The TD Friends of the Environment Fund is running an children’s Nature Art contest. This gives our school a wonderful opportunity to win $7,500 for our yard, as well as great prizes for the winning artist and their class. The winning art will be featured on Enviro-Bags distributed by TD!

Runnymede families are encouraged to participate. We will collect submissions (with signed registration form) in the office until Thursday, October 13th. Have your child draw a picture of what they love about nature and send it in!

The school’s photo retake day is scheduled for Tuesday, November 8th. A form will be sent home with students that you can fill out and return on the 8th to request retakes.

Also, the group class photos will be retaken for these classes, whose teachers were absent on the original day:

All Runnymede parents are welcome at the first Council Meeting of the year, Wednesday, September 28, 2011, at 7:00 p.m. in the school library. (Here is the agenda.)

Attendance at this meeting is required in order to become a “voting member” of council for the remainder of the year, which means you can vote on issues and motions as they come up at meetings. If you cannot attend this meeting but still wish to become a voting member, please review articles 4 and 5 of the Runnymede Public School Constitution to make sure you are eligible, and then fill out the attached self-nomination form and send it to Krista Wylie.

The administration and school council are committed to using email as the primary form of communication with parents. To accomplish this goal, we have organized an email list system that will enable you to receive information from your child’s classroom teacher, the administration and school council about school-wide activities (like concerts), classroom specific events (field trip details), updates and newsletters like the Rapport.

If you have not yet provided your email to your child’s classroom teacher, please fill out the form on the Runnymede Email Manager.

This project will help us significantly reduce the amount of paper used, make it easier for you to receive correspondence, and ensure your privacy. Your email addresses will not be shared anywhere, we have incorporated built-in verification, and all messages will be archived.

So how does it work? One parent from each of the 46 classes in our school has volunteered to act as that classroom’s email manager. Once you have provided your email address, they will invite you to join the classroom’s list and the school wide list. (A few of the classes do not have a volunteer yet. If you are interested in helping in that role, please email jemsustar-school@yahoo.ca.)

We are hoping for a 100% participation rate in this program. If you already completed and returned the green Email Sign-up form from the beginning of the school year, thank you. If you don’t receive an invitation to join the group by the end of the month, please come back and resubmit your information using the link above. You know how paper sometimes gets lost!

Please remember, this is an effort to move communication away from paper. It is NOT a method for your to ask your child’s teacher about their progress. Please speak to the teacher directly about any issue specific to your child’s needs.