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I write the Eagle News from the heart of Manhattan, New York. Our son, Brady, will be graduating tomorrow from the NYU School of Dentistry and the commencement exercises will be held in Madison Square Garden. As a young boy, I dreamed of playing an NBA basketball game in MSG, but my basketball glory days ended in high school.  6^th grade teacher Mr.  Roberts is the only person I know personally who has played in the The Garden, so a graduation ceremony will be my one and only trip to MSG. We have crammed a lot of NYC activities into our short stay here: a leisurely walk through Central Park, a Broadway play, the Carol King musical biopic Beautiful, which was incredible, Prince Street Pizza, chocolate chip cookies from Levain Bakery, church services in Manhattan, and all manner of head turning things in a city of 9 million people. We have food trucks in Utah Valley, and though there are plenty of those in NYC, I saw my first marijuana truck. I wonder what the reaction to the Weed World Candies truck would be if it pulled into the Alpine Days celebration? Though our trip has been fun, I look forward to returning to our little protected bubble in the Utah Valley!

I understand that we were able to get the Dance Festival in just before the skies opened up. Thank you rain gods and thank you Angee Tanner, our Movement Teacher, for all of the time and effort that went into preparing our students for their dance performances!

Our longest tenured instructor, kindergarten teacher Natalie Schurter, has accepted a job offer that has come to her to be the Reading Specialist at Westmore Elementary in Orem. We of course will miss Mrs. Schurter and are grateful for all she has done for Alpine Elementary and the many students she has taught for the past 18 years, but are excited that she now will get to share her knowledge of how to effectively teach reading to the kindergarten and first grade teachers at Westmore Elementary. That means we have a teaching change at every grade level next year. Wow!

Lizzy Snyder, a recent graduate of Utah State, will join Colleen Aitchison on our kindergarten team. We were originally going to have Ms. Snyder be the second grade Chinse Immersion English Partner Teacher, but she is very excited to move to kindergarten. A plan is in place to find a new second grade teacher. I am also waiting on the State of Utah to process some paperwork so we can hire Rui Chen to be our third grade Chinese Immersion teacher. Rui, a native of China, recently completed her Master’s Degree in Education at the University of Southern California. She did her student teaching in a high school Chinese Immersion Program.

The Box Tops contest for May is almost over. Let’s “Scoop Up Those Box tops”! The final day to turn in box tops is May 24. Thank you for helping our school raise over $1300.00 this year! The  ice cream prize has been generously donated by Stanley Adams Attorney at Law located in Salt Lake City. And a special thank you to parent volunteer and Box Tops Coordinator, Jesse Majors, for organizing all of our box top fundraising efforts this year.

The final day for kindergartners will be May 22 and the final day for preschoolers will be May 24.

Lots of end-of-the-year activities in the last eight days of school. Communicate with your student’s teacher if you have any questions. School will dismiss at 10:35 am on May 30, the final day of the school year.

Have a great week, and as always, remember that it is a great day to be an Eagle!

Though Mother’s Day is a celebration and recognition day specific to mothers, I hope that all of the women in the Alpine Elementary Community, mothers or not, had loved ones express their love and appreciation to them. For those of you with missionaries serving somewhere in the world, I’m sure you enjoyed your visit with your missionary yesterday.  I have been blessed with amazing women in my life, first and foremost my beautiful wife Laura, our three daughters, two choice daughters-in-law, and of course my beloved mother who passed away 10 years ago. If not for a choice my mother made when I was five-years-old, our family’s life trajectory would have been completely different, and I definitely would not have all of the women mentioned above in my life or writing this Eagle News in Alpine, Utah.

A huge shout out to our PTA for all of the planning, work and parent volunteer time that went into staging our School Carnival last week! Since I have been the principal at Alpine Elementary, Erica Hartshorn has served as the PTA president twice. With her youngest child moving on to Middle School next year, and after many years of selfless and dedicated service to Alpine Elementary, we will be losing Erica as one of our PTA members. The School Carnival was Erica’s last big event to oversee. Thank you Erica for all you have done for Alpine Elementary during the years that your children have attended our school. Next year, we will have co-PTA presidents, Ammie Gillespie and Laralee Proctor. These two ladies will be outstanding leaders for our PTA.

All library books or payment for lost books are due by May 17. Please check to see if your student has brought any library books home.

Please come to the school and check out our Lost and Found. We have lots of coats, jackets, hats, gloves and lunch bags that we would like to see go home with their rightful owners.

We will be having our Dance Festival at 2:30 pm on Friday, May 17.

I will have to miss the Dance Festival this year because our son, Brady, graduates from the NYU School of Dentistry on May 20, and we will be flying to New York City on Friday to join Brady and his wife, Whitney, to celebrate their four years of hard work. We are excited as they will soon be moving to Rapid City, South Dakota for their first post graduate school job. A 10-hour car drive instead of a flight across the country!

Please remind your students to use the crosswalk on 300 north before and after school when crossing that busy road. Too many students are running, biking or riding scooters across the road and not using the crosswalk. We will make an announcement at school emphasizing the importance of being safe. We don’t want any child to be injured!

Have a great week, and as always, remember that it is a great day to be an Eagle!

I hope you all had a happy Cinco de Mayo and found a way to eat some delicious Mexican food yesterday.

