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 📌Sunday, October 5, 2:00 p.m.: SLHS PTSA Food Pantry's Do it Your Way 0.5k
📌Monday, October 6 - 10: School Spirit Week (see details below)
📌Wednesday, October 8: Walk, Bike and Roll to School
📌Thursday, October 9: Rocket Day/Literacy Night (Stories Under the Stars)
📌Friday, October 10: South Lakes Homecoming Parade
📌Monday, October 13: Student Holiday (Staff Development)
📌Monday, October 20: Student Holiday (Diwali)
📌Tuesday, October 24: Student Picture Day
📌Wednesday, October 29, 12:40 p.m.: 3 hour early release
📌Friday, October 31, 1:40 p.m.: 2 hour early release (quarter end)
 October 6: PAJAMA DAY - Wear your favorite PJ’s to school but please leave your slippers at home.
October 7: FALL INTO FLANNEL - Wear fall colors or your favorite flannel.
October 8: GAME DAY GEAR - Represent your favorite team (local, college or
pro) and wear your jersey. (Walk, Bike and Roll to School Day)
October 9: HWES IS OUT OF THIS WORLD! - Wear sparkles or anything space related (Rocket Day and Literacy Night @ 6:00 p.m.)
October 10: GREEN OUT - Wear green in support of SLHS and HWES
PTA Event - SLHS Homecoming Parade meet @ 4:30 in the Safeway shopping center parking lot. Students must be accompanied by an adult parent or caregiver.
The SLHS PTSA Food Pantry will be hosting its 8th Annual FUNdraiser, the “Do It Your Way 0.5K” on October 5th from 2 - 4 p.m. at Lake Anne Plaza. We hope you will join Mrs. Cope and others in our community for lively music, pre-race warm-ups, yummy cookies (baked by the SLHS Culinary students) to put a little pep in your step, a live raffle, and the most rewarding 650 steps you’ll take all year. Register online now or in-person the day of the event. All proceeds will directly support providing food to over 550 local students and families in the SLHS Pyramid each week.
 Wednesday, October 8 is Walk, Bike and Roll to School Day.
Why Bike or Walk to School?
Walk / Bike to School Day is an annual event that promotes walking and bicycling for several reasons:
- Physical Activity
- Teaching safe pedestrian and bicycling skills to students and families • Awareness of how walkable and bikeable our community is and where improvements can be made
- Concern for the environment
- Reducing traffic congestion, pollution and speed near and around schools • Sharing time with friends and family
- Having FUN!
How you can participate
- All students, parents, faculty and staff are encouraged to bike or walk to school if they feel they can safely do so.
- If you are too far away from school, ride or walk with your family in and around your neighborhood before or after school. Park near the school and walk from there.
- Create a bicycle course on your street or driveway.
You are invited to attend Hunters Woods Elementary School's Literacy Night, Stories Under the Stars, on October 9 from 6:00 to 7:00 p.m.! Students are invited to wear their pajamas/comfortable clothes, and camp out with us while we listen to stories being read aloud by HWES teachers. We will have literacy games and other goodies for you to take home. Please RSVP HERE.
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 Date: Friday, October 24
Orders placed online
- Parent/guardians will receive a camera pass via email. This can either be printed or texted to the student and brought to picture day. The photographer will photograph the printed camera pass along with the student.
- If a student is not able to print their camera pass, that is not a problem. We will match up the student to their order manually in the production process.
Orders placed with the flyer
- Parent may order from the flyer up until 24 hours after picture day. After 24 hours, the online ordering access may close.
When pictures are returned to school, all students that purchased pictures will receive their prepaid package. Any student that was photographed but did not order a package, will receive a proof of their picture that was taken on picture day. All proof packages offer parents a second opportunity to order prints. All orders are subject to shipping and handling costs of up to $8.50 and will be shipped directly to home.
Barksdale Fall Portrait Online Ordering
Hunters Woods Families! Your energy and enthusiasm power our school community, and we are excited to welcome you into our classrooms, field trips, and more!
SAFETY FIRST: BACKGROUND CHECKS REQUIRED!
To ensure the safety of our students, recurring volunteers and chaperones will need a completed background check and fingerprinting on file with FCPS before joining the fun! This includes:
- Classroom helpers
- Field trip chaperones
- And more!
*One-time large event volunteers are not required to complete the extended clearance process but are still expected to scan their identification at the FHES Visitor Management System to be cleared against the Sex Offender Registry.
*If you may volunteer several times a year, please consider completing the FCPS background check process.
Ready to get cleared? Visit the FCPS Volunteer Page or connect with Mrs. Wagner in our main office. Please be patient as our county processes requests from 140+ schools!
