Monday: Full Day
Tuesday: 1 pm day
Wednesday: 1 pm day
Thursday: 1 pm day
Friday: 1 pm day(Last Day—no Aftercare)

Our first class of 8th grade students officially graduates City Neighbors this Friday at 6 pm in Hightman Hall. All 8th graders are expected to arrive by 5:30 and meet in the Library.

Because of limited space in Hightman Hall, this is an invitation only event. Just including guests invited by our 8th grade families and our staff and Board members, we are expecting over 250 attendees. There will be a reception in the courtyard following the event at 8 pm. All are welcome to attend that outside gathering and wish our 8th graders well.

The Community Relations Committee, in partnership with the Organized Parent Group, will be sponsoring a City Neighbors End of Year Picnic this Saturday June 6 from 12-4 at Burdick Park. See attached flyer for more information!

Parent/Teacher Conferences will be held on Tuesday (June 9th), Wednesday (June 10th) and Thursday (June 11th) for all K-5 students. All three of those days will have 1:00 dismissals. The final Parent/Teacher conference is used to review the year, look ahead to next year, determine any summer activities that may be helpful, and, of course, obtain and review your child’s report card.

For middle school students, we will be holding a Report Card Open House on Tuesday June 9 from 1:30-7. Parents/Guardians may show up any time between 1:30-7 and pick up your child’s report card. All middle school teachers will be on hand and available during that time.

We will be clearing out our Lost and Found on Friday, June 5th. Lost and Found is located on the coat racks in the Parent Room. All items left after Friday, June 5th will be donated to the Epiphany Church Thrift Shop. If anything’s gone missing in the last few months (and seemingly many things have!), please be sure to check the Lost and Found before Friday!

Thank you to everyone who participated in the Spring Arts Celebration. It was a joyful event with wonderful performances from our Instrumental Group, our Afterschool Chorus, our music classes from grades K-8, our Modern Dance troupe, our 2nd grade Virginia reelers, and Brazilian drummers! And, wonderful visual arts filled our building from our bottom floor to our third floor.

A LOT of work goes into our Arts Celebration and I thank everyone who worked so hard with our students to make it a success!

Over 70% of our parents and staff voted in this year’s Board Elections! The results are in! We are thrilled and excited to welcome the following member to the Board:
Director of Fundraising: Gwendolyn Unoko
Organized Parent Group: Colleen Dibble
Board Secretary: Ava Schweikert

We also give thanks to those who served so wonderfully in those positions to date: Annastasia Kezar (Director of Fundraising), L’Tanya Crosby (Organized Parent Group) and Charmaine Turner (Board Secretary).

And, congratulations to 1st grade —- who had a 100% voter turnout!

We will hold The City Neighbors Spring Arts Celebration on Wednesday, May 27th at 6:30 pm in Hightman Hall.

Tentatively scheduled performances include Vocal Music (Afterschool Chorus, K-2 students, 3-5 students, 6-8 students), Instrumental Music, Dance, Theater, Brazilian Drumming… and for the first time…Film!

Then, enjoy the rich displays of student art located throughout the building! We look forward to seeing everyone then!

Elections for the City Neighbors Board of Directors will be held this Wednesday night at the Spring Arts Festival. If you can’t be here for the Elections, please submit an absentee ballot by tomorrow night! Results from the election will be announced next week.

Graduation
Our 8th grade graduation will be held on Friday, June 5th at 6:00 at Hightman Hall. Unfortunately, due to space constraints, we only have enough space for 8th grade families and their guests, staff, Board members and founders. There will be a
reception on the lawn outside (with cake and coffee) following the ceremony (around 8:00 pm). Please feel free to join us.

Parent/Teacher Conferences
Parent/Teacher Conferences will be held on June 9, 10 and 11th for grades K-5. At this final conference, you will sum up the year with your child’s teacher, look ahead to next year, discuss any strategies for continued learning over the summer, and review your child’s report card. A parent or guardian must conference in order to obtain his/her child’s report card.

Report Card Open House
For students in grades 6-8, we will be holding a Report Card Open House from 1:30-7 pm on Tuesday, June 9th. We will already have held Presentations of Learning for every child in the middle school. This will be an opportunity to stop in, pick up your child’s report card and connect with any teachers.

Sixth Grade Trip to North Bay
Sixth grade will be traveling to North Bay next Monday morning. They will be returning on Friday at lunchtime. Mr. Oyelana, Ms. Trinisa, and Ms. Jagusch will at the site throughout the week. Other teachers may be visiting for a day.

