Busy Bees!

Greetings Parents and Community Members!
It’s been a fantastic couple of weeks since we’ve last spoken! Our COVID mitigation strategies are working great, I provided a State of the School update at yesterday’s PTA General meeting, and we successfully rolled out the WIN block for our early intervention and high achieving students. Each day for 45 minutes, 1st-5th graders may receive personalized learning from one of five intervention or gifted teachers. So cool to see in action! As we continue to move through the week, please take a moment to read up on some important updates below.

1. BASC-3 BESS – Last week, your child came home with a parent opt-out form for a new Behavior and Emotional Screener, which will be administered between September 16 and October 1. The new screener will be given two times a year and will help us identify areas of growth and also strengths in social, emotional, and behavioral well-being. Parents in grades PK-5 will also be invited to complete a brief rating scale about their student(s). Students in grades 3-5 will be invited to complete a self-rating that will take 5-15min. Together, this information helps us to understand the needs of all our students. If you would like to participate, there is no further action required. If you would like to opt out, please complete and return the form. You can also access it again HERE. If you are interested in learning more about this behavior and emotional screener, please join the North Atlanta Cluster onSeptember 16 at 5:15pm using THIS link.
2. HIVE Rallies are back! – We are excited to renew, revamp, and re-excite our students around our HIVE Colors!  As a reminder, EVERY Morris Brandon student and employee is assigned a HIVE color – just ask your child which HIVE he or she is in (Yellow, Green, Blue, or Orange)! If they don’t know, you may assign them one, or have them take on the HIVE color of their current teacher. All students in Kindergarten take on the HIVE color of their homeroom teacher, and they will keep that color until they graduate Brandon. Our first outdoor HIVE rally is slated for October 22, and we want our students to do their best to earn HIVE points by exhibiting our IB learner attributes! Points are given throughout the day, and EVERY Friday is HIVE color day if it is not already another themed day.
3. COVID Mitigation Updates – Our positive cases have dramatically improved over the past several weeks and while we continue to get better, it’s important that we do not lose sight of our COVID Mitigation strategies. Students are currently still eating in the classroom and staying in their recess zones, but if all goes well in the coming weeks, we hope to loosen up some of these requirements. With that said, our reporting measures, mask mandates, and AM health check screeners are still required, as is twice a week mandatory COVID testing for all staff. We are currently testing more than 360 students each week, and I want to continue to encourage your participation by opting in HERE.

Friday, September 17 is Falcons Friday! Wear your red and black to support Atlanta’s home team (or the NFL team that you support)!

Thank you again for your continued support of all the amazing things happening at Brandon and within our community. If you have not done so yet, please consider donating to our Annual BeeFund HERE, I know I already did!

Until next time,

j