WELCOME TO BURNS PARK
Burns Park Elementary School Mission Statement
To foster academic achievement in a safe and nurturing environment which develops responsible citizenship, a positive self-image, creativity, sensitivity to others and multi-cultural awareness.
Dear Burns Park Families,
Happy Spring! What a beautiful day. For those who are celebrating Passover this week we wish you a happy holiday. For those who have been celebrating Holy Week and celebrate Easter today, we wish you a joyous holiday as well.
We’re grateful for our community’s support for the Burns Park Blood Drive this week. Once again, we exceeded the previous record (held by Burns Park) for the largest elementary school blood drive in Michigan.
On Friday we enjoyed a wonderful assembly featuring Ms. Gina Thompson’s dancers and their presentation of Beau Monde dances (featuring our own Lucy Lowenschuss). Our students love to watch dance and we all had a lovely time. Thank you PTO for your support of this event.
Our Girl Scout and PTO, co-sponsored Buddy Benches have arrived. Stay tuned for details on a short assembly where we will celebrate and learn about these special gifts.
We want you to know about the high quality drinking stations which have been installed throughout our school. Filtered and ultra-clean water machines are now installed on each floor of our main building, including an extra by the cafeteria, in the A-wing, and in the modular building. We appreciate the investment that you as parents and our school district has made, in ensuring the safest drinking water possible for all of our students, staff, and families.
If you have not yet, please take the district and building climate survey that AAPS are offering for families, staff, and students. You can find the link to this survey here:
https://www.a2schools.org/Page/14494
As some of you may know, our school’s Kindness Committee is looking into painting some new murals in our school. The murals in our school now are many years old, some older than 35, and we’re done with then student’s participation. Some of our murals were painted by students who are now in their mid to late 40’s. We imagine that, if asked whether they wish their work to remain on the school walls, or if they wish that current students had the same experience of creating visual representations of their school’s culture, they would encourage the latter. (Which doesn't mean that any would necessarily be painted over........)
The initial phase of this project has involved some brainstorming about the possibilities of doing this and possible locations. Our next phase will involve eliciting feedback from stakeholders. (Yes, we are using some of this process language with students.) We will begin with surveying students in a digital and “shoe-box” format, in our upper grades. At some point we will offer a survey to adult members of our community.
As a committee that is working toward kindness and inclusivity in our school culture, students are committed to a process in which we build consensus and move forward in a win-win fashion. We want to reassure you in that regard in case informal and word of mouth conversations, that students or adults hear, indicate otherwise.
Speaking of surveys, here is a message from our Rec and Ed department about their annual survey:
Ann Arbor Rec & Ed has had the pleasure of offering after-school enrichment classes to elementary-aged students for many years. To know what types of classes to offer, we survey parents to find out which classes are the most popular at each school. We also give parents an opportunity to provide new class ideas for us to consider. A link to this year's survey can be found below.
Rec & Ed After School Class Survey for Year 2019-2020
NOTE: This survey will only remain open until April 30th.
We’re excited for green grass and budding leaves on trees. Please watch for our PTO email this weekend. Lots and lots of exciting events are coming up at Burns Park Elementary and you won’t want to miss any of them. It’s going to be another wonderful week at Burns Park. We hope you will join us when you can!
Your Principals,
Chuck and Laura
Dear Fantastic Burns Park Families!
We hope all celebrating Easter and Passover had a wonderful weekend! Thank you to all who came out and saved lives at the Burns Park Blood Drive, with a particular THANK YOU to Sandy Kreger for organizing once again. Be sure to mark you calendars and please plan to join us on 5/22/19 at 7:00 p.m. for the final PTO monthly meeting! We will be voting on our slate of officers for the 2019-2020 school year.
Do take a moment to see below for all of the exciting information and details on upcoming events!
Have a great week at Burns Park Elementary.
As always, please feel free to email us if you have any questions.
Cheers!
Jennifer Monk-Reising
jmonkreising@gmail.com
Jill Schloff
jillschloff@gmail.com
Burns Park PTO Co-Presidents 2018-2019
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IMPORTANT DATES
MAY 5TH - BURNS PARK RUN
MAY 6TH - STAFF APPRECIATION LUNCH
5/22 - FINAL PTO MEETING OF THE YEAR
MAY 31ST - ICE CREAM SOCIAL
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GARDEN NEWS!
New Garden Coordinator at Burns Park
Burns Park has a new School Garden Coordinator! Ms. Shah, a fourth-grade teacher at BP will be leading the garden program. What that entails is working with the Burns Park school staff, families, and garden committee to develop and implement school garden programming. The School Garden Coordinator will manage the budget and track spending. The School Garden Coordinator collaborates with teachers to utilize the garden and connect to grade-level curriculum and standards, helps organize events like garden workdays, and aids in recruitment, supervising and training of volunteers with the PTO.
