Newsletter: June 22

Jun 22

Dear Common Ground Community,

Thank you for making our party last Friday night an amazing success! We look forward to getting another one on the calendar soon! If you have any food vendors that you would like us to include, please send us a message and we will try to get them.

Going on Vacation?

Let us know when you’ll be out by completing this form: https://www.signupgenius.com/go/70A0F4FACA723ABFF2-vacation

(if you haven’t figured it out yet, we got a sign up genius account and LOVE it!)

Speaking of Sign-Ups:

Don’t forget to sign up for:

Early Drop Off Hours: https://www.signupgenius.com/go/70a0f4faca723abff2-morning
Laundry: https://www.signupgenius.com/go/70a0f4faca723abff2-laundry
Late Pick Up Hours, starting July 6th: https://www.signupgenius.com/go/70a0f4faca723abff2-summer

Sun Safety:

Summer programs in all classes have been a blast! The kids love water play and enjoying time out in the summer sun. That said, sunscreen only increases a child’s natural sun protection factor to a certain point. Because we are spending a large part of our day outside, it’s important that children have sun protective clothing as well as sunscreen. Here are some links to some great options for your kids:

bucket sun hats and wide brim sun hats
Rash Guard Sun Shirts - might I suggest BRIGHT COLORS since white, grey, and blues are hard to see in the water at the pool

We will also be adding more shade tents near the water play sprinklers, in the hopes of keeping our kids protected.

Swimming Updates:

We are still restricted by the state and not allowed to use our pirate ship paddle pool but are hoping that updated guidance will come out soon so that our younger kids can enjoy more than a sprinkler. We have also reached out to Reston Association about the possibility of renting a wading pool for the Rising Stars and Busy Bee classes.

Busy Bees will try a swimming field trip on Thursday afternoon! They will be swimming at Uplands Pool in Reston from 1-2pm. If this goes well, we will try to make swimming a weekly event for them!

CAMP - Red, Blue, and Yellow Teams: Have been swimming all together this week at the Herndon Swim Club! It’s been going swimmingly! Due to the storm today, we did not swim this afternoon at Uplands Pool. To make up for it, we have added FRIDAY MORNING SWIMMING at the Herndon Swim Club! Please make sure your camper arrives dressed in their swim clothes with their camp shirt overtop every day this week.

Camp Update:

Next week we will be trying a new grouping that mixes our rising kindergarteners in with some of our older campers. Now that we know (and LOVE) our counselors, we have created camp groups that help to balance the strong personalities across the three color teams! We have quite a few campers out next week, so with smaller groups, this is the perfect week to try out some new groupings!

We also have a special announcement coming out later this week for next week’s camp session!

Juneteenth Holiday Pay, Wages, and Grants (oh my!)

Common Ground was ahead of the curve when Juneteenth was announced as a federal holiday. We had already budgeted and planned to pay our teachers holiday pay in addition to their working wages for Juneteenth, since it was announced as a state holiday by Governor Northam in 2020. Here’s a great post on that from our blog.

In addition to that, there was a new grant program that announced in the state that offers a bonus of $500 to people who return to work beginning May 31. This grant, the Return to Earn Grant, requires child care centers to pay their new employees $15/hour for them to be eligible for the $500 bonus. We had planned on a slightly lower hourly wage for our summer staff with a bonus from us at the end of the season, but with this grant announcement we decided to go ahead and bump our summer staff up! In fact, Common Ground was the first Northern Virginia business to apply for this grant!

It’s grants like this that show how effective our advocacy efforts have been!