I had a niece get married on Saturday in the Provo City Temple, so it was a wonderful weekend spent with my younger siblings, a brother from Pasco, Washington and sister from Muncie, Indiana. Laura and I took my sister and her husband to Comedy Sports in Provo on Friday night. Lots of laughs topped off with some delicious ice cream from the Rockwell Ice Cream Company! My family activities kept me off my bike on Saturday, which is probably a good thing because my bike team did a “Century Ride” (100 miles) around Utah Lake. That is the ride last year that when I clipped the back tire of a fellow rider and fell off my bike, and the next thing I remember is being unloaded from an ambulance at Utah Valley Hospital. After receiving the ambulance and doctors’ bills it turned out to be a very expensive bike ride!

Good luck to our 5^th graders as they participate in Hope of America this week!

Below is a link to register for our school’s Summer Chinese Club.  The 10:15am-12:00pm session has a wait list, but there are still spots in the 8:45-10:30am session.  If you have registered but haven’t submitted payment to the school office, please do so this week to avoid being moved to the wait list.  If you registered for the wait list, do not send payment unless we let you know that your child has a spot.  Questions may be sent to[email protected].

And I am also attaching a flyer to another Chinese Camp that is offered here in Alpine.

Have a great week, and as always, remember that it is a great day to be an Eagle!

Can you believe we flip our calendars to the month of May this week?

This is the week that we are accepting Teacher Requests. I have attached once again the staff changes that are occurring for next year and the Teacher Request Form. And we have one more teacher who will be leaving us. On Friday, fifth grade teacher Condita Washburn was informed that she has been hired as the Partnership Facilitator at Vineyard Elementary where she will have supervision duties over the teaching interns from UVU. Ms. Washburn is currently enrolled in the BYU Educational Leadership Program with the goal of becoming a school administrator. Her new job is a natural stepping stone to securing an administrative position. Having taught at Alpine Elementary for 18 years, we lose one of our most skilled and tenured teachers. Sad news for our school, but good news that Ms. Washburn is able to start the next chapter of her professional journey.

Mrs. Ruesch, our all-star librarian, is having her final Book Fair this week. Buy one book and get one free! Come to the school to check out all of the great books that are available at the Book Fair.

Thank you to all the second grade parents who came last week to support our students in the annual Glow performances. The four classes did an excellent job in their performances, and a special thanks to our music teacher, Melinda Hunt, for all she did to prepare the students.

Wednesday will be our final Walk to School Wednesday of the school year. Please encourage your students to walk to school or drop them off at Creek Side Park and they can follow the painted footsteps to school.

Only two days left to turn in your box tops for the April contest!  Easter treats and a surprise, generously donated by QTI, LLC, a construction inspection agency located in Lindon, Utah will be awarded to the class with the most box tops turned in!

Below is a link to register for our school’s Summer Chinese Club.  There are still spots in the 8:45-10:30am session, although the 10:15am-12:00pm session is nearly full.  If you have registered but haven’t submitted payment to the school office, please do so this week. Here is the link to the Google Doc to sign up.

The two primary metrics of academic success in the Alpine School District are the state of Utah RISE assessments for 3^rd – 6^thgraders and the Dynamic Indicators of Basic Early Literacy Skills (DIBELS) for our K – 3^rd graders.  We continue to make improvements in our end-of-year DIBELS scores. I have included an attachment that shows you a four-year overview of the Alpine Elementary DIBELS scores compared to the 2018 – 19 Alpine School District average.  Congratulations to all of our K-3 teachers, the aides who work with those classes, and Instructional Coach Penny Gardner, for the excellent job we are doing in the primary grades of teaching the foundational reading skills!

Have a great week, and as always, remember that it is a great day to be an Eagle!

I hope you all had an enjoyable Easter! Because of the rainy forecast on Easter Sunday, we had our four local grandchildren and their parents over to our home for a Saturday Easter Egg Hunt. Laura and I hid 40 plastic Easter eggs, 20 each, some containing candy, others candy and money, around our yard. The grandchildren had fun hunting for and finding the eggs, but only 37 were found, and I don’t remember where I hid the missing eggs, so Papa will have fun discovering Easter eggs as he does his spring yard work in future days and weeks.

I biked Mill Creek and Emigration Canyons on Saturday with 20 other members of the bike team I ride with. Both canyons were full of people biking, hiking or driving, taking advantage of a wonderful Spring day. What a beautiful part of the world we live in!

Our PTA and parent volunteers did an amazing job of recognizing our staff last week! The Alpine Elementary faculty realizes how fortunate we are to have such tremendous parent support. The meals, treats, gifts, flowers and kind notes are appreciated so much by our hard-working staff. A huge shout out to Meredith Rosenvall who headed up the Staff Appreciation Week activities, and thanks to the many other parents who came into the school to recognize staff members.

Speaking of parent volunteers, I am pleased to announce that one of our longtime PTA members, Tawnya Bearss, has been recognized by the Utah PTA as the winner of the Spirit of PTA Award. The fact that Tawnya is being honored as a statewide winner is very fitting as her youngest child is a 6^th grader, and after many years of service on our PTA, including serving as PTA president, Tawnya will be recognized at an awards dinner on Tuesday night for her many years of devoted service to the children at Alpine Elementary. Congratulations Tawnya!

Our second graders will be performing Glow on April 24 in the gymnasium at the following times:

Mrs. Wallace 5:00 pm

Mrs. Bailey 5:45 pm

Mrs. Blodgett 6:30 pm

Ms. Bennett 7:15 pm

Parents can turn in Teacher Request Forms to the main office April 29 – May 3. I will be sending out another email this week detailing the staff changes that are occurring next year and attaching the Teacher Request Form.

Please read the attachment for our monthly Box Top update.

Have a great week, and as always, remember that it is a great day to be an Eagle!