Deer Park Elementary School August 2021
Hello Deer Park Families and Friends!
We hope you are enjoying a wonderful, healthy, and somewhat normal summer before we kickoff a great school year! It has been a pleasant and calming summer for my family. We traveled from Maine to New Orleans over a two-week period! In Maine, we had the opportunity to enjoy some cooler weather and a lot of sight-seeing while my family members enjoyed lots of lobster eating! During our New Orleans visit we went on an exciting Swamp Tour where our entire family held a baby alligator. It was so cool. This summer the Hitz family had a great time in the Outer Banks! We had wonderful weather and were able to spend every day on the beach. The kids became proficient boogie boarders and enjoyed playing in the sand. Other than our family vacation, we have been enjoying the pool, going on lots of nature walks, and taking care of our vegetable garden. It has definitely been a relaxing and refreshing summer! Looking forward to seeing everyone when we return! Ms. Jeter spent the majority of summer working at Deer Park, but she was able to sneak away on a trip to Lake Norman, North Carolina. She also took a few day trips to different places around Virginia, including a visit to Nats Park!
Deer Park has been busy hosting many summer programs Bridge to K, Bridge to 1, SOAR, Young Scholars, and Overtime Athletics (OTA). Thank you for taking the opportunity to utilize these programs to help students continue to work on some unfinished learning from this past school year. In addition, our custodial staff has been working very hard once again to have the building ready to go on Thursday, August 19, for our In-Person Open House. Due to Covid-19 and the Delta Variant case increases, we will be holding two sessions utilizing an Alpha-last name system to limit the amount of people in a room to maintain social distancing as much as possible. Details will follow soon!
The first day of school is Monday, August 23, 2021, and the last day of school will be Friday, June 10, 2022. The FCPS calendar has had updates from our traditional calendar of years past. The full FCPS calendar can be viewed here SY21-22 Calendar. Highlights to the calendar include, two weeks for winter vacation, and one week for spring break, but please note that spring break has been adjusted from its traditional week. As a reminder, DPES’ published back to normal school hours are Monday through Friday, 8:40 a.m. to 3:25 p.m. We will expect all bus arrivals, walkers, and kiss n ride students to be in the school building no later than 8:40 a.m. so that instruction can begin promptly at 8:50 a.m. Kiss n ride line drop-off will start at 8:15 a.m. and students should report to the cafeteria. Please remember to drop your child off after 8:15 a.m. as we do not have teacher supervision until this time.
We’re excited about several new changes for the 2021-2022 school year. We continue to update and improve Deer Park! With the PTA support, all classrooms have been equipped with ceiling projectors to make classrooms more effective. The school will be rebooting the “Bucky” behavioral plan for staff and students as well. We are excited to welcome Mrs. Sandy Guidice-Murray-Advance Academic Resource Teacher (AART) to Full Time status this school year which will allow us to provide more differentiation and rigor support in our classrooms. Unfortunately, we did make a difficult choice with our staffing to not bring STEAM back this school year in leu of a second Reading Teacher. With unfinished learning for many students, especially in reading, it was determined this was the best course of action for our school this year. We will be working to bring STEAM activities to students during and after school. We are looking forward to very exciting times here at Deer Park ES!
We hope you can join us for Open House on Thursday, August 19, 2021. Class lists will be sent by email ONLY on Wednesday, August 18 at 4 p.m. using the e-Notify system. Additional information will be coming soon! We look forward to welcoming you all back for the 2021-2022 school year! Welcome to all our new families! A Town Hall In-Person Meeting will be held on Friday, August 13th, in the library at 10:00 a.m. Please wear a mask if you plan to attend.
Megan Jeter Bob D'Amato Heather Hitz
Acting Assistant Principal Principal Assistant Principal
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