Greetings to our Fullerton School District family,

As the 2019-2020 school year comes to a close today, we want to start by giving a big shout out and #fsdgratitude to all of our amazing FSD employees.  Thank you teachers, classified staff, and administrators for your extraordinary efforts and incredible work for our students, parents, and community over the past two and a half months. 

On June 1st our staff will begin the process of preparing our schools for reopening in August.  Our custodial and maintenance staff will be cleaning, sanitizing, and disinfecting each school to ensure that our schools are ready for our students and staff to return.  Additionally, we will be sending out videos to our community throughout the summer to provide you with more information on the reopening of our schools.  The videos we will be sending out will cover the measures we will be asking all students and employees to take in order to ensure everyone is able to return to school safely and to stay healthy when we return.  Please continue to check for important messages we will be sending out over summer break.  

Starting Monday, June 1st, we will reduce the number of meal pick-up locations from 17 to our 8 Title 1 Elementary Schools.  Anyone under age 18 can receive meals from any of these 8 sites. The 8 meal distribution sites will be:  Commonwealth, Maple, Richman, Raymond, Woodcrest, Orangethorpe, Pacific Drive, and Valencia Park Elementary Schools. For those of you that have been picking-up your meals at Acacia, Rolling HIlls, Beechwood, Hermosa, Laguna Road, Sunset Lane, Fisler, Fern, and Golden Hill, you may continue to pick up your meals at any of our 8 Title 1 Elementary Schools.

Best wishes for an enjoyable summer break!

Greetings to our Fullerton School District family,

We want to express our appreciation for all the good work our parents and staff are doing for our students.

To our Fullerton School District Community, this is a little Public Service Announcement: We have the census that is going on and we ask everybody to please fill out the census so that your voice can be heard, and so that this community can be represented; it's really important.

We've received some news from the governor about a 55 plus billion dollar deficit; the impact on school districts will be about 18 billion, but I do want you all to know that our number one priority is preparing for the start of school to ensure that your children are safe. We do have a healthy reserve in place for really difficult times; if there was ever an emergency or dire situation, this is it.  Over the years we have prepared for this day and, if need be, we will use that reserve to ensure a very safe environment for our students.

As we prepare to bring our students back, we will be doing everything we can to make sure we have the right safety and health precautions in place. Rest assured we will start the 2020-2021 school year with a very safe and healthy environment for our students and staff; that remains our focus.

We will continue to have the strong programs that we have, and want our staff to know that you will be here with us because we need you. We need our staff to prepare for this and so, for those of you a bit nervous, rest assured you will be here to help us do the right thing for our students. For our parents, we want you to know that we will be bringing back the programs that make Fullerton School District such a special place. 

To our parents and community, thank you for helping us celebrate our classified employees during classified employee week, May 18th through May 22nd. Our classified employees keep our district moving. They drive our buses, prepare our meals, serve our students, answer the phone, and help you in the offices. They also provide great services through our instructional support assistance, and do so many things behind the scenes that ensure our schools are running smoothly, are clean, and are prepared for our students.  Thank you classified employees for all you do!

For our Fullerton School District parents and guardians, we sent out a survey through our messaging system on Tuesday, asking you how you would like your students to return to learning in the Fall. More than 4,000 of you have already responded, and we thank you for that. If you have not yet responded, please take the opportunity to do so. You can find the survey in our district app or on our homepage by clicking the Parent Fall Learning Survey button. Some of our school sites also have paper copies, or have staff with iPads asking parents these questions as you go to pick up lunches during this week. It is incredibly important to our planning for us to understand your current thoughts on physically coming back to school, learning from home, or a hybrid model with some physical attendance and some distance learning. We will be resending the survey this afternoon, but please only fill in this survey one time per student in your home. Please have your choices heard through this survey.

As many of you know we have been creating original television programming on channel 3 Spectrum local access cable. We have a great partnership with Discovery Education who have let us utilize some of their amazing videos to broadcast as well. You can now see all of our FSD produced content at a new website, FSDTV.org. You can search by grade level and by subject. We hope you take a moment to check out the amazing learning videos on this new website.

A big thank you to everyone; we look forward to working together to do what's right and be there for our children.

Have a wonderful holiday weekend!

Greetings Fullerton School District Parents, Community and Staff, 

We are excited to announce a new program, FSD Extended Play, Summer Edition.  Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, we understand that your summer may look very different this year.  Parents may be looking for opportunities to have their child continue their learning after the school year ends.  FSD Extended Play is a virtual summer school for students in grades 4-8 that will be offered from June 1st -26th.  During the course of Extended Play, participating students will receive ELA, Math, and Arts lessons as well as other enrichment activities on a weekly basis, similar to what your child’s current teacher is providing. There will also be a few treats and surprises throughout the weeks to encourage students and reward them for their effort.  For more information, please visit the FSD Extended Play, Summer Edition website to watch a video providing more specific information about our summer program as well as how to register.  Registration will begin this Friday, May 15th and will remain open until Wednesday, May 27th.

