Newsletter: October 5
Happy October, Common Ground Families!
We are into the swing of our school year with lots of fun and exciting events coming up and some updates for you! We had our first community board meeting since the before the pandemic and were able to vote to make the first of many recommended changes to our bylaws. These changes don’t affect the day to day operations of the center, just the overall management structure. You can see the update here.
We also have the following financial updates and reminders:
we are CLOSED on Monday for a teacher work day
the 2023-2024 tuition update was approved
the $150 yearly registration fee will be charged to families due November 1
Halloween Carnival on Friday, October 27th
We are so excited for our Halloween Carnival on Friday October 27th! Here’s the schedule of events:
Timeline:
4pm - Blacktop opens for Carnival set up
4:30pm - Carnival opens on blacktop for both children in care and those that have been picked up
4:30pm - Village closes for School Agers to set up preschool trick-or-treating!
4:45pm - 5pm - Preschool trick-or-treating in the village, hosted by the school agers!
5:30pm - Center closes for care (no extended hours) and Parking lot closes to vehicles for Trunk-or-Treating
5:30pm-6pm - Parking lot is closed for Trunk-Or-Treating, we will block the entrance so that it is safe to walk around
6pm until we finish - Carnival continues on the center grounds!
Please sign up for either a carnival activity or a trunk (or both!): https://www.signupgenius.com/go/70A0F4FACA723ABFF2-44615579-halloween#/
It’s Illness Season
We have already seen some cases of Hand Foot and Mouth in some of our classrooms, but we know with weather changes comes more illnesses. We urge you to keep your children home if you believe that they are coming down with something, as our goal is to keep as many well kids in care as possible and to keep our classrooms open.
While it is not currently the prevailing illness that we have seen, there does seem to be an increase of COVID cases in the area. We ask that you perform an at home COVID test if your child develops any new symptoms that could be attributed to COVID and report the results to the center immediately. We have plenty of COVID tests to provide and you can also order more free tests here: https://www.covid.gov/tests
Please note that expiration dates on COVID tests have been extended past the date on the packages. Information about that can be found here: https://www.fda.gov/medical-devices/coronavirus-covid-19-and-medical-devices/home-otc-covid-19-diagnostic-tests#list
As a reminder, children are excluded from care with the following symptoms and return criteria:
a fever of 100.4, return criteria: fever free 24 hours, clock starts 6 hours after last dose of fever reducer medication if used
recurrent vomiting (2 or more instances), return criteria: 24 hours vomit free
recurrent diarrhea (2 or more instances of un-contained loose stool/fecal accident of loose stool), return criteria: 24 hours diarrhea free (exception: loose stool caused by medication or diet changes)
new COVID symptoms that wouldn’t otherwise exclude from care, return criteria: negative COVID test
rashes, return criteria: physician evaluation and guidance
red or pink eye, with or without discharge, return criteria: 24 hours after beginning antibiotics
strep throat, return criteria: 12 hours after treatment, provided they meet the other criteria
This list is not exhaustive, but is a guide. When in doubt, we always recommend consulting with a child’s physician to provide a return to care plan when there is a question about an illness.
If you child is diagnosed with something, please make sure to send an admin message so that we can post any required notifications to help mitigate any spread of diseases. We keep the names of children diagnosed confidential in our notifications.
We also recommend that every eligible Common Ground Community member have a conversation with your physician about getting any immunizations that can help keep our community safe!
Mr. Josh is BACK!
We’re excited to welcome Mr. Josh back to Common Ground! He began implementing the Second Step social emotional curriculum this week and we look forward to adding some musical programming in the coming weeks!
Observations
As part of the Virginia Quality Program and the state’s participation in the preschool development block grant, our teachers have been or will be observed this month by representatives from the state. They use the CLASS tool, developed by the University of Virginia, to measure the quality of teacher/child interactions. A high frequency of quality interactions in early childhood has been shown to be the best predictor for later academic success. Our teachers have been scoring incredibly well and have been very appreciative of the coaching they have received through these observations!
It’s amazing that the observers are seeing the same high quality program that we see on a daily basis!
Upcoming Events
Make sure you check our our calendar for upcoming events and sign up to participate with us! Our unity day shirts will be here next week and we should have a few extra if you haven’t ordered yours yet!
Thank you for being a part of our amazing community!
Love,
The Common Ground Team
