Newsletter: May 11

Dear Common Ground Community!

We are in the home stretch of our 2020-2021 School Year! Graduation for Honeybees and Owls is just around the corner. If you have an Honeybee or Owl please make sure that you sign up for your Graduation Tickets. If you also have a younger child, please note that our center will be open during graduation, so they can remain in their class until the ceremony is over.

Summer is Coming:

As we head into the summer, you will see some new faces here at Common Ground! We have several summer seasonal counselors coming in to work in our classrooms and camps during their break from both high school and college. On Monday, May 17th Miss Elise comes to join our infant room staff from Virginia Tech. She will be completing a Human Development field study this summer while working with us! Miss Kassia, Miss Marita’s daughter, will also be joining us on May 17th as a full time summer employee. We are sad to say that after just two weeks with us, Mr. Stephan resigned to take care of his own mental health. We wish him the best and enjoyed having him here for a short time!

With summer comes our third transition since we reopened and moved to a ‘three times per year’ transition schedule. By the end of next week, you will receive a letter with the plan for your child for our summer and fall sessions. We have worked hard to adapt our program to the children we have, rather than trying to squeeze children into a static program. This means that year to year, the path through our center may look different, but you can rest assured that we have taken careful consideration to design classes that best meet the needs of the students in them! Later this week we will publish a post with our upcoming summer class rooms and teachers, events and activities, and other fun we have planned at Common Ground!

Still Collecting Teacher Bonuses:

There is still time to donate to the Teacher Bonus Fund. This is a tax deductible donation that Common Ground will match so that the teachers end the school year with a nice bonus for their hard work throughout the school year! While teachers love hand made cards and sentiments of thanks, we ask that you contribute to this fund rather than buying gift and gift cards, so that the bonus can be really impactful for our teachers.

You can donate through the PayPal giving fund or by emailing Liz.

Thank you if you have already donated! If you donated through the PayPal Giving Fund, you will get a tax receipt from them immediately, as well as a duplicate tax receipt from us once they have made the donation to us.

Hours:

There have been a few questions about when we will increase the hours of the center again. We are working on a plan to add an additional hour to our day, but it is still a process. Just this week, our teachers began staggering their shifts so that they didn’t have to work more than 8.5 hours per day.

Prior to the pandemic, when we opened at 6:30, we had two staff members on site and could accept up to 18 early kids and remain in ratio. Currently, however, the state guidance doesn’t allow us to mix children between different groups, which means that we need one classroom teacher for each class, for all hours that we are open. Not only is this a staffing challenge and taxes our human capital, but it also can becomes very financially expensive.

We are still hopeful to be able to extend our hours this summer, so please stand by as we get creative! When the weather is nice, we are able to combine classes without sacrificing best practices in mitigation outdoors! In the meantime, if you’d like to fill out this survey, it will help us with our plans!

Spring Cleaning Fundraiser:

Lastly, we just want to give a quick reminder that our Spring Cleaning Fundraiser is coming up the first weekend of June! Declutter your house of old clothes, small household appliances, and books for free and earn your school $$$ at the same time! Check out our post below or Email LJ Donnell for more details.

Thank you!

And as always, thank you for all of your amazing support! We love an appreciate you all so much!

-the CG team