How to Sign Up to Volunteer
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In Virginia during October, Disability History and Awareness activities provide an opportunity to create greater public awareness for individuals with disabilities, with the goal of full inclusion in our community. |
October is National Bullying Prevention Month. To help develop a common understanding of Bullying, below is the FCPS definition.
Bullying in Students Rights and Responsibilities is defined as: “Any aggressive and unwanted behavior that is intended to harm, intimidate, or humiliate the victim; involves a real or perceived power imbalance between the aggressor or aggressors and victim; and is repeated over time or causes severe emotional trauma. “Bullying” includes cyberbullying. “Bullying” does not include ordinary teasing, horseplay, argument, or peer conflict.”
For more information on how FCPS handles a bullying situation please visit the FCPS Bullying Prevention and Intervention webpage. Our goal is to ensure all students feel safe and welcome at school. If you have questions and/or concerns about something that is going on at school, please contact the front office so that they can support you and most importantly your student.
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FCPS is continuing to explore options for adjusting school start times, with the primary goal of beginning the middle school day at 8 a.m. or later. In order to minimize any costs associated with this change, elementary and high school start times would need to shift as well.
Providing feedback opportunities for the community is a critical part of this effort. Since 2024, FCPS’ consultant has hosted five community forums and administered two surveys. A new School Start Times Survey is open and includes two options that are designed to support student well-being, align with research, balance transportation logistics, and minimize costs.
Staff, parents and caregivers, students, and community members may provide input on the two options by taking the survey. The survey deadline has been extended to Monday, October 6. Find more information on adjusting school start times on the FCPS website.
The building and renovation of schools are not financed through the FCPS’ operating funds, but through bonds. Similar to an individual or a family obtaining a mortgage on a residence to spread the cost of home buying over several years, bonds spread the cost of major capital improvements over a number of years. This ensures that current and future residents and users share in the payment.
This approach is good for our taxes, too. If capital construction were financed out of current tax revenues on a pay-as-you-go basis, projects would need to be paid for in a much shorter time frame, likely reducing other county services or necessitating tax increases. Fortunately, the county’s bonded debt is not likely to be a contributing factor to any increase in local taxes.
A bond referendum to benefit FCPS will be on the ballot this Election Day, Tuesday, November 4. It represents an investment by the community into the facilities everyone uses — whether for school or to gather as a community.
Read more about the FCPS 2025 Bond Referendum. Learn more about registering to vote. Make a voting plan and vote on Tuesday, November 4.
Attendance is an important life skill that will help your child later in life. It’s a good habit to build now to help them graduate from college on time and routinely report to work on time once they have a career.
Please take a look at the FCPS Calendar. Try to schedule any trips or family events on weekends and school holidays. Every day of learning is a day toward success. Keep in mind that absences add up quickly. Students who are absent 10% of the school year (or just two days per month) are considered “chronically absent.”
When possible, schedule appointments for your child outside of school hours. If your child needs to miss school because of an illness or appointment, you must report the absence to our school. [Add how parents at your school should report absences.]
Visit FCPS’ Attendance webpage for resources on attendance.
Your voice matters, and Dr. Reid wants to hear from you! Parents are partners, working with us to set our students up for long-term success at school and in life.
A series of Community Conversations will be held across the school division to discuss current challenges and future opportunities. These events are also a chance for you to share your thoughts with Dr. Reid and ask her questions. Events are planned for the following dates from 6:30 to 7:30 p.m. To register for the October 3 meeting, please click that date below. Registration links for the other dates will be available soon:
Child care and interpretation services will be provided. Events are open to all. Please check our website for updates.
FCPS will begin holding October community boundary review meetings on Monday, October 13. The new draft map, Scenario 4, will be shared with the community for feedback at those meetings. It will also be uploaded to the Boundary Explorer Tool shortly before October 13. Community members will then be able to provide feedback in the tool at their convenience.
As a reminder, the community provided feedback on draft scenarios 1-3 in the spring. Scenario 4 continues to build upon the first three scenarios. It is informed by the Superintendent's Boundary Review Advisory Committee, which reviewed community feedback received in the spring to help develop priorities that the consultant used to create Scenario 4.
Visit FCPS’ Comprehensive Boundary Review webpage for more information.
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In case you missed it in FCPS This Week, the school division shared updates on the following topics:
- FCPS Welcomes Military Families
- October Community Boundary Review Meetings
- Community Conversations
Read FCPS This Week to learn more about these topics. If you are not already receiving this weekly newsletter, please sign up today.
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