Improving Communications

Now that our licensing is complete we have some time to think about the ways that we can improve our school overall. As we head into the fall and the new school year, the first thing that we want to improve is our communication. We have already begun to implement some changes throughout the school. We began this process with an experiment at our last staff meeting. We broke up into small focus groups where we mixed the staff from both campuses and both buildings. We asked them how we could improve our communication in four areas:
Among the teaching team
From teaching team to families
From leadership team to teaching team
From leadership team to families

We gathered the feedback from each of the groups and discussed it as a leadership team. We then took that information and discussed it again in a school-wide lead teacher meeting. The end result is some easily implementable ideas that we think will really help us to improve in this area.

Some things that you should expect to see in the coming days:
1. Today We boards in all of the classrooms to tell you about the events of the day.
2. This Week We emails from your teachers every week to alert you to the upcoming events in the week to come.
3. Invitations for families to participate in the classrooms and the school.
4. We will continue to blog weekly.
5. Email from the Leadership Team whenever a change or an update effects multiple classroom in the school. It was suggested tonight that we organize these larger emails so that the information that impacts your child's classroom is presented first followed by the school-wide information so that you can choose to read on or not. We think this is an excellent suggestion.
6. Monthly school-wide events like the Potluck Dinner held this evening at the Waterstone Campus. There is nothing that helps our communication more than coming together as a community. We LOVE seeing you all and spending time together as a school. Look for more information for the September event in the coming weeks on this blog.

We hope to grow stronger and stronger in our communication systems and while we are growing this area we value and appreciate your input and feedback more than we can say. Please stop in, call, or email with any suggestions.
Thank you!
Christa and Jennifer

BUILDING UPDATE: We are expecting to begin building on August 23rd. The builders are still projecting 8 weeks from the 23rd as a completion date. We are counting on January 1, 2011, but optimistically considering Halloween. We will keep you posted.

REMINDER: The Waterstone Campus is very near full now BUT there are still openings at Davis Road. We will also begin to enroll for the new buildings in the weeks to come. PLEASE remember to stop by and let us know as soon as you know that you need a spot for a sibling. We always prioritize our current families, but now that we are full it is always good to give us as much time as possible to be sure that we are ready for you.