Back to School Night Reminder and an Important To Do for Parents

[prin...@sethigh.org]

Dear Students, Parents, and Guardians,

• Early Release Today at 1:25 PM
• Back to School Night Reminder (tonight, 9/3, at 5:30!)
• Important To Do (FRMP form; please read my plea below!)

Back to School Night Reminder (tonight, 9/3, at 5:30!)

Note that the SET PA is providing pizza, so if the students want to eat and hang out in the den there should be plenty of food!  This is the blurb about the event that I sent out in my last email:

Back to School Night is an opportunity to see your student's classroom teachers in the actual classroom.  Usually our new families are the ones who are most interested in this event because they are eager to get a better feel for the new school, but all families are welcome.  I just don't want the returning families to feel like this is an obligation.  The event is designed for parents, but students are welcome to enter the classrooms as well as long as there is room for the parents to sit.  Usually the students will just hang out outside or in the den with their friends.  Note that you'll need to know your student's schedule during Back To School Night.  Most parents just pull it up on CoreCompetency, but you can also print it out using the Kiosk at the front office at the start of Back to School Night.  Hope to see you all there!

Important To Do (FRMP form; please read my plea below!)

We have a new online (easier to use) form for determining which of our students have financial need, and our goal is to get a 100% response rate since we have an explicit opt-out option for those families who believe that they won't qualify or who simply don't feel comfortable filling out the form.  It's super important for you to actually opt out, instead of just not doing it, so that we know which families might need an extra little nudge to fill out the form.  So if you want to stop hearing about this, either opt out or fill out the form!

The FRMP (and I'm intentionally not telling you what that acronym means yet!) designation is important for schools because the percentage of students who qualify directly determines school funding.  What is frustrating is that there is very little incentive for families to fill out the form, now, because the immediate benefit of getting free meals no longer applies since all students in California qualify for free meals.  This means that schools across the State are under-reporting their students who have financial insecurity and all of those schools are losing the funding that can help those families.  So, even though the direct benefits for you may not be as obvious, it is still really important for us to get an accurate count of the students who would have originally qualified for the Free or Reduced Meals Program (there's the definition for that acronym!) so that we can make sure that we can maintain all of the programs that rely on that funding.  The current personal benefits are fee waivers for the SAT and college applications (100's of dollars of benefit!).  The school benefits are a substantial increase in funding for each student who qualifies, a significant discount on the rent that we pay for this building, and loan forgiveness for some of our staff who are carrying student debt.  These benefits all translate into more funding for the student services that we provide.

Here is the link to the form (note that there is an opt-out ("We Won't Qualify") option right on the front page, so please at least do that!): https://cc.sethigh.org/lunchform

We will send out an email to those families who have already qualified based on other criteria (or who have already filled out the paper form), so wait a few minutes before filling out form.

 

Thanks so much everyone!  Looking forward to seeing you tonight!

Dr. McCurdy