BLUES’ NEWS
Richmond Street School and PTA Newsletter
December 2007				Volume 8, Issue 4
Richmond Street School 615 Richmond St. El Segundo, CA 90245 310- 606-6831		Dickie Van Breene, Principal Jack Plotkin, Assistant Principal elsegundousd.com/richmond_school Shari Gulian, Newsletter Editor	Tammy Long, PTA President PTA El Segundo Council Thirty-Third District California State PTA, everychild.onevoice

MESSAGE FROM THE PRINCIPAL

Dear Richmond Street Families,

Parent conferences for grades 1 – 5 are scheduled for the week of December 10^th. We will be observing the minimum day schedule Monday through Friday during the week of December 10th. Your child’s teacher will contact you to schedule a conference date and time.

Character Education is an important part of our school wide discipline plan and bully prevention program. Did you know that we have had 50% less office referrals this year than we had during the same time period last year? Each grade level has chosen a Good Character theme on which to focus and we have revised our Character Assembly to recognize more students. We appreciate all you do at home to teach your children the values of our six character pillars: trustworthiness, citizenship, caring, respect, responsibility and fairness. It shows every day at school.

On behalf of the Richmond Street staff, I would like to wish all of our families a happy and safe holiday season. We look forward to seeing the children back at school on Monday, January 7, 2008.

Sincerely,

Dickie Van Breene

Principal

dvanbreene@esusd.k12.ca.us

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FALL FESTIVAL PHOTOS

We hope you had a fabulous time at the Fall Festival. If you had pictures taken that night at our photo booth, please go to www.elitedp.photoreflect.com to view your photos. They are listed under Richmond PTA Fall Festival 2007.

RICHMOND STREET PTA PROUDLY PRESENTS THE "BOOK FAIR BLIZZARD"

The Book Fair Blizzard is blowing into town!  Join us in sharing the love of reading with our students at Richmond Street's PTA Scholastic Book Fair on December 10th - 14th.  Come explore our large selection of books and find great reads for every person in your family.  The Book Fair will be located in the Science Lab and will be open Monday through Friday from 8:00am to 3:00pm.  The kids will be visiting the Book Fair at an assigned time with their class and they are also allowed to shop before and after school and during lunch and recess. We encourage you to check out our school's Scholastic Book Fair website at:  bookfairs.scholastic.com/bookfairs/cptoolkit/publish/richmondstreetelementary to view some of the selections that will be available at the fair.

This is the week of Parent/Teacher conferences so the kids will be on a minimum day schedule.  Stop by on your way to or from conferences and do some holiday shopping!

We are excited to offer two Family Events this year.  We will be opening early on Tuesday, December 11th from 7:30am to 8:15am for Croissants and Coffee with Clifford.  Only children accompanied by a parent or guardian will be able to attend.  Save the date for our Polar Pizza and Pajama Party on Thursday, December 14th where we will be offering late hours (5:00pm to 8:00pm) so that you can enjoy the Book Fair as a family.  We will have winter themed games, crafts, story telling, face painting and tattoos to keep everyone busy! There will also be food to purchase so that you don't have to worry about rushing home to feed the family.  Feel free to bundle up or get comfy and wear your pajamas!

We also have two special opportunities to support literacy inside and outside of our community.  First the El Segundo Rotary will be collecting gently used books for distribution to neighboring schools and children in need.  Boxes will be available outside the office and at the Book Fair.  We are also participating in One for Books through our school's Loose Change Challenge.   Each day of the fair, students will be asked to bring in change to donate.  Monday - pennies, Tuesday - nickels, Wednesday - dimes, Thursday - quarters and Friday...anything goes!  There will be a winning classroom for each day and the classroom that brings in the most money at the end of the week will receive a pizza party!  The money donated will go towards buying books for our school library.  Also, for every dollar donated, Scholastic will give one book that will go to non-profit organizations devoted to improving the reading skills of children less fortunate than our own.  Last year Scholastic donated over 1 million books. Richmond was responsible for 290 of them!

