Hello Everyone!
We are very excited to Welcome to the 2021-2022 School Year! Below we are sharing important information with you, please read through it carefully!
To start, we want to thank our staff for putting together an amazing summer program for our students. We’ve been on break for the last two weeks recharging our batteries and are now ready to look towards the new school year!
There are many new practices brought by COVID that we believe have been beneficial to improving how we think about education and how we operate on a daily basis. Overall, we strongly believe that students are served best when they are at school learning alongside their peers and educators. It is our intention that all students return to school for in-person learning 100% of the time. We look forward to learning and experiencing new things together.
For those whose children have to remain at home, we will be attending an update this week on the new regulations as they pertain to attendance and distance learning. As soon as we have an understanding of these new guidelines, we will share them with you.
Budget
Our budget has been approved for the next school year. Here is a brief overview:
We operate our school with roughly $1.2 million dollars.
Of this $1.2 million, about $700K goes to salaries for our staff which has now grown to 20 members that serve our children daily!
That leaves about $500K for us to manage all other expenses that include things like:
~$85K Rent (not including utilities)
~80K Staff benefits (not including dental/ vision)
~$64K EXED who manages our back-office
~$10K Copier Lease
~$10K Audit/ tax services
~$30K General Insurance for Alma Fuerte
As you can see, $500K dwindles quickly but we still manage to do a lot for our students. Our priority is to provide support staff in every classroom and that should we ever need to cut back on expenses that we cut in places that have the least direct impact to the classroom.
We do all of this without asking for direct donations from our families, that being said we could always use your help in keeping our budget healthy. The best way to do this is to help enroll students into our school. Any reviews that you could leave for us on greatschools.org, facebook, or yelp go a long way!
Wish List
Alma Fuerte provides all school supplies, and we are well stocked! However, our families are always eager to help. We ask that you help us with the following donations. Our goal is to make sure that our MakerSpace is well stocked. Any cash/ check/ gift card donations will go directly to our MakerSpace and funding student activities.
Clorox Wipes
White Soap Base
Pastel Card Stock
4oz and 8oz Mason Jars
You can keep an eye on this link to view our MakerSpace’s wishlist.
Priorities
There are 2 big community needs that we have not (completely) accounted for in our budget.
1. After School Program
We know that our families need after care. COVID funding allowed for us to run free after-care last year. However, that funding is one time funding and we are not able to provide the program for free going forward.
We still want to provide fun and engaging programming to our students at a low cost. For this upcoming school year, we are expecting to ask that families who need after care pay $10/per week for the program (regardless of how many days your child attends).
The after school program will run until 6pm. We will be sharing more information about payment options, and surveying your needs in the coming days. We will not have aftercare during the first week of school, the after school program will start on August the16th.
Furthermore, The Harmony Project will be providing after school Music opportunities and we will also continue our partnership with Robotics for All. More details to come!
2. Beautification
We are so excited to be the sole occupiers of our campus and we want to prioritize adding color and life to our space. Our children deserve a beautiful campus and this year, we will be working hard to make that happen.
Classroom Themes
In most schools teachers pay for classroom supplies and decorations out of their own pockets. We do not think this should be the case and so long as we can afford to we will continue to provide these materials for our staff. Our teachers have chosen themes for their rooms which will remain in place every year to improve and build on as we grow.
Electives
We are excited to continue to learn on campus and therefore bring back electives! All of our students will have weekly in-person access to: Art, Music and Dance. We are excited to also be adding Spanish 4x/week and Entrepreneurship/ Home Economics 2x/week.
Entrepreneurship and Fall Festival
Similarly, we are excited to recommit to our school's mission and community-centric values. We have some amazing entrepreneurial projects that we are working on including the return of the Fall Festival with student-led business booths- so get your creative juices going!
Parent Volunteers and Coffee Collective
Again, with the return of in-person meetings we are so excited to revive our Coffee Collective (Alma Fuerte’s PTA) to get together and plan school events and activities. We anticipate needing a lot of help on Mondays as we’ll focus on project-based learning. More details and signups to come but please note that for the time being parents should not be entering campus, especially through the back door when dropping off/ picking up.
Student/ Family Handbook
This is a draft of the 2021-2022 Student/ Family Handbook for you to peruse and to familiarize yourself with or refresh on our policies. We are waiting on some COVID updates to finalize the Handbook and will share it with you as soon as it is revised.
Dresscode
Put simply, our dress code is active, comfortable clothing with shoes for running and playing. More details can be found in the handbook above.
Calendar
Please look over our 2021-2022 School Calendar. Most notably, due to our early start and late end we have added a week long break during the last week of September.
Schedule
School starts at 8:15 sharp! We therefore recommend that everyone be through our doors at 8:05am. Students entering after 8:15am will be marked tardy.
Pickup is at 2:35pm. Students that are not picked up by 2:45pm will be sent to the after school program, where parents will incur a fee.
Timeliness is really important to ensuring a safe, healthy, and well balanced environment for students and staff. We therefore ask that you please coordinate accordingly.
Your teachers will be sharing their individual daily schedules.
Carline Routine
We will continue to use the carline routine that we initiated with COVID. Parents, please make sure that any other adults that will be coming to campus are aware of the new flow of traffic.
Meal Program
We continue to work with Revolution Foods as our meal provider. Due to COVID, meals are free to all students regardless of their Free/ Reduced Lunch status. However, we are still required to collect financial information to determine the needs of our students and families. We hope to provide a new, quicker way for families to fill out the lunch forms.
Back to School Night and Tea with Keay
Please join Director Laurilie Keay and Operations Manager Adriani Leon on Thursday, August 5th at 5pm over zoom to discuss updates for the new school year.
Join Zoom Meeting
Meeting ID: 868 0930 5802
Passcode: 5k70ed
Please Save the Date for Back to School Night on Monday, August 30, 2021 from 5:00-6:00pm. More details to come!
Chuck E Cheese
Join your Alma Fuerte friends at Chuck E Cheese at 3737 E. Foothill Blvd. on Thursday August 12th from 3-7pm. Wear your Alma Fuerte gear to welcome new friends!
Please reach out with any questions you may have, we look forward to seeing you soon!
Comments