Hello Bexley Families,
This week we start the month of September which means we are closer to the end of storm season! Last week we had 3 severe storms our of 5 days where we needed to implement our severe weather plan. We thank you for your patience and thank those that have sent both positive messages and feedback to help continue to improve our process. Our staff has been amazing at adjusting quickly and staying late to ensure all of our Bulldogs get home safely.
The first goal of our severe weather plan is to keep our students and staff within our gates safe. We then have made some adjustments to our plan to assist with the safety of those that stand outside of our gates. Again, we thank you for your patience. Moving forward, we chose to make the following changes. First, our students will move along the safe, covered, designated paths to their safe locations for dismissal. Once our students are within their classrooms with teachers at the door, we will allow hiker/biker parents into our buildings for safety. If a parent chooses to retrieve his/her child and leave our campus while the lightning is within 10 miles of our campus, they may do so at their own risk. If your child is a car rider, we ask that you remain in our car line and we will release students when the lightning is clear away from our campus. We cannot release car riders from any other areas as our staff are working diligently to supervise children and communicate where assistance is needed the most. Parents of car riders, thank you for waiting in your vehicles until we can safely dismiss. Bus riders will be released when our students can move safely from the building to the bus doors. We have one designated staff member that stays in communication with our bus garage and our bus garage is expected to communicate bus delays to our bus rider families.
Communication is very important to us. We realize that we could improve our communication during a change of dismissal. Some changes we have made to improve our communication is to make the decision about dismissal changes at 3:35pm instead of 3:40pm. As you know, storms move quickly in Florida, so we often need to make decisions and communicate our decisions as late as possible. We have one staff member that will send an email through our school connect system, one staff member that will communicate on Facebook, one staff member that will communicate via our schoolwide Class Dojo account. If we have time to create a recorded phone call, you will also receive a phone call. If you are questioning the plan for dismissal because you see bad weather in the area, please plan to monitor one of these communication platform avenues. If you are the parent of a hiker/biker, you may stay home until you see that we communicated that we have released hiker/biker students, or you may plan to come and walk/bike at your own risk. Lastly, we have a partnership with our school crossing guards and met with them last week. They are not employed by our school district, however, we have a great partnership with them and communicate our dismissal plans so that they know to expect students to leave our campus later than normal. We cannot make our crossing guards to stay past 4:30pm, but most of them do, because they also care about our Bulldogs. If your child has a green GO tag to walk or bike home without you, please understand that our crossing guards may have left their post for the day. Please be sure to review your walking/biking expectations with your child if you let him/her walk or bike home alone. Once they leave our campus, we tell them to stay on the sidewalks, but we are no longer supervising their walk/bike home. Thank you!
Save the dates for upcoming September events:
– No School on Labor Day: 9/5
– Early Release Day: 9/7 Students will be dismissed at 1:50pm. Please plan accordingly so your child is picked up or gets home safely at 1:50pm
– Burger-Fi Spirit Night: 9/7 3:30pm-9:00pm Bring your family for dinner, mention Bexley Elementary, and help raise money for our Bulldogs!
– Panera Spirit Night: 9/13 4:00pm-8:00pm Skip cooking tonight and join us at Panera Bread for dinner! Don’t forget to mention you are from Bexley Elementary. 🙂
We look forward to seeing our Bulldogs, on time, tomorrow morning! This week is all about learning, loving, and no more lightning…we hope!
Believe. Engage. Succeed. Teamwork. Integrity. Equity. for Every Bulldog, Every Day!
Have a great night!
Michele Boylan, Principal
