Some assorted musings...

Well, I put up my December calendar this morning! The holidays can't be far away now!  Hanukkah begins at sundown on Saturday, December 8th and Christmas will be December 25th.  The holiday break here at OCS will begin with a 1:00 dismissal on Friday, December 21.  The school offices will be closed until December 27.  The offices will be open for business Thursday, December 27 from 9:00am - 3:00 pm  and also on Friday, December 28.

School will reopen on Wednesday, January 2, 2013.

We are in the process of securing a two year agreement with Study Island for both Language Arts and Math activities for all students in grades 2-8.  We will be implementing benchmark tests as well with the students prior to the end of the school year.  This schedule and more about the benchmarks tests will be coming home after the holiday. The tests are based on our current curriculum, the NJ Common Core State Standards and will allow us to have another mechanism to measure the progress of our students.

This coming week, there will be some surveys conducted here at school.  We are asking our 3-8 students to answer questions about the school.  The questions are from the NJ Department of Education surveys developed as part of the Anti-Bullying Bill of Rights.  There is a parent survey that will come home as well next week.   The surveys will be up on our school website for everyone to look over by Monday, December3, 2012.

Slowly getting back to normal...

The difficulties of last week are slowly getting to be a memory... unless of course you still do not have power or have no email, internet access, have to wait on an odd numbered day for two hours to get gasoline, have an empty refrigerator because you had to throw everything way... wait, maybe we are not back to normal yet!  It certainly has been a trying time for our families and for our students.  We will do our best to remain cognizant of the hardships many of our families still face!  If you need anything, please give us a call!

I am not sure what normal is, but I hope we get there soon!

Till next time...

Superstorm

Quite a title.  Sandy will be another storm to remember for a long, long time!  As I write these words, I know that some of our neighbors, relatives and friends are without power and they are hoping that the power comes back on before the next wave of crummy weather hits the area... which looks to be Wednesday night into Thursday!
We lost five days of school and we will make up two of those days this week with the cancellation of the NJEA Convention.  The School Board will be meeting on Tuesday, November 6, 2012 at 4:00 to discuss the calendar changes that need to be addressed.  More information will follow that meeting. This is a public meeting.