Upcoming Events
2/2/2012
- Third Grade2/9/2012
2/16/2012
2/20/2012
- Presidents Day Holiday2/21/2012
School Announcements
Welcome!
Welcome to the Bryant Core Knowledge Magnet site!
We are looking forward to the 2011-2012 school year!
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https://www.surveymonkey.com/s/boundaryproscons
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We are looking forward to the 2011-2012 school year!
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Staff, parents and community members are invited to complete a survey regarding the school boundary discussions. The feedback will be shared with the Superintendent Focus Group and the Board of Education as boundary plans are developed.
The survey asks participants to provide the pros and cons of five questions. The district wants participants’ perspective on the pros and cons of each of the five strategies, not just yes or no answers to help guide the Superintendent Focus Group’s and the BOE’s work.
The questions are:
- Should the district open all buildings as NEW attendance centers (at an additional cost of approx. $34.6 million annually)?
- Should the district consider closing buildings as part of the new boundary plan?
- Should the district open all buildings as “retasked” attendance centers (i.e., moving existing schools out of older buildings, moving programs, etc.)?
- Should the district operate exactly as it does today and open NO new buildings?
- Should the district consider developing a plan involving the combination of opening new attendance centers, closing existing attendance centers and retasking new buildings?
The deadline for taking the survey is 5 p.m. on November 3.
The $370 million bond issue passed in 2008 included the construction of six new schools and five of the new schools are scheduled to open in the fall of 2012. The five new schools that are scheduled to open are a new high school in the northeast area of the district, a northeast and southeast quadrant K-8 school, the new Ortiz Elementary in north Wichita and the new Lewis and South Elementary. With the addition of new schools, school boundaries will have to be changed and developed, along with creating a new high school feeder pattern. New boundaries will also address growth and overcrowding at many Wichita schools.
Besides boundary changes, with the loss of millions of dollars in school funding from the state, the Board of Education has to study the costs of operating the new schools and has to consider possible changes to the bond issue plan.
More information about the boundary changes can be found at www.boundary.usd259.org.
https://www.surveymonkey.com/s/boundaryproscons
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Here's a message from our new principal, Mr. Dave Saunders:
July 17, 2011
Dear Bryant Community,
This summer Bryant has felt refreshing, happy, and comfortable… like coming home. So, I can earnestly say, I am very glad to be a Bulldog.
In the last seven weeks I have been fortunate to meet one-on-one with most all the staff members and I was blessed to meet with the Bryant Leadership Team for six full days. During these meetings I heard countless positive anecdotes about the staff, kids, and parents. These meetings were essential to enlighten me about many of the strengths and needs at Bryant. All of this made it possible for our Leadership Team to make a number of exciting upgrades for the 2011-2012 school year. In a variety of ways we will be allocating staff more purposefully, using schedules to optimize learning, increasing consistency, and improving communication. The information below is my initial effort to convey a few of these upgrades. Please know that I am looking forward to working with all of you to build on the many successes you have already accomplished at Bryant.
The New Guy
Typically, when ‘the new guy’ comes in people like to know a little more about him. With that in mind, Mrs. Gomez has been kind enough to ask for and add my biography and resume to the Bryant website http://bryant.usd259.org/. Please see those documents for more information as you may so be inclined (in other words, read it if you need some help going to sleep J). Thanks Mrs. Gomez for your countless hours updating so many technology items this summer.
Reading is Job # 1…. And it takes all of us.
All joking aside, as you will hopefully soon be able to tell, my number one academic passion at school is to help our students love reading and read at grade level or above. Why? Reading is the key to success at school. Period. Nothing else compares. So, we will emphasize reading when deciding how to use our resources.
It is abundantly clear, students who don’t read at least at-grade-level are significantly more likely to be in trouble at school (behaviorally and academically) and they will have drastically fewer choices as to how they earn-a-living compared to their peers who read well. None of us want those limitations for any of our students or children. That is not acceptable. The research not only completely supports this point, the research is also clear and simple about what parents must do to help make their child be successful. Every day, parents must have their children to school on time, ready to learn, and (you guessed it) read… that is, all students need to read or be read to at home for 20 minutes each and every night.