Ms. Shah has 7 years of school garden experience and has coordinated a successful school garden program in the AAPS for 5 years. She volunteers as the Ann Arbor Farm to School Collaborative (https://annarborfarmtoschool.weebly.com/) co-chair and leads their School Garden Grow Group subcommittee. Ms. Shah and the AAFTS Collaborative lends support to all of the school gardens in the AAPS with a team of experienced school garden folks. She is beyond excited to help with the Burns Park School Garden!
Grant News
Just recently, the City of Ann Arbor's Sustaining Ann Arbor Together committee approved a grant request in conjunction with a writing project she is working on in with her students. Burns Park Elementary together with Nate Ayers (alumni of BPE) of We Are The Forest (http://www.wearetheforest.org/), a local non-profit organization will be funded $10,000 to put in green infrastructure on our school campus. We are super excited about this! With the support of our community, administration, and all stakeholder involved, this will be a project to remember. The exciting part is that this project is student-led and will be sprucing up our garden as part of the project. More details to come!
Garden Committee Volunteers Needed
We are looking for dedicated volunteers to help serve on the garden committee. Garden committee members would attend meetings as needed, help with event planning (garden workdays, weed n' seed, summer volunteering), and work with students in the garden. If any of this sounds exciting to you, please contact Ms. Shah (shahn at aaps.k12.mi.us).
Weed n' Seed
We are excited to announce that Weed n' Seed will be resuming on Tuesdays this spring! Parents, please come join us and volunteer from 11:30 a.m. - 1:00 p.m. starting Tuesday, April 30th. No experience is necessary. Help us plant, harvest and serve food to a large number of delightful students who love to come to the school garden and take a break in nature. We have 7 dates available and would love a large number of volunteers to help! Thank you for your consideration. Sign up using the link below!
https://www.signupgenius.com/go/4090945a9ac2ea3fe3-weed
Fun Fact: Did you know?
WALK & TALK
It’s officially spring now - and we welcome Burns Park students to join us for laps around the orange cones during lunch recess on Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays. If your son or daughter participated in the fall, please tell them to look under the bed and deep in the closet for those metal chains full of colorful toe tags so they can bring them back to school this season. Veterans and new volunteers - please come out and join us!! It's a great chance to see very happy and active Burns Park students! https://www.signupgenius.com/go/10c0444ada629aafa7-fall
BURNS PARK RUN 2019
The 41st Annual Burns Park Run will take place Sunday, May 5, 2019. This is the largest fundraiser for the Burns Park PTO. We hope you will join us to run, walk, cheer or volunteer as we have fun and raise funds! Registration for the Run is available at: https://runsignup.com/Race/MI/AnnArbor/burnsparkrun?remMeAttempt=
See you Sunday, May 5th!
The Burns Park Run is in need of a Volunteer Coordinator for this year’s run! This year’s run is Sunday, May 6 and is only successful because of the 130+ volunteers that help run the day!
The Volunteer Coordinator will help to recruit and communicate with volunteers.
Please contact the race directors if you are interested- racedirectors@burnsparkrun.org
Thank you for your consideration,
Dave Lowenschuss, Kate Flewelling and Elizabeth Villiard
2019 Race Directors
SPRING STAFF APPRECIATION LUNCHEON - PLEASE HELP MAY 6th
The Spring staff appreciation luncheon is Monday, May 6th. This tradition is a great way to show our awesome Burns Park teachers and staff how much we appreciate them. Please consider contributing an item or two to ensure this special event is a success. Sign up here to contribute or to volunteer your time:
https://www.signupgenius.com/go/4090945A9AC2EA3FE3-teacher4
If you have any questions, please contact Julie Soldan at juliesoldan@gmail.com.
A BIG THANK YOU FOR THE BLOOD DRIVE
I couldn't be prouder of our kids. This was a record breaking blood drive. We are the biggest elementary blood drive in Michigan. We beat the last champs - ourselves! This is because of YOU, our Burns Park Community.
Approximately 110 people came to the drive. 105 presented. We got between 85 and 92 pints of blood. We had 46 new donors, including many of you!!!
They say each pint of blood saves up to 3 lives. We saved up to 276 lives saved. This is profound. Thanks to my amazing Burns Park community. I am so appreciative.
Thanks to our principals, Kathy Cramer, Jr. Leonard and Jayme Kelmegian for helping make this drive successful!!
My favorite part were the stories.
•There were stories about our wonderful children being mature and serving others.
•There were stories from people who needed blood in their past, and wanted a way to give back. They were elated to be able to give blood.
•Former students worked, played music, and even give blood and talked about their experiences.
•A cancer patient couldn't give, but thanked donors because she had to receive blood.
•Many first time donors decided to be donors for life.
•Students held hands of parents to cheer on their hero parents.
And on and on. Congratulations all, for a job well done.
Thank you again.
<3,
Sandy
(Lucky 5th grade teacher)
Burns Park Elementary
Burns Park Lunch Schedule 2018-2019
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