As we are nearing the end of a long journey through distance learning, the elementary PE team wanted to bring something creative and impactful to students district-wide along with their usual focus on health and physical fitness. Fullerton School District's Elementary Physical Education Teachers are challenging students in a week-long physical education and nutrition challenge from May 18-25. During this week-long event, students will participate in engaging physical education and health activities at home. Two days will be fun, active challenges to do on their own, or compete with their families. For three of the days, students will submit their score via Google form to compete for participation awards, grade level score awards, and earn points for grade and school competitions. These are activities that they have been practicing during distance learning as assigned and showcased by our elementary physical education teachers. For the health component, students learn about the benefits of physical activity with age-appropriate language. Come join the fun and stay healthy!

This weekend we will be sending out a survey to all parents in the Fullerton School District. As a district we have created committees to plan options for how our students will come back in the fall. These plans may change based on CDC guidelines and our Governor’s guidelines for reopening our schools, but we really want our parents to tell us about their interest in students returning to school physically or learning at home in an online distance learning setting. Please take the time to fill in the survey as it will help guide our plans. Paper surveys will be available at your school sites next week during lunch pickup times as well.

Communications will be going out to all parents in the next two weeks with days this month or over the summer when iPad collection will be happening at your school sites. Throughout the summer we will need to collect most of the district iPads to refresh them, add new software, and swap some of the older iPads for newer models. Your sites will be in touch with dates and then we as a district will be communicating the dates through email, text, phone, and the district app as each school’s summer dates get closer for those turning in during the summer. 

Thank you!

Greetings Fullerton School District Parents, Community and Staff,

This has been a difficult and trying time, but it’s also been a time that the entire community has shined; our teachers, our classified staff, food services workers on the front line, all of our community, our parents. Churches have stepped forward, our nonprofits have stepped up, everybody has come forward to help our kids, and together to make a difference, educationally, and nutritionally for our kids and families. I want to thank all of you. 

Some of the Governor’s messages have pertained to what reopening schools may look like, and we will be providing more guidance on that in the next couple of weeks. We have some options, and for some of our families that have already expressed that they are not yet comfortable to bring their children back, we will be offering independent study.  For our families that are ready to come back, we currently anticipate opening on August 11th, which is our 2020-2021 start date, and we look forward to sharing more about the safety precautions we will be taking to ensure our children are safe.

This week, we would like to express our own #FSDgratitude to our community. Thank you for all your support, appreciation, and caring as you have honored our teachers and nurses this week. Your heartfelt "thank you's" and kind words have been so meaningful and motivating for our staff.  

As a reminder, during the week of May 17th through May 23rd we will be recognizing our hard working classified employees who work in our offices, clean our schools, and help to serve our students lunches. These employees keep our District running. Please mark the date. 

Thank you!

Greetings Fullerton School District Parents, Community and Staff! 

This week the Governor suggested starting the 2020-2021 school year in late July or early August. Currently, FSD’s start date is in early August on August 11th. We will continue to monitor this situation. We anticipated direction from the California Department of Education regarding the Governor’s message. We will keep you updated as soon as we have more information. We are creating plans to continue distance learning opportunities for the summer through the FSD Extended Play: Summer Edition.

April and May are the months we celebrate and honor our Fullerton School District employees. Last week, we honored our after-school professionals and we want to thank them for all their time and effort that they put in to help our students after school. 

This week we honored the employees who truly keep our District and students moving.  Tuesday, April 28th was School Bus Drivers Appreciation Day and we want to thank our hard working and committed bus drivers for all they do for our students.  

Friday, May 1 is School Lunch Hero Appreciation Day.  Even during this temporary school closure our Nutrition Services staff continues to provide over 10,000 meals per day and over 250,000 meals since our schools temporarily closed, Monday through Friday, to students 18 years and younger in the Fullerton community.  Please give a loud shout out and thank you, or consider hanging a banner from your car when you pick-up your child’s grab and go meal to honor and celebrate our amazing Nutrition Services Staff, and all of their work in making sure our students have meals even during these times of Safer at Home.

