LCES Panther Cub Communication #40
Week of June 2-5, 2025
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| LCES Families, Thursday morning we celebrated our last HOWL of the year with a fun meeting led by our specials teachers. Teachers recognized students of the month for the HOWL of creativity. Mrs. Ritacco and the first grade students showed their creative animal habits and Mrs. Northcraft and kindergarten students showed their creative thinking with homemade squishmallows. Mrs. Ayers is looking forward to field day on June 17. Congratulations to our students of the month!  Next week, on Thursday, June 5 from 6:00-7:00pm we will be hosting our kindergarten transition night, Ice Cream Social. See the flier below for more information! If you have a student who will be 5 by October 1, 2025 and will be enrolling in kindergarten at LCES, we look forward to seeing you at our transition event. If you know of other families in the community with kinder ready children, please help us spread the word! We also have our Teddy Bear picnics planned. K-2 students will have their picnic on June 11 and The Center will have theirs the week of June 16-18. We invite you to come have a picnic lunch with your student on these days! If you are wanting to buy an adult school lunch, please call the front office (719-486-6890) by June 4 so we can have accurate lunch count numbers. Adult lunches will be $5.00 We are looking forward to this event and fingers crossed for spring weather! A quick note about June 19, the last day of school. This day will be an early dismissal day with dismissal starting at 11:00am, similar to how we operate our half day conferences in October and March. Project Dream programs end on June 5, so please make arrangements with the front office regarding transportation and pick up plans. Have a great weekend, see you on Monday! Brandi Lovely, Principal blovely@lakecountyschools.net Subject: Important Update Regarding PowerSchool Data Security Dear families and educators of the Lake County School District community: We are writing to inform you of a recent development related to the cybersecurity incident PowerSchool experienced in December 2024.PowerSchool is aware that a threat actor has reached out to multiple school district customers in an attempt to extort them using data from the previously reported December 2024 incident. PowerSchool does not believe this is a new incident.Please be assured that both PowerSchool and Lake County School District are taking this situation very seriously. PowerSchool has informed us they are working with cybersecurity experts to thoroughly assess this development and have reported it to law enforcement in both Canada and the United States.As a reminder, following that incident PowerSchool also offered and made widely available credit monitoring and identity protection services for a period of two years to students and faculty Lake County School District regardless of whether they were individually involved. We encourage all those who were offered these services to take advantage of them:For individuals in the U.S.: https://www.powerschool.com/security/sis-incident/notice-of-united-states-data-breach/For individuals in Canada: https://www.powerschool.com/security/sis-incident/notice-of-canada-data-breach/As was reported earlier this year, PowerSchool made the decision to pay a ransom because they believed it to be in the best interest of their customers and the students and communities they serve. As is always the case with these situations, there was a risk that the bad actors would not delete the data they stole, despite assurances and evidence that were provided PowerSchool.We wanted to share this update as part of our ongoing commitment to transparency. We remain committed to working closely with PowerSchool and law enforcement to provide support in any way we can.Sincerely,Lake County School District | |
| K-2 Specifics | |
| Second Grade NNAT3 Assessment: This year the Gifted and Talented Program will be testing all students in 2nd grade, using an assessment called the Naglieri Nonverbal Abilities Test 3 (NNAT3). We will be using it as a universal screener for identification in General Cognitive Ability. Students will take this assessment on Tuesday, June 3rd. Giftedness is actually quite rare. We look for a minimum of three nationally-normed achievement tests to qualify someone in an academic area (i.e. Math, Reading, Science, or Social Studies), and also use universal screeners like the NNAT3. If a student scores in the 95th percentile or greater, we can use this as a data point for giftedness. We will contact you at the beginning of the 25-26 school year if your child scores in the 95th percentile or greater on this screener. Please notify me via email if you would like a copy of your child’s NNAT3 report for your information. Feel free to contact me if you have any questions. Thank you,Brandi Lovely Principal DIBELS Update: We would like to shout out and celebrate the reading growth and achievement our students showed during their end of year DIBELS reading assessment. Individual student results will be sent home with report cards in June. First, we are celebrating the tremendous growth of 56 students who moved a color band, meaning their composite score grew enough to move from: red (below grade level) to yellow (approaching grade level), or yellow to green (at grade level), or green to blue (above grade level). Fifty six students is 31% of our total number of students. Next, as a school, we started the year with 55% of students performing below grade level (red) and our end of the year data shows this number decreasing to 33%. This is phenomenal growth that truly shows our student’s ability to learn and grow as well as our teachers and families dedication to each child’s education. We look forward to celebrating this growth and achievement with students the week of June 9-12, where all students will receive a reading growth award during grade level DIBELS donut parties! Thank you for the continued partnership and commitment to your child’s education!  May Reading Challenge: Students have really been enjoying the reading challenge again for the month of May! Thank you, families, for prioritizing reading at home as this challenge has been a great opportunity to further motivate students and celebrate the joy of reading in all languages at home. HOWLs Challenge: It is the last quarter of the school year which means it is time for our Quarter 4 HOWLS challenge! Your student will try to earn as many HOWL Dollars as they can by June 9th for the chance to have cotton candy and extra recess with the principals on June 16th! The top six HOWL dollar earners in each class will win. If your student wins, we will send home paper communication as well as a message from the front office. Students can earn HOWL Dollars by showing any of our HOWLs to any staff member in the school. The HOWL that we are focusing on for May is creativity. May Attendance Breakdown Attendance Goal: 94% This month’s average daily attendance: 91.35% (150 school days & 186 students) K 89.71% 1st92.51% 2nd92.05% | |
