April 24, 2020

Dear WREC Family,
 
It’s hard to believe that we have been on this “distant learning journey” together now for six weeks.  We’ve accomplished a lot in that time – the rollout of a continued learning plan, developing a distance learning schedule, integrating new learning platforms -Discovery Education and IXL, setting up Webex as our district’s secure solution for video conferencing and online meetings, as well as the endless list of little details which emerge as we all do our best to provide continued learning experiences for our students.

Looking at the academic calendar, that leaves us with six more weeks leading up to our last day of school - Friday, June 5th.  I want to remind everyone that this coming Thursday, April 30th is the official end of the third marking period.  We extended the third quarter for over a month so that our students, parents and teachers would be able to transition to working from home.  Our teachers have been working diligently to have all students make up any third quarter missing assignments.  Missing assignments will impact their third quarter grades, so I am asking for parent’s help in checking with their students to ensure they have submitted assignments and have made every effort to make up any schoolwork that has not been submitted yet.  We are accepting all late third quarter work with no penalty up through this Thursday.  The fourth quarter will begin on Friday, May 1st.  All assignments/schoolwork from that point forward will count towards fourth quarter grades. 

Students should be logging in to their Schoology accounts daily to check on posted assignments from their teachers, submit assignments, and read messages from their teachers.  Students are also expected to attend daily scheduled Webex online classes with their teachers.  We had excellent student attendance for this past week’s Webex sessions, and our hope is that trend continues.  If students are still having problems accessing their Webex account, I encourage you to go to the Webex information posted on our district website at: URL:  https://www.wyoarea.org/departments/information_technology/virtual_learning_-_webex . 
We will continue to help you work through any technical/logistical issues with the ultimate goal of every school day having all WREC students engaged in learning and actively working with their teachers.    One of the methods we are using to track student attendance is by monitoring students logging into Schoology, so the expectation is that students should be doing this every school day. 

If you still want to request that your student have access to his/her student iPad because your devices at home are not integrating well with our instructional resources, please email me at [email protected] and request to pick up your student’s iPad.  I have generally been scheduling pickups to coincide with the handing out of school lunches at WREC.  I will get back to you with a specific time/date for that to happen. 
            
Looking towards next school year, I’ve been asked to relay the following information regarding kindergarten registration:
We are excited to begin registration for kindergarten students in the Wyomissing Area School District for the 2020-2021 school year!   To ease this process, we will be offering online registration utilizing our NEW Student Information System PowerSchool.   
To  begin the online registration process please visit:  https://www.wyoarea.org/our_district/pre-_k_counts___kindergarten_registration
Please note that you can register your student online and submit the required forms at a later date - prior to the start of the 2020-2021 school year.  When Governor Wolf provides direction on lifting COVID-19 restrictions and re-opening schools additional information on Orientation will follow.
 
 As always, if you have any additional questions, please email me at [email protected].
 
Corbett Babb, Ed.D.
Principal
West Reading Elementary Center
(610) 374-0739   ext. 5211