We are still looking for a few food donations for our Family Events and for the volunteers working the fair.  If you are interested in helping out, please contact Michele Leach at (310) 322-5144.

All proceeds from the Book Fair go straight back to your children's classrooms and our school library.  We appreciate your dedication to creating lifelong readers!  See you at the fair!

Your Book Fair Co-Chairs,
Laura Nilsson, Brenda Forsythe,  Michele Leach and Tammy McGonegle

ANNOUNCEMENTS

Boost our School: The Educational Foundation is continuing to raise money for our schools. If 50% of our families donate $30 the Educational Foundation will donate $2,500 directly back to our school for art training for our teachers. The Los Angeles Music Center will send an artist to our school during one of our Monday professional development days and will work with our teachers on an art lesson they can present in their classrooms. The artist will also work with two grade levels and we will follow up next year, bringing the artist back to work with more students. The Foundation funds many important programs including elementary music, elementary PE, new computers for our staff, UCLA Writing Program consultants and much more. Please help us be the number one school to support the Foundation again this year. Your $30 is counted at each site you have children. Thank you for your support.

Winter Concert Grades 1- 5 Schedule

Tuesday December 18

9:00 – 9:40 = Choir and 1^st Grade – 1^st Grade Parents invited to attend

9:50 – 10:10 = 2^nd and 3^rd Grade – 2^nd Grade Parents invited to attend

2:00 – 2:30 = 4^th and 5^th Grade – 4^th Grade Parents invited to attend

Wednesday December 19

9:00 – 9:40 = Choir and 1^st Grade – Choir parents attend

9:50 – 10:10 = 2^nd and 3^rd Grade – 3^rd Grade Parents invited to attend

2:00 – 2:30 = 4^th and 5^th Grade – 5^th Grade Parents invited to attend

Thursday December 20

10:30 – 11:15 = Kindergarten Concert

MESSAGE FROM OUR PTA

I hope that everyone had a wonderful Thanksgiving week.. PTA is back in full swing this month! Be sure to attend this year's Book Fair. The committee has big plans and I am sure it will be even bigger and better than last year and that is no easy feat!

I would like to let all of our PTA family know how much you are appreciated. December is such a busy time that PTA wants to give something back. We are going to give you a gift, the gift of time. We will not have a PTA meeting in December so that you may have that evening to spend however you wish! But don't worry, we do have a PTA meeting the first Monday back from our Winter Break in January!

I would like to wish all of you a very wonderful holiday season and again, thank you for all you do!

Tammy Long

President

Richmond Street PTA

December 2007 Calendar

Sun	Mon	Tue	Wed	Thu	Fri	Sat
						1
2	3 Minimum Day	4	5 Kinder Santa Fly-In Performing Arts Final Presentation 3:00	6 RSS Choir Tree Lighting Ceremony at City Hall	7	8
9	10 Minimum Day Grades 1-5 Parent/Teacher Conferences Book Fair 8:00am-3pm	11 Minimum Day Grades 1-5 Parent/Teacher Conferences Book Fair Opens at 7:30am Crosissants & Coffee with Clifford	12 Minimum Day Grades 1-5 Parent/Teacher Conferences Book Fair 8:00am-3pm	13 Minimum Day Grades 1-5 Parent/Teacher Conferences Book Fair 8:00am-3pm Family Night Polar Pizza & Pajama Party 5-8pm.	14 Minimum Day Grades 1-5 Parent/Teacher Conferences Book Fair 8:00am-3pm	15
16	17	18 Winter Concert See schedule	19 Winter Concert See schedule	20 Kinder Winter Concert 10:30 – 11:15	21	22
23	24 Winter Break Dec. 24 – Jan. 6 Winter Break	25 Winter Break	26 Winter Break	27 Winter Break	28