Dear PVES Families,
We have completed our sixth wonderful and productive week at PVES, and another beautiful fall weekend is here for us to enjoy! Our students continue to amaze us with their adaptability and their renewed focus on school life and learning. Thank you for all you are doing to keep your children organized, engaged in learning, and healthy. We are so proud!
Thank you to the Putnam Valley Volunteer Fire Department for visiting our school for two full days this week to provide outdoor lessons on fire safety and fire prevention, complete with two fire trucks and a wonderful firefighter team. The Fire Department also provided our students with coloring book goodie bags and children’s fire hats. Our remote learners were sent a video of an outdoor fire lesson, and the bags and hats are being distributed to our remote students with classroom learning materials. We greatly appreciate this community partnership, and our students truly enjoyed and benefited from this learning experience.
We have added some VERY important information to our elementary website concerning the possibility of All-Remote learning. If you go onto our Putnam Valley Central School District website (www.pvcsd.org), and then click on the “Elementary” tab, you will see a new link (in Red, to the right of the photos) that leads you to our All-Remote Learning Schedules for our K-4 Classrooms and our Special Classes (Art, Music, Physical Education, and Technology). These schedules will be put into effect if and when we must close our school and teach all of our students remotely for a period of time. You will see from this link that in the event of a school closure, our students will be following their daily schedules (with pre-set times for live lessons) with their classroom teachers, their special class teachers, and their professional support staff. (Individual and small group support lesson invites will be emailed to students by teachers of AIS, Speech, ENL, Counseling, etc.). All PVES students have been entered into “Google Classrooms” with their various teachers, and they will be able to access their live learning immediately through these links. (Only students who have been invited into Google Classrooms may enter them, so this protects privacy). These remote learning schedules are quite different from the classroom schedules that existed in the spring, and I thank our amazing faculty for the great amount of learning and preparation they have done in this area for the sake of our students. It is also important to note that if we end up having to close school for more than 48 hours, laptops will be available for those students in need. Please take the time to review these remote learning schedules, and please discuss them with your child. Hopefully, our schools will continue to stay open!
The busy month of November will be here soon, and our 1st Quarter Parent/Teacher Conferences are quickly approaching. Schools will be closed for elementary students on Friday, November 13th for virtual parent conferences, and schools will dismiss at 12:00 noon on Thursday, November 19th for evening virtual conferences. Please make sure that you have scheduled parent/teacher conferences with your child’s classroom teacher, professional support staff teachers (AIS, Speech, ENL) and your child’s Special Class Teachers (Physical Education, Art, Music, Technology). All teachers can be reached via email at first initial, last name @ pvcsd.org. You can also call our main office phone number to leave a message for any of our staff members. The phone number is 845-528-8092. We look forward to this important communication.
Please note that on the November calendar, schools will also be closed for all students on November 3rd for Superintendent’s Conference Day and from Wednesday, November 25th through Friday, November 27th, for the Thanksgiving holiday. Schools will reopen on Monday, November 30th. Schools will also be closed on November 11th in honor of Veteran’s Day. Let’s hope for another healthy, happy, and productive month ahead!
Enjoy this beautiful day, and thank you again for working so closely with us. As always, if you have any questions or concerns, please contact us!
Fondly,
Dr. Margaret Podesta
Principal