Weekly Update: January 20th, 2023
Weekly Update: January 20th, 2023
Dear Grinnell-Newburg Board, Staff, Families, and Friends:
Happy Friday! Thank you for your continued support and patience as we navigated a delayed start this past week and then had to add hard surface drop-off and pick-up to the mix. The gravel roads are tricky for school buses traveling on them. Our priority is to keep all students and staff safe while traveling to and from school.
The process for school delays, closures, or transportation changes takes time when informing our families. Here is the process that we ask you to follow so that you receive emergency communication timely:
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Check the parent portal in Infinite campus to ensure that you have updated information on who should be receiving voicemails, texts, or email messages. We have defaulted all families to receive these items. This past week, emergency contacts contacted us as they have moved away or are no longer emergency contact. Please remove any emergency contacts that no longer need the messages.
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We submit our delays and closures to the local media television stations such as KBOE-OSKY, KCCI- Channel 8, KCOB- KGRN, KIX 101., WHO-Channel 13, WOI Channel 5, z102.9, and KCRG.
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You will see delays or closures on the local news tv scrolling bar. We submit them prior to the voice reach going out. If there is a delay, it may be the station trying to upload all the information.
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We will post delays and closures on our district website at https://www.grinnell-k12.org/
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You should receive a voicemail, text message, and a more detailed email if your information is correct in Infinite Campus. We ask that you do not call the district office after receiving a call. More than likely, we will not be able to answer the phone as we may have been unable to get into the district office to answer phones due to inclement weather. Please review your email or text message if your voicemail did not accept the call before contacting the district office or school. The email is more detailed than the voice reach.
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We send translated email messages to individual families in various languages. These are short informational messages that should trigger families to review emails through the use of Google Translate.
We hope that all of these strategies will help you to navigate emergency communication. We welcome your feedback if you have any questions or concerns regarding the communication process in the event of an emergency.
Swimming: The GHS Tiger swimmers held their last home meet this past week. Wishing all swimmers the best as they head into the postseason while times are dropping!
Girls Varsity Basketball: I hope that you can come out for tonight’s Girls' and Boys' Basketball games this evening. Go Tigers!
Build a Better Grinnell Survey:
BABG is looking to pay some folks to recruit within their personal networks to collect complete survey responses for our "Community Visions" survey. These Community Research Assistants will be paid $10 per complete survey they submit. There is also a food budget of $6.25/person recruited to take the survey - so, for example, someone might take a few of their friends out for pizza or drinks and take the survey together.
If you can think of anyone who would be interested in making some money to recruit survey takers and can reach out to them with this opportunity please do! Also if you could share this information within your personal network and forward it along, it would really help.
A reminder, if you have not yet taken the Community Visions survey, I encourage you to take it yourself!
Check out this flyer for more information.
Suicide Awareness & Prevent: Support and Strategies:
The Speaker Series continues for families on March 4, 2023, at Hotel Grinnell to hear two speakers related to suicide awareness and prevention. This event is sponsored by American Brawn, the G-N School district, and Grinnell Area Mental Health Consortium. The speakers and meal are all free, but we do need reservations by Feb. 10. For more information, click HERE.
Please be sure to review the Virtual Back and activities calendar!
Take a look at the Virtual backpack here.
The upcoming activities calendar can be found here:
Have a safe and relaxing weekend!
Janet