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Edison Language Academy – Together Through Two Languages (310) 828-0335 www.edison.smmusd.org
ANNOUNCEMENTS Valentines Dance and Silent Auction – Join the Edison community on Friday, February 13 for our celebration of the Día de Amistad. 5th grade parents are selling food, and the PTA is organizing dancing, a foto booth, face painting, crafts, karaoke and loteria in addition to the Silent Auction. Come between 5:30-8:30 p.m. for this great family evening. Proceeds benefit both the Edison PTA and the Santa Monica Malibu Education Foundation (SMMEF). Notice of Work on Stewaart St. and Urban Avenue – We’ve received notice that Time Warner Cable will be working from February 6-20 in this intersection just east of our school from 8:00 am to 3:00 p.m. There should be a continuous flow of traffic, but you might plan ahead and prepare for delays. Facilities Updates:. For more detail, visit: http://fipcontractors.smmusd.org/edison-newconstruction.aspx or join us at our weekly Wednesday meetings at 7:45 am in the community room. February Workshop for Parents: Helping Children Through Divorce –A parent hot topic workshop from Family Services of Santa Monica will be presented on February 18, 9:30-11:00 am at Franklin School. Edison families welcomed. Childhood Anxiety - A bilingual workshop for Edison families presented on February 25 from 8:30-10:00 am. by Bobby Verdugo of the UCLA School Function Project in Room 208 at Edison.
Corazon de Vida – Collection of donations continues through February 27. To purchase the $50.00 bus tickets for the trip to Baja California on February 28, go to http://www.eventbrite.com/e/february-28-2015edison-school-trip-to-the-casa-hogar-maria-imaculadaorphanage-hacienda-tijuana-tickets-15215533069 School Smarts – This seven week class will start on Monday, February 23rd at 8:30 a.m. in the Community Room. It will continue for seven consecutive Monday mornings except on holidays or spring break. If you still want to sign up, you can either pick up a form in the front office or show up to the first class on the 23rd.
FROM THE PRINCIPAL’S DESK: BUILDING A CIVIL CULTURE We have just finished our Kindness of Justice Challenge which we do each year to celebrate the life and work of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. In a period of just three weeks, our students completed 2,216 intentional acts of kindness and justice and wrote them down on small slips of paper. When you come to the Valentine’s Dance on Friday night, you can see these colorful paper links joined in a chain and stretched around the lunch area – a reminder of the power that many small acts have when joined together. Of course, the real test is to keep the intentional practice of kind and fair acts going after the official challenge is ended. To that end, I’d like to ask your help with a few things. There are a few student behaviors lately that a word from parents would greatly help to end – and we’d appreciate your help: Urinating on the bathroom floors -- Some of our male students have recently been using the downstairs bathrooms in an unsafe and disrespectful manner – urinating on the floors, urinating on full rolls of toilet paper, taking the handwashing signs off the wall, urinating on them and trying to flush them down the toilets. A word about your expectations for them at school helps. Taking food from others – No one should ever take food from someone else. Please check and see if your child is getting enough food so that they’re not hungry and see if you may need to send something else for snack or lunch (healthy options please!). But taking food from others is not OK. Taking things from other people’s backpacks -- Someone rifled through a backpack during the afterschool hours and removed a students’ trading card collection. Granted, the collection shouldn't have been at school, but we’d like to see it returned to its owner. So if your child has an unexpected infusion of trading cards in the last few days, please have a serious discussion with him or her. The cards weren’t given away or loaned – they were taken without permission. The cards can be returned, no questions asked, to the main office. And because our children learn a truly terrifying number of things by watching us – the trusted adults in their lives -- I’d like to ask your help with a few adult problems that have surfaced lately: Disrespecting our neighbors -- Please do not park in our neighbors’ driveways, even for “a few minutes”. There are multiple apartments/houses on the southside of Virginia that have one driveway. When you park there to run into the school, you are making it impossible for many people to go to work, school, doctor’s appointments or pick up their own children. Teasing or criticizing other people’s children – When someone else’s parent teases or criticizes you in front of your peers, it can feel a lot like bullying. So many of our students are taught not to speak disrespectfully to an adult, so they don’t say anything but they are tearful and humiliated. If a child is behaving in a way you think is inappropriate or unsafe, please simply tell them to stop and find a school staff person. We’ll take it from there. February 16 – Presidents’ Day NO SCHOOL
February 18 – PTA Association Meeting 8:30 a.m. Cafeteria
February 23 – First day of School Smarts Class 8:30 a.m. – Community Room