Next week, May 4 through May 8 is Teacher Appreciation Week and specifically Tuesday, May 5th is Teacher Appreciation Day.  Our teachers have helped our students shift from classroom instruction to distance learning and go above and beyond to help our students learn, grow, and succeed.  Please join us in thanking and celebrating our teachers, school lunch heroes, and bus drivers this week and next.  If you have a special menu or thank you to share with our bus drivers, school lunch heroes, or teachers, please post it on social media and use our #fsdgratitude.

Thank you students, parents, and community members for your support and strength during these times.  We hope you all have a great week and stay healthy. 

Thank you!

Greetings Fullerton Families!

We appreciate everyone working together to face this crisis. As a community, we are working to provide opportunities for our families. We are excited about the new resources that are featured each week. If you have not recently looked at the website, please go check out the fun activities that you can do as a family, such as a Build-Your-Own Schedule Activity. Building consistent schedules brings comfort and a sense of safety to kids. 

We continue to provide meals at all of our Elementary Schools including Beechwood and Fisler, Monday through Friday between 11:00 - 1:00.  Because many parents prefer to keep their children inside during the shelter-in-place, we no longer require students to be with you when picking up a meal.  Please be prepared to provide your child’s name and school, and the name of their teacher.  

All the Arts For All the Kids artists have created easy to follow lessons in Visual Arts, Dance, Music, Theater and Media Arts for students to work on at home. Our artists have also created fun art activities and games for the whole family to enjoy. These lessons can be found on the Fullerton School District’s 360: Distance Learning webpage. The resources can be found on both the parent and student pages, under Visual and Performing Arts. We are continuing to add new lessons to the site each week. My personal favorite is a folkloric dance or baile folklórico called Llano Grande from Jalisco.

Weekly Family Challenges are posted on the website under the Parent Resources tab. Each week focuses on a theme with suggested family educational activities. The goal is to have fun, learn, and promote healthy habits. For example, there is a gratitude activity you can do with your child. You can write letters of thanks to medical personnel. Another example is a math challenge such as creating a mancala board out of an egg carton. Families can post photos of their weekly activity on social media using #fsdfamilychallenge or email photos to fsdfamilychallenge@myfsd.org.

District personnel and teachers have been working hard to design and produce FSD TV. We will have educational programming on Spectrum channel 3 from 8:30 until 2 each weekday. We have a great partnership with the city of Fullerton, Discovery Education, and our teachers who have been coming in to film educational programs. Each week we will build in more original content as our talented team learns more about television production. We will be posting all original content to YouTube and Facebook as well.

We want to make sure you and your students spend some time on our parent and student resource pages to see all the amazing things students can be doing at home after they have finished their work assigned by their teachers. I have two students at home now, and I know that they are often looking for things to do once they have finished their school work. If you go to our home page, and click on distance learning, you will get to our FSD 360 page.  Click on the Parents button where we highlight Duo Lingo for learning languages, Khan academy for extra help with almost every subject, the educational programming provided by your local PBS station, Social-Emotional games to play with your students, and an amazing resource on commonsensemedia.org called Wide Open School. When you click on Wide Open School, then click “We’re a family”, select your grade grouping, then you will see a page with subjects to explore. Each one of these tiles opens up to a huge selection of resources to explore. If you click science in the kinder to five band you get links to mystery science, how to be an engineer videos, and even introductory computer science lessons on coding. Going back to our FSD360 main page, click the students button, and we are highlighting Thrively, our program where all 4th-8th grade students in the district have done a strengths-based assessment. You can ask your student to show you their Thrively assessment and students can explore their interests. We also highlight Discovery Education which all students can access through their Clever app on a district device. Scan to the bottom and we have a set of literature links curated by our district’s Technology and Library Media Assistants. These are just a few of the resources on each page that students and parents can explore.

During this time of staying home and self-isolation, both parents and children can feel lonely and isolated.  Mental health experts agree that helping others is one of the most important factors in maintaining our own wellbeing in times of uncertainty and has the ability to lift our spirits and motivate us.  Consider this a challenge – how are you helping others? Here are some of the most common ways that we hear of people supporting others while still adhering to the CDCs social distance protocols:    

• helping the seniors in your neighborhood with shopping  
• donating food at collection points throughout the City or at our District office
• making healthy meals with your family (yes this can be done!)
• creating a video or picture helping others to encourage friends and family
• donating blood during this time of shortages due to Covid-19
• calling or video chatting with family and friends who you have not spoken to in some period
• Sending words of encouragement of showing acts of gratitude for those providing essential work outside their homes (grocery workers, nurses, doctors, custodians, food service workers, postal workers)

If you feel comfortable in sharing, please share the encouragement and pass it along to others. We are setting up a HASHTAG campaign - #FSDGRATITUDE if you would like to share your efforts and their impact on others!