If you need more packing instructions, please contact Mike. They were included in the original paperwork.

All 6th grade students can and should be picked up around 12:30 on Friday, June 5th.

Seventh and Eighth Grade to Assateague
Seventh and eighth graders are off to Assateague Island on Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday of next week. Contact Mr. French for any specifics about the trip.

Fifth Grade to Yorktown
Fifth grade is off to Yorktown next Thursday and Friday. Contact Ms. Bennett for specifics.

This week, we see the end of several City Neighbors afterschool opportunities — Math Club, Chorus, and Instrumental end this week! Thank you to everyone who sponsored an afterschool opportunity this year; they do so much to enrich the lives of our students and school.

All Parent Volunteer Hours Need to be Logged no later than Friday, May 15th!

Congratulations to the City Neighbors Community and, specifically the City Neighbors Fundraising Committee, for reaching its 2008-2009 goal of raising $22,000 for the school! The 6th CNCS Gala raised over $6,500 on May 2nd —- helping us reach our goal.

It takes a tremendous amount of hard work to raise that amount of money. Thank you to everyone on the Committee, its chair Annastasia Kezar, and to everyone who supported fundraising this year.

The Middle School Dance was a great affair on Friday night. With great food, great music, and a great environment for our middle school students to be together, the Community Relations Committee held a great event!

This year, the Community Relations Committee, headed by Shellae Jones, has pulled off a K-2 Dance, a 3-5 Dance, a Middle School Dance, an International Pot-Luck, and more! They have worked so hard to create opportunities for building community within our school. Thank you to them and all of their hard work!

One of our efforts as we approach the 2009-2010 school year is to solidify the culture of City Neighbors Charter School….and the expectations of what it means to be a member of the City Neighbors Community. We are now a full K-8 school, no more expansion of students, no more additions of staff —- this is the perfect time for us to explicitly define (with everyone present) who we are. In essence, “What is the City Neighbors Way?”

The staff has been working on a set of “values” and behaviors which represent the mission, vision and community. These would serve as a common set of values for all community members. I would like to invite parents to be part of that process. I will be offering three parent work groups to brainstorm and respond to those values.

Once these values are defined, we will examine all of the pro-active things we can do as a staff, as a group of parents, and as a community to nurture that culture. We will be examining our discipline system, management practices, and other mediation strategies to align them with these values. And, finally, we will look at our Assessments, report cards and feedback mechanisms to have them reflect these values.

So, I invite you to participate in one of three parent work groups on these values:

• Wednesday, May 13th from 12-1
• Monday, May 18th, 5-6
• Tuesday, May 19th, 8:30-9:30

Or, if none of these times work for you, please contact me and I’ll be glad to set a time to meet.

Please contact me with any questions, ideas, or concerns: mchalupa – at – cityneighbors.org.

This Thursday, Ms. Brightman will hold the last Art Club of the year. Thanks to everyone who participated!

We just wanted to thank the OPG and all of the parents who sponsored the Teacher Appreciation Lunch last Wednesday. The food was delicious. It was a great treat to save those extra few “lunch-packing” minutes in the morning. And, it was nice to be acknowledged. Thank you!

A Spring round of Grand Conversations will take place later this month.  What’s a “Grand Conversation”?  It’s a wonderful opportunity for families and teachers to support students as they grow as readers.  Both parents and children commit to reading a longer grade level novel.  Some families share the reading, others take turns reading the book independently.
 
In a few weeks, we all meet as a group for a special evening potluck and book conversation. The discussions are so rich and truly show how children think in sophisticated ways as they read engaging literature. But it is not simply just the children who share their ideas and questions; adults chime in and share their own connections with the book.  By the end we all know a little bit more about reading, discussing and each other.  And we always leave with a free book,  well fed! 
 
This Spring’s schedule:
Grade 2- Starring Grace, potluck May 26
Grade 3- Donovan’s Double Trouble, potluck, May 21
Grade 4- Elijah of Buxton, potluck May 19

This week, our very own Circus Arts club, will perform at All-School. The performance will begin at 2:45 and end at 3:15. Please join us!

This Friday, May 15, a group of 16 City Neighbors actors from grades 3-6 and 3 crew members, will journey to Washington, DC’s Folger Shakespeare Library to perform in their annual Children’s Shakespeare Festival. We were invited back after last year’s stellar performance of All The World’s A Stage. 

This year we strung together some of Shakespeare’s sonnets, soliloquys and speeches that deal with Time.  Look for the reprise of the CNCS Shakespeare Club’s  Is Time Shakespeare’s Enemy?  at an All School at the end of May.