Posted April 4, 2023
Dear Swigert Families,
Welcome Back from Spring Break. I hope it was a nice opportunity to recharge with your families.It’s so hard to believe we are approaching the final two months of the school year.
Good News Front:
Swigert will be able to expand some of its seat offerings for students in the 2023-2024 school year. In addition to our two additional ECE-4 rooms, we are adding a fourth round at kindergarten and second grade. And as we have done for the past 3 years, we open up a fourth round in third grade. We know this change might impact some families who made decisions during school choice and we encourage those families to put in a second round application. We are excited to move closer to having consistent rounds/classrooms (4) at each grade level and start our IB program with our youngest students. In the 2024-2025 school year we plan to open a fourth round at first and potentially more ECE space. Please reach out directly with any questions, Shelby_Dennis@dpsk12.net or Emily_Pool@dpsk12.net.
We are working on confirming dates/times for our Kinder and new family welcome events. As of right now, K-5 choice will be announced mid-April and ECE April 26th. As a school, we will share any staffing changes and updates in the beginning of May.
Spring Reading and Kiwi Kindness Challenge Results:
I know the students were anxiously awaiting the winners of our first Spring Lexia challenge. We announced the classrooms with the most units this morning starting with Kinder and working our way up to fifth. They were: Aggarwal, Hopper, Page, Edge, Burdett and Conarro. We will be working with each class to provide a pizza party this week. We are starting a new spring reading challenge in April to encourage students to read more for pleasure. You will see students coming home with reading activity boards beginning this Friday. Every time a student completes a reading activity from the board they need to get a parent signature. They can turn in the boards each week for different prizes.
The week before spring break we focused on Kiwi Kindness Week due to the inspiration of fourth grader Max Schultz. We all read the book Manu the Kiwi of Kindness and kids decorated their doors with kiwis and wrote slips to students who were showing caring attributes during the week. Max walked the doors this morning and chose three outstanding winners – the classes of Ms. Marijke, Mrs. Ross and Mrs. Kline. All students did such an amazing job showing kindness that we are going to have an icy pole (New Zealand popsicle) for every student on Friday. You can see the photos below of all the doors, thank you Autumn for capturing those photos. This will be an annual Swigert tradition, thank you Max!
Kiwi Kindness Week Doors
Sincerely,
Shelby Dennis
shelby_dennis@dpsk12.net
Do your kids attend a Central Park area school? Interested in local, state, national
education issues? Then you’ve got to check out the Central Park Ed News –
CPEDNews.org!
It’s a new online source focused on local schools, Denver Public Schools and larger
education issues. We’re interested in readers and writers. Let us know what you think
and if you’d like to contribute!
CPEDNews.org is a project of The Foundation for Sustainable Urban Communities.
2023-2024 SAC Parent Elections:
The SAC (School Accountability Committee) is holding parent representatives elections in April. We have three parent representative openings to begin the 2023-2024 school year. If you are interested, please submit a short blurb about yourself, including why you think you would be a great addition to our SAC committee to Shelby Dennis, Shelby_Dennis@dpsk12.net . Voting will be held via an online ballot by the Swigert community.
The purpose and scope of the School Accountability Committee (SAC) is:
The commitment for parent representatives is a two year term. All members may be elected to no more than 3 successive terms. Meetings are held approximately once a month in the evenings.
Parents of 3rd – 5th Graders, please see the attached CMAS letter in PDF or Word.
The PTA invites all Swigert families to join us for Family BINGO Night with our very own Mr. Shutts as caller!
Please bring a snack to share and play to win fun prizes from the Swigert Treasure Chest!
When: Wednesday, April 12th from 6-7 pm
Where: Swigert Cafeteria
Who: EVERYONE
Cost: This event is FREE for all to play!
We look forward to seeing you there for some fun community-building!
As a staff, we start the class placement process in May for the following school year, and there are many factors that we consider. Grade level teachers, administrators, and our mental health team work together to decide on the best placement for every child. We know your child well, and consider things such as kids who might benefit from being in class together, kids who may need to be seperated, academic needs, and social/emotional needs. We also try to balance classes as far as gender, diversity, etc. We ask that you please trust the process. We know your children well and we will very thoughtfully place them with whom we think is best. The school policy is that we do not take teacher requests from parents. If you have questions or concerns, please reach out to the admin team.
Denver Public Schools (DPS) is beginning enrollment for Summer Connections for all eligible families currently in kindergarten to fourth grade. The new EAL program will offer free classes in core subjects to enrolled students, allowing them to get ahead of critical course material and get a head start on the upcoming school year. For more information, please check out the Summer Connections website at https://www.dpsk12.org/academics/summer-connections/ . To enroll your student in the free summer program, go to https://myportal.dpsk12.org/.
We are scheduled to host International Night on Thursday, May 11th this year. This is a community event where we love to recognize, honor, and celebrate different cultures from around the world. International Night is always made better by involving our students and their own backgrounds, traditions, and interests. If your student/family (or your student’s extra curricular group) would like to present, host, or demonstrate something at International Night, please reach out to Tabitha Jones at tabitha_jones@dpsk12.net. Examples of past student performances have included Irish Dancing, Drill Team, Japanese Flag Making, Mexican Folk Dancing, Capoeira, Bollywood Dancing, Polish Dancing, Craft Making, etc.
We’d love to connect with you as much as possible. You will be automatically added to our weekly Swigert Eagle newsletter that comes out every Tuesday during the school year. Please also visit our website at www.swigert.dpsk12.org to learn more about Swigert and events that are coming up. You can also join our “Friends of Swigert International School” private Facebook page – www.facebook.com/groups/friendsofswigert. When requesting to join, please include a note to say you are a new family. We post pictures of events at school, interact as a school family, and you can see friendly reminders of upcoming events.
Who to contact if you have questions about:
| Registration | Daphne Jolley | DJolley@dpsk12.net |
| Technology and events | Richard Fisher | Richard_Fisher@dpsk12.net |
| Daily School Life | Emily Pool | Emily_Pool@dpsk12.net |
| Instruction, Programing, etc. | Shelby Dennis Amber Holthus-Pera | Shelby_Dennis@dpsk12.net Amber_Holthus-Pera@dpsk12.net |
| Health | Nurse Hoang Tran | Hoang_Tran@dpsk12.net |
| IB Program/Service Learning | Caroline Dane | Caroline_Dane@dpsk12.net |
Key Dates
Apr 6 – Safety @ Swigert (5-6 PM)
Apr 7 – Parent Coffee (8:30 AM)
Apr 12 – Bingo Night
Apr 29 Swigert Auction
May 4 Swigert Service Day
May 5 No School for students
May 11 International Night
May 20 Swigert Night at the Rapids