but please review carefully this extended message for important information
Please remember that we will focus entirely on using your new parent credentials and email accounts for most of our communications. Please login to my.aswkey.org, make sure you have access and click through to all of our portals for a review of the systems supporting your child (PowerSchool, ManageBak, SeeSaw, SchoolBuddy, etc.). my.aswkey.org is your one-stop portal for access to all important information and communication at ASW. Our communication will be increasingly limited to this portal only and its associated school-provided parent email address, which you can easily set up on all of your devices. We also maintain our SMS Emergency system and you can update your mobile number through PowerSchool. PowerSchool continues to be our main hub for daily maintenance of your records, health alerts, and attendance, and it is enhanced with additional systems depending on academic and program needs at each grade level.
It's also important to enter PowerSchool immediately as necessary start-of-year consent forms for EACH child must be filled out during the first days of each school year. The form should be available shortly and this important information makes sure we have all the necessary directions and permissions in place to effectively care for your child at school.
Reminders:
Our new families will be here on the 22nd for orientation starting at 9:00a
The first day of school is the 23rd for grades 2 and above.
Early childhood start, Pre-K to Grade 1, details are in eNotes and other direct communication you may have already received.
The traditional Director's Welcome Back Coffee for Parents - all of you are cordially invited to join me for a cup of morning coffee and treats on Wednesday, August 23rd, at 8:30 a.m. in the cafeteria.
Divisional principals will communicate more about their programs and necessary reminders in eNotes which will follow this message shortly.
Finally, I just want to welcome one and all to the coming school year. We have challenges this year due to our construction project, but with a flurry of activity in the final days of preparation, we will be ready for students on schedule. More about the project update and some of these challenges, including traffic and parking directions, are below.
We have worked hard to get us to the point where we are ready to open. As previously presented, we have lost our central core until February after extensive work (see map below) this summer in demolition and initial work on the renovation.
Some key things:
We will have open ceilings in the hallways this year. This will look a bit messy but is not an issue. While we move through with additional renovation work (off hours), we need access to these areas for necessary connections and wiring. The building will have a bit of a warehouse look, but it will not affect operations.
We will have different pathways between areas of the school, particularly between the main building and the Annex. We'll work with kids to master these as quickly as possible.
We will have challenges with parking and pedestrian routes (see below) between now and February.
Temporary walls to secure these areas are all in place and we are cleaning up the last bits to make sure our environment is ready. Rest assured, our focus remains on safety and security while we continue with this work. This is the toughest period of the project and we'll need to work together to achieve it as a community.
In order to answer your questions, we have set up a new email address for all things related to construction. Please write to us at info@aswarsaw.org to share any concerns or seek more insight.
Please click HERE to orient or remind yourselves of parking customs here at ASW. We will need to be very strict about the Kiss-n-Go lanes this year and keep vehicles moving.
Parking will be particularly challenging in the coming semester until more of the most challenging work is completed. In addition, the connection between Upper School and Elementary parking areas will only be open between certain hours as described in the image below. We will have additional parking outside the back gate that we will need to use this year. To help with this, we have moved all staff parking to the Upper School section or to overflow parking outside the back gate to maximize parking available in the Elementary area. If you must leave your car to enter the school or greet your children, you must park.
We highly recommend using offsite parking in the nearby parking areas as an alternative and walking the short distance to school or carpooling in order to minimize the number of vehicles on campus. This is particularly important in the first days of school. Thank you in advance for considering this.
You can post questions and comments via the Facebook comment stream before and during the event.
Recordings of past episodes are available on the Zimplicity Director's Desk and Apple Podcasts, as well as in the Facebook Parent Group, Videos section. Subscribe to videos via Apple Podcasts and recordings are delivered automatically when published. You can also subscribe to my channel on Podbean.