| K-2 Project Dream Information | |
| Hello Project Dream Families, Just a reminder the last day for After School will be June 5th!, and the last day for Friday’s will be June 6th! Elementary School Information & Policies If you have any questions about Project Dream, please reach out to Raquel. Raquel Contreras | LCES Site Supervisor | 719-293-5363 | rcontreras@lakecountyschools.net | |
| Preschool Specifics | |
| Hello Center Families, Happy Birthday Head Start! Head Start is celebrating 60 years of service to children and families. See our website for a more detailed post regarding the history of Head Start. Our program is proud to be a Head Start and Early Head Start provider for families in our community. Returning families, communication went out last week regarding next year’s enrollment. We are asking that families accept their spots this year and schedule your main orientation with the program in June instead of August. Instructions and QR codes for both of these tasks are in the provided communication. We will still host August orientations as an LCES school but these will be focused on meeting with your classroom teachers. More information including how to schedule will come with your district enrollment packet in July. Please reach out if you have any questions or did not receive our communication. We look forward to continuing to partner together next year! The month of June brings us to three weeks left in our school year. We have several events planned so mark your calendars! – June 5 6:00-7:00 Kindergarten Transition Family Fun Night, this is for children transitioning to kindergarten next year. This is not only for our Center families, but all families that have children ready for kindergarten next year. Help share the word if you know of other kinder-ready families in our community. – June 16 Teddy Bear Picnic room 135 and 133; Pajama/Movie Day room 130, 131, and 137 – Tuesday June 17 Teddy Bear Picnic Room 130; Field Day all other rooms – Wednesday June 18 Teddy Bear Picnic rooms 131 and 137; Pajama/Movie Day room 135 and 133 – Thursday June 19 Preschool Celebrations 10:00-11:00; Early release, program closes at 11:00, this is also the last day of school Please watch your child’s yellow folder for more specific information related to each of the above events. Have a good weekend, see you Monday! Tanya Lenhard –PreK Director Office phone: 719-486-6928 Cell: 719-293-1055 tdlenhard@lakecountyschools.net Classroom and Curriculum Updates: Our older preschool classrooms continue to focus on our study of transitioning to kindergarten. Here are some more tips for what you can do at home to support your child as they make this exciting transition. – Acknowledge your child’s feelings. They may be feeling excited, worried or nervous. – Keep your at home routines and rituals consistent. This will help your child feel a sense of security and stability at home. – Continue to read books about kindergarten. Talk about the characters in the story and their feelings – Encourage older siblings or friends to share their experiences with going to kindergarten As we get closer to the end of the school year we have been focusing on reviewing letter names and sounds. Teachers are helping preschoolers to “listen” for the first sound in words and identify the sound. You can practice this at home too! Name objects around your house emphasizing the first sound and support your child to identify the sound and name it. Kelly Horning Assistant Director Office Phone: 719-486-6927 khorning@lakecountyschools.net Family Engagement Corner  We are headed into the month of June and Summer is almost here! Need some Fun and Educational Activities to do with your Preschooler? Over the next few weeks, we will focus on ideas for SUMMER FUN! Summer Themes for Preschoolers Alphabet Theme Alphabet themes introduce children to the fundamentals of language and literacy through play. To bring this theme to life, provide materials like magnetic letters, alphabet charts or flashcards, and letter cut-outs for children to use in creative projects. You can even make your own alphabet letters using large wooden letters or painted stones with letters of the alphabet painted on them. Children can learn their ABCs through fun activities such as matching letters with objects, making alphabet books and posters, playing letter sorting games, singing songs about the alphabet, and learning letter formation. You can take advantage of the warm weather during the summer by teaching your children alphabet themes outside. You can organize an alphabet scavenger hunt and have the children search for objects in nature that begin with each letter of the alphabet. The original article can be found at:https://mybrightwheel.com/blog/summer-activities-for-preschoolers Rhonda H. DeVoe, Preschool Family and Community Engagement Manager Office Phone: (719) 486-6925/Cell Phone: (719) 293-1403 Email: rdevoe@lakecountyschools.net | |
| PK-2 Important Dates | |
June 5 Kindergarten Fieldwork at the Fish Hatchery (leave 8:45, return 1:30) June 5 Ice Cream Social for rising Kindergartners and Families (see flier below) 6:00pm June 10 K-2 Earth Day event activities on LCES Field (coordinated by FFROGS- high environmental club) June 11 K-2 Teddy Bear Picnic (see flier below) June 12 1st grade Fieldwork at Hayden Meadows (leave 8:45, return 1:45) June 16 K-2 Dollar Day (see flier below)June 16 K-2 Quarter 4 HOWLs Reward (cotton candy and extra recess) June 17 PK-2 Field Day June 18 K-2 Awards Celebration, LCES Gymnasium 1:00pm (see flier below) June 19 PK Graduation, LCES Gymnasium 10:00am June 19 LAST DAY OF SCHOOL, Dismissal 11:00am | |
| Fliers | |
  Digital copies of lunch/breakfast menus are available in our front entrances or in the office! Please feel free to stop by and grab one.                   LAKE COUNTY HIGH SCHOOL PERFORMING ARTS ANNOUNCES 2025 MUSICAL! Performances start tonight! Lake County High School’s Performing Arts Department is happy to announce their production of WILLY WONKA! Performances will be held May 29th – May 31st, 2025 in the Lake County High School Performing Arts Center. The production is directed by Scott Carroll and Dylan Rodwick with musical direction by Celesta Cairns. Tickets for the entire run of the production are currently on sale by calling 486-6950 or by logging onto (lakecountyhs.booktix.com). Adult tickets are $12, senior tickets are $10, and child/student tickets are $8. Online ticket sales will end two (2) hours prior to each scheduled performance. The box office will open one (1) hour prior to each scheduled performance. Doors to the theatre will open thirty (30) minutes prior to each scheduled performance. Ticket prices will be $2 more at the door and we only will be able to take cash or check. | |
