What’s New: Shepherd Elementary School
* Support the Shepherd Auction!
* Kids Corner
- Summer Camps in Our Area
- Where Your Children Can Go on Winter Break and No-School Days
* Signal your intent to send your children to Shepherd for 2010-11!
* Shepherd Elementary Featured on WAMU-FM
- Music Class Offers Lesson on Activism
by Jessica Gould
>> listen — and read!
* YOU’RE in the PTA Now!
For the 2009-10 school year, EVERY Shepherd parent is in the PTA. If you are at a PTA meeting, you will automatically have a vote and a voice. There will be no membership dues, either! If you had ever thought of money – or anything – as a barrier to participating in the PTA in particular, or more fully in the life of the school in general, then your worries are over! The Mustang, the Shepherd Elementary Web site, and the PTA listserv will let you know of plenty of ways you can make Shepherd School – and our children’s educational experience better than ever?
* ‘180 Fund’ Is Created To Finance PTA and School
In place of PTA membership dues and what had been known as the Family Enrichment Fee, the PTA has established the “180 Fund”” There are 180 instructional days in the school year. Parents, can you afford a dollar per day per child to improve Shepherd Elementary? We think you can, and we hope you’ll contribute to the 180 Fund. There are all sorts of things that Shepherd Principal Jamie Miles and PTA leadership have identified since the end of the school year that will enhance the educational program at Shepherd that don’t fit into the school or D.C. Public Schools’ budget. These include, but are hardly limited to:
- Plastic folders to be provided to each student at the start of the school year to facilitate communication between the school and the home.
- A redesign of the Shepherd Elementary Web site to make it easier to use – and this year with individual Web pages for each teacher!
- Discovery Education software for the school (available at half price because a Shepherd parent works for Discovery Communications).
- Workshops and seminars conducted by renowned International Baccalaureate educator John Burnell.
- “White boards” to augment and supplement the school’s blackboards.
- More laptop computers for teacher use. Currently, we have about one laptop for every three teachers – and that just won’t do.
