2022-11-11 Noticias de ISLA y ISLA PTO

November 15, 2022

Emily Smith

Administrative Assistant

Next Thursday, November 17th is Give to the Max Day! This is Minnesota’s biggest giving campaign of the year and ISLA PTO’s only Fall fundraiser. Our ISLA PTO Give to the Max goal for this year is $25,000! We believe we can accomplish this goal and want to bring our community together by increasing participation across our families and friends of ISLA. Early donations are welcome- please go to https://www.givemn.org/organization/Islapto and make a donation now!

We want to encourage participation across our classrooms and get our students and staff involved! The classrooms with the highest participation will win the following prizes:

  • 1st place – Classroom party (i.e. pizza party, movie & popcorn, etc.) and non-uniform day!!!
  • 2nd place – Special treat for the class and non-uniform day!
  • 3rd place – Non-uniform day!

Any classrooms that achieve 100% participation will win the 1st place prize!  

Please consider donating ANY amount to support our amazing LAs, teachers, families and community building events. There are multiple ways to donate to Give to the Max:  

Online donation on the Givemn.org ISLA PTO site* https://www.givemn.org/organization/Islapto

Donation to Venmo @ISLA-PTO

Bring cash or check to the school office made out to ISLA PTO

Please reference GTMD and list your child’s name, teacher and grade for classroom participation credit. If you have multiple children, each child will get participation credit with your single donation.  

*If you make an anonymous donation online, email PTOFundraising@Isla.school and simply note you made an anonymous donation so we can give participation credit to your child’s classroom.

THANK YOU, we greatly appreciate your support of the ISLA community!!

State of the School

For those of you who participated in last night's virtual state of the school address, thank you so much for participating. We hope that you found this information useful. For those who did not have an opportunity to attend this virtual event, it has been recorded. We will be posting in on the ISLA website in the next week or so. State of the school 2022-2023

STUDENT ILLNESS & ABSENCE

We are seeing more students who are feeling sick now that winter is upon us. Here’s a review of the procedures to follow if your student is ill or not feeling 100%.

If your student will not be at school, please send an email (attendance@isla.school), leave a message on the attendance voicemail, or put the information in Pickup Patrol. Please give a reason for your student’s absence and describe any symptoms that they have. If they were tested for illness (strep throat, ear infection, RSV, croup, influenza, COVID, pneumonia) please mention that as well. If your child was diagnosed with an infectious disease, please notify ISLA, because we monitor this as part of our Infection Control and Prevention practices. Please notify the school each and every day that your student is absent.

If your student is not feeling well, please keep them home from school. Give them the day to rest and drink fluids and see whether symptoms improve or worsen. If symptoms improve, they can return to school the next day. If they feel worse, continue to keep them home and consider further evaluation and/or testing for infectious disease. If your student has a runny nose, sneezing or coughing, please keep them home if they are sneezing or coughing frequently or their nose is running continuously. If your child is improving and has just an occasional, infrequent cough/sneeze they can return to school. It’s recommended these students wear a face mask while at school. Please also review good hygiene practices with your child (using a tissue, sneezing or coughing into their elbow, frequent hand washing) when they are not feeling well.

Sending students home from school: If your child starts feeling ill while at school, you will be asked to pick up your child. Please make sure you or your emergency contacts will be available to pick up your child as soon as possible. If primary parents/guardians will be out of town or unavailable temporarily, please notify ISLA (teacher, nurse, office staff, etc) if there is someone else who should be notified if your child becomes ill or hurt while at school. Some reasons your child might be sent home could include:

  • Fever of 100 F or higher
  • Vomiting or diarrhea episode
  • Frequent coughing, sneezing or runny nose
  • Sore throat, headache or stomach ache that does not improve with interventions
  • Your child is not able to participate in classroom activities (for example, the teacher has noticed a significant difference in their energy levels and your child is feeling very tired)
  • Your child has an injury that may need further evaluation

Returning to school after being ill: In order to return to school, students should feel well enough to participate in classroom activities and symptoms should be improved. If they had a fever, they should wait to return to school until the fever is back down to normal for 24 hours after the last fever (without the use of medication such as Tylenol or Motrin). Also, wait 24 hours after the last episode of vomiting or diarrhea before returning to school. And again, coughing/sneezing/runny nose symptoms should be improved and infrequent. If your student was diagnosed with an infectious disease, their return date will depend upon the recommended isolation and recovery time for that specific disease.

Rapid at-home COVID tests are available from the Health Office. Please email the School Nurse (tnelson@isla.school) if you would like to pick up a test kit or have it sent home with your student. Remember to be more vigilant about monitoring for any symptoms after traveling, group gatherings or time together with extended family. Consider testing for infectious disease if your student has symptoms of illness after these times.

If you have any questions, please feel free to reach out to Nurse Tanya (tnelson@isla.school).

LA Host Families

We are looking for new host families for our 9 amazing LA’s for the spring semester (mid January to mid June). The LA would need their own bedroom, but often share bathrooms with the family. Hosting is a wonderful opportunity to learn about a new culture and hear more Spanish in your home! The ISLA community supports each host family with designated aunt and uncle families, and rideshare options are available as well. Please email islaLAprogram@gmail.com if you feel your family would be a good fit in hosting one of our Language Ambassadors!

Calendar of Events

  • November 15, 6:30 pm - ISLA Board Meeting
  • November 17 - Give to the Max Day
  • November 23-25 - Thanksgiving Holiday, no school
  • December 2, Grading Day, no school

Aventuras Closed for Thanksgiving Holiday

Aventuras will be closed from Wednesday, November 23rd - Friday, November 25th in observance of the Thanksgiving holiday. Aventuras staff will be with their friends and family. They will re-open on Monday, November 28th.