Homework; Daily (or Weekly)
We need you. We must have you join in this effort with us. You are your child’s single most important role model and teacher. We cannot and likely will not accomplish what is needed for and with your children without you. Thus, it will be a school-wide expectation and requirement for students to read (or if they are younger, to be read to) each night for 20 minutes … or a bare-bones minimum of 100 minutes a week. Each student will need a parent to sign-off that this has occurred in the student agenda.
We need you. We must have you join in this effort with us. You are your child’s single most important role model and teacher. We cannot and likely will not accomplish what is needed for and with your children without you. Thus, it will be a school-wide expectation and requirement for students to read (or if they are younger, to be read to) each night for 20 minutes … or a bare-bones minimum of 100 minutes a week. Each student will need a parent to sign-off that this has occurred in the student agenda.
Now you may think, “The what? The student what? The student agenda?”
Santa and Student Agendas are Coming to Town
This coming year at Bryant we will significantly improve a number of items using one tool, a student agenda for grades K-5. I have read about and personally seen how the systematic use of student agendas play a pivotal part in simultaneously improving all of the following:
- Effectively and efficiently communicate to the student and parent what the student is expected to accomplish each and every night at home (and sometimes convey how they behaved).
- A simple structure to enhance student responsibility. Who wants to have a child that does not have the skill and habit of successfully and regularly bringing home and keeping track of materials / an agenda? This is very doable for all students, even kindergarten students and less organized students. This is accomplished when, together, we lovingly expect them to do so. Then we support them in a variety of ways and also lovingly hold them accountable when they do not complete their responsibilities.
- Have simple accountability for the staff member to follow through with basic communication the parent and student need and deserve.
- Inside the agenda are a number of learning tools that the teacher, student, and parent should find useful.
A massive thanks to Ms. Woodman for all the time she took entering and formatting this for us.
Back to School Night
Now, you have likely read enough to have some questions… PERFECT. The above items concerning homework, agendas, classroom expectations, and much more will be shared with you in more depth at our Back to School Night on August 16 by your child’s classroom teacher. This event will be different then in the recent past. You will have a couple minutes, max, to very quickly drop off your supplies with a parent volunteer (hopefully) in your child’s class. Then, more critically, you will sit in the classroom with the other parents and find out the most important items the teacher needs each and every parent to know so that we all get off to an optimum start this school year. Later in the evening kids will have a chance to play on the playground and you can talk with other parents as you eat dinner and meet the teacher. Thanks to Mr. Branson who agreed to be the point person for this event. He will have more information to you via flyer / parent link phone calls in the near future.
Enrollment
That leads us to enrollment which again will be done exclusively online at http://bryant.usd259.org/ Click on Bryant Enrollment (left hand side), then scroll down to the files at the bottom of the page. You can take care of most everything from home or work if you wish to do so. When you do come to the school for enrollment, we will be in the library since the Dodge Elementary latch key has been using some of our building this summer that you typically had enrollment in. Thanks Obie and Tony for all your work to make Bryant shine!
The following are times Bryant will be open for enrollment:
The following are times Bryant will be open for enrollment:
July 28 and Aug 2 from 2 PM – 7 PM
July 29 and Aug 1, 3 from 8:30 – 1:30
The Spanish interpreter will be available at the times listed above on August 1st and 2nd
The fees for this year are almost identical to last year and are posted as a part of online enrollment. Just for clarity, everyone will need to pay $5 for the student agenda. Every agenda after the first one will cost $4 so please help impress upon your children the importance of keeping track of their agenda. Heck, if they lose it that can actually be seen as a great opportunity to show empathy for their mistake and let them learn a life lesson by replacing it with their money … or they could do extra chores around the house to pay you back.
Also, the PTA will have a station for you to stop by and Lindsey will have all the volunteers and information lined up for you. Finally, we need a few people that will help shelve library books on a regular basis this year.
Fundraiser
It was nice to meet with Lindsey Peterson lindsey.peterson@ymail.com the PTA president. She shared that the PTA is (again) just having two fundraisers and that the first one is selling Entertainment Books. The PTA will send more information but at this time it looks like this event will be kicked off at school at 3:30 on Wednesday the 24th of August and the final assembly to celebrate all our sales will be September 7. Thanks for any and all support you can give to this endeavor to help our PTA help all our wonderful Bryant kids J.
Yours for kids learning needs first, foremost, and always,
Dave Saunders
Principal, Bryant Elementary