Wendy Dau: Hello, Provo City. I am Superintendent Dau of the Provo City School District. Today is Monday, October 12th. I have a meeting here in Salt Lake, so I'm doing this little videocast from my home. You will notice that we are adamant Cornhusker fans from Nebraska, which is why you see the “Fear the Corn” sign in our office. We hope all of you had a fantastic weekend.
We want to share with you some celebrations. Kennedy Napierski, the theater teacher at Timpview High School, received an award from the Utah PTA. She was nominated by several students for this award. It's the One Kind Act a Day Teacher of the Month Award. She has received a $500 grant from the Utah PTA that she can use for her classroom, and we are very excited for Kennedy. And thank you to the Utah PTA, which makes these grants available to our students and our teachers.
Rock Canyon student art is also being displayed at USBE's boardroom. Congratulations to Marie Mattinson and our students at Rock Canyon Elementary for this recognition and opportunity.
We want to thank all of you as parents for participating in our parent-teacher conferences last week at the elementary level. We know many of you visited with teachers about individualized reading plans and talked about how you can help support building literacy and math skills for your students, and we're going to be talking about an activity this week to further support that.
I had a great visit at Lakeview Elementary with Dr. Jamie Davis-Leite. I got to visit Ms. Reed's fourth-grade class, Profesora Loftus's first-grade Dual Language Immersion Portuguese class, Mrs. Cox's kindergarten class, and several classes that had perfect attendance. It was really a fun visit.
I got to go out and visit Principal Dalby at Franklin Elementary and participated in their student recognition assembly, which was led by Mr. Vandermark. I got to visit Mrs. Flores' second-grade class, Mrs. Prince's fifth-grade class, and Mr. Johansen's kindergarten class. Just fantastic things happening across our district.
And then we did have a fall graduation for those students who were finishing up their high school diplomas from last year. That was hosted by Principal Yablonovsky at Independence High School. And we want to thank all of you as parents, and our counselors and our teachers, and everyone who helped our students finish up that goal to achieve that high school diploma.
We also want to recognize that this month is Hispanic Heritage Month. We've had lots of fun activities across our schools to help our students appreciate and learn about the diversity in our community. It's one of the things that makes Provo such a special place.
Our Parent University is going to be held this Thursday, October 15th, from 5 to 7:30. This is for all parents of preschool through third grade. We hope that you have RSVP'd for this event. There is a link in the email so that you can RSVP. It will be held at Shoreline Middle School.
We have classes for parents where you'll be able to take home kits and materials to help support your students with their literacy development. Students will get free books, and they'll be able to make reading goals with you. We are really excited for a very fun night, so we hope all of you will join us.
The Board of Education does have a meeting tomorrow, October 13th. The study session begins at 4:00 p.m. in Boardroom 1, and the business meeting begins at 7:00 p.m. in the Professional Development Center. Both meetings are open to the public, but public comment is only allowed during the business meeting during the public comment period. The study session is primarily for board members to work through issues and to provide direction for district leaders.
You can find the official agenda and timestamps of different agenda items with the link that is provided in the email. Specific topics include a Timpview construction update, a Provo Peaks update on their special education self-contained classrooms, and beginning-of-the-year data for Acadience and NWEA. We do have a Trust Lands amendment for Edgemont Elementary, a DLI Parent Committee update, and some policy discussions. And Amelia Earhart will be our school that will be featured at our 7:00 p.m. business meeting.
Just a friendly reminder that during public comment in the business meeting, there is a form that you must fill out. It asks you to provide your email address and the topic on which you want to discuss. Board President Partridge will indicate how many minutes you have. You cannot go over that time allotted. You must time your comments. It's generally three minutes, but if we have a lot of people coming, that could be limited to two minutes. So please plan accordingly.
Applause, cheering, booing, and signs are not appropriate for a board meeting. This is the board's meeting where they are discussing their issues, and you are providing some feedback. So it's very important that we follow the decorum that is expected in these board meetings.
It is also important to note that comments about specific individuals or about personnel are not allowed in a board meeting and will be stopped. If you have concerns about that, you can email the Board of Education, you can email me, or you can email our assistant superintendents over elementary or secondary education.
We are really trying to be responsive to everyone who comes and comments. Our board members are fantastic about responding to community members, so please know that they will follow up with you after public comment. And we appreciate that our Provo community, even while we may disagree on different issues, is always very respectful and civil. We appreciate that we have this opportunity to hear from you.
The end of the quarter for our students is on Tuesday, October 20th. Fall break for them begins on Wednesday, October 21st, when our teachers will have a professional development day and will be finishing up and finalizing all of their grades.
Middle and high school parents should check Canvas and PowerSchool here in Provo City School District. Contact your teachers if there are any concerns, and make sure that you have communicated with teachers, as some of them have earlier deadlines for bigger projects so that they have time to grade them before the end of the quarter and to provide appropriate feedback.
Thank you to all of our parents and community members who are helping us with our DLI Elementary Parent Committee, our Parent Advisory Committee, and our Community Connections Committee. You guys are so key to making sure that we're getting all of this feedback and being able to have a dialogue with each of you. We know that it takes so much time. We're very appreciative of the time that you're willing to spend with us.
With that, we hope all of you have a great week. Bye now. Thank you.
