Hello Students, Parents and Staff of the Charger Community...

We have so far had a great first quarter and a great first few weeks of school.  Most of that is a testament to the great students we have coming every day.  This has been a great group so far.  Additionally, we have just finished our conferences, which we hope were a positive and solution oriented way for our parents and teachers to be able to discuss student progress and intervention.  

Recently, our community participated in the Primo’s Run, San Ramon Valley Education Fund’s largest annual fundraiser.  We were thrilled to have 26.6% of our enrollment represented- that was a significant improvement over last year, and we thank our teachers and parents for joining that effort.  The San Ramon Valley Education Foundation is instrumental in providing grants to our teachers, as well as a variety of supports throughout the year, so we thank you for your participation.  If you weren’t able to join us this year, you are always welcome to join next October.  A special thanks goes out to Diane Thompson, our Primo’s Chairperson, who was relentless in helping us raise our participation.  

On October 31st of this year, our staff will be participating in a district wide, middle school presentation by Common Sense Media on Cyberbullying.  While we have always concentrated on the prevention of cyberbullying, we realize that it is an area that is a constantly moving target due to the rapid change of pace in the technology that both us and our students use.  We continue to keep the prevention of any online harassment at the forefront of our character education efforts here at Charlotte Wood.  As parents, we urge you to help us in that effort by discussing what your child sees, hears and does on the internet with them, and being vigilant about their online presence.  As always, if there is any way that we can help with that conversation, or if there are ever any concerns you have, we urge you to contact us, and will be glad to help and discuss them with you.  

During the first quarter, all of our teachers, in conjunction with the district, have recently been trained on the Data Director software that we use.  This training allowed us to further the effectiveness and use of formative and summative assessments, and allows us to better use student data to determine individual student needs.  We will continue discussing this, as well as how we use data to better collaborate amongst ourselves and better identify struggling students throughout the year.  

As always, we are so thankful for the parent support in our community, and please continue to be in touch with us.  You can follow us on twitter @cwmsinfo for periodic updates, or you can check out our newly reorganized website.  It is our hope that the new website design will be more useable for students and parents, and we can consolidate some of our communications there.

Have a great October.

Christopher George