This Week at WMES
November 22 – 26th

Dear Families:
Please use the Covid19 Daily check before sending your child to school each day.  Thank you for helping us all stay safe and healthy this year.

Some reminders for this week:

• Student Progress Interviews with classroom teachers will take place virtually for first term this week.  If you don’t have an appointment time yet, please reach out to your child’s classroom teacher to make one.   
  A reminder that there is no school for students on Thursday.  Staff will be having professional development sessions in the morning, and the doing Student Progress Interviews in the afternoon.
   
• Water Bottles: Staying hydrated is such an important part of staying healthy, and being ready to learn.  Please ensure that students have a refillable water bottle with them at school each day.
   
• Afternoon Pick-ups:  As you know, vehicles are not permitted to enter the lower parking lot / bus loop area between 1:55 and 2:05pm during bus dismissal.  Once the buses have pulled out, a staff member directs other vehicles in.   This is important so that our buses are able to pick students up safely, and so that bus traffic flows efficiently.  
  
  When picking up students after school, many family members have been waiting on Rocky Lake Drive until vehicles are directed in.  We appreciate this and your patience each day.  We foresee however, that parking on both sides of Rocky Lake Drive during this waiting time is going to become increasingly difficult as the road conditions deteriorate with winter weather. We strongly encourage all family members who are pulling up to wait on Rocky Lake Drive to do so on the school side of the road to avoid any potential accidents with through traffic.    Thanks.
   

• Food Drive:  We are so pleased to be able to support the Lion’s Christmas Express Food Drive again this year.  If you would like to help out, please send in one of the following items on or before December 9th: (cranberry sauce, store bought boxed cookies, Hamburger Helper, Boxes of tea bags, Stove Top Stuffing, juice, sugar, jam, pasta sauce, canned fruit, peanut butter).
  The Christmas Express will be here to pick the donations up on December 10th.
   
• We also collect new or homemade hats and mittens this time of year if you would like to send some in for our “Hat & Mitten Tree”.  We keep a few at school so that no student ever goes without on a cold day, and we donate some to local charities.  
  Thank you for your support.

Do you want to receive information from our school and HRCE by text message?

We now have the ability to send information to you by text message. To ensure compliance with Canadian Anti-Spam laws, you must opt-in to receive information by text message.

If you have already opted in – that’s great! You don’t have to read further.

If you haven’t (and would like to), here’s what you need to do:

If you did not receive the opt-in text message on November 16, please call your child’s school to update your contact information in PowerSchool. Any changes are uploaded nightly and reflected the following business day. When your number is added or changed in PowerSchool, you will automatically receive the opt-In message.

If you decide you no longer wish to receive HRCE and school information via text, you can reply to the message with “STOP” or by clicking here.

Parents/guardians can opt-in at any time by texting “Y” or “YES” to 978338. The mobile number MUST also be in PowerSchool.

This text message function WILL include school cancellation notifications.
This text message function will NOT share bus delay information.

Anyone who is NOT a parent/guardian in our system who wishes to receive school cancellations due to inclement weather must opt in via the HRCE website: www.hrce.ca/notifications . This includes staff, students and members of the community.

Have a great week everyone. 
Please reach out if you have any questions / concerns.

Karla Wolfe
Principal WMES

Our webpage can be found at:  https://wms.hrce.ca/
You can also follow us on Twitter at: @WMESchool

Important Dates in November:

November 22nd – First day of Term 2
November 24th/ 25th – Student Progress Interviews re. 1st Term progress
November 25th – No School for students
November 29th – Report Cards emailed home

Upcoming dates in December/ January:

December 6th – PTC meeting (Zoom)
December 21st – Last day of School before break
January 4th – Schools Reopen