Slight LCHS Calendar Change for August ~ Orientation Conferences

Dear 2018-19 LCHS Families,

I wanted to bring to your attention a slight change to the calendar at the beginning of school next year.  As you may recall, last year LCHS had one day of orientation while LCIS and West Park had two.  These orientation days allowed teachers to meet with their student’s Crew teachers, get schedules and have their final questions answered as we head into the school year.

While we do want to get straight to learning and classes as usual, we have made the decision to follow the practice of our other district schools and go ahead and have two days of orientation as well.  We think that ensuring all students and families get to meet with their crew teacher is worth the investment of an extra instructional day.  Additionally, by opening more times we hope to make it convenient for families with tight schedules who may be trying to coordinate these meetings with Crew teachers in multiple buildings. Therefore, LCHS will hold orientation conferences on both August 20 and 21 like West Park and LCIS; the first day of school for LCHS will match all Lake County schools on August 22.

We think these beginning of the year meetings are very important and we hope to accomplish several important goals:

• Establish a strong working relationship between crew teachers and families, including a plan for communication, any concerns as the year starts and a real feeling of comfort for parents to reach out as needed.
• Go over students’ PARCC, PSAT and SAT data.  It is incredibly important that students and families understand where students are academically as the year starts.
• Set goals for the school year including academics, athletics and extracurricular goals to help students focus and do well.
• Go over students’ Individual Career and Academic (ICAP) plans and schedules to make sure it still feels like the right focus for the 18-19 school year.

You all know I hate missing days of normal instruction and classes.  We have worked hard to have consistent strong days of learning, but we feel that this extra day at the beginning is worth the investment of time and we look forward to starting the year off on a strong foot in terms of Crew teacher and family relationships and collaboration.  We will be following up this summer with details on scheduling these days and our new system of electronic registration. Please see the updated calendar attached.

Thank you!

Mr. Ben Cairns, LCHS Principal