Effective immediately: No parent parking on the Commerce Bank lot

Dear SLLIS families,

After several conversations with the corporate facilities division of Commerce Bank, we learned this morning that Commerce Bank will no longer allow any parent parking in the Commerce Bank lot during student drop-off and pick-up.  All spaces in that lot will be restricted for dedicated staff use and business visitors.  The safety of our students and families remains our highest concern.  Effective immediately families will be allowed to park in the lot just to the west of our building (Papin and Sarah) during drop-off and pick-up only.  Our classes use this lot for recess and PE daily.  The lot will be open for parking from 7am-9am and again from 3:15pm-6:30pm.  We ask that you respect these time periods so that our students may continue to use the area with their classes during the school day.  We also encourage families to carpool and consider alternative means of arrival to reduce the amount of car traffic during drop-off and pick-up.

Within the next two weeks we will convene the meeting with the alderman, streets department, bank representatives and SLLIS representatives to address long-term solutions for our safety concerns.  I look forward to sharing the outcomes of that meeting with everyone.

Thank you in advance for your support!

 

 

Bus Transportation frustrations

Yesterday Bus 8164 arrived to school for afternoon dismissal and promptly stopped working.  SLLIS staff members contacted families individually to alert them to the delay.  Despite the efforts of our staff, several families did not receive communication about this significant delay. Everyone at SLLIS agrees that this is not the experience we wish for any family to have.

Multiple staff members were working, some well beyond their scheduled hours, to make the phone calls that parents expect and deserve to receive when an unexpected event like this occurs. We are finalizing the new parent data in the SchoolReach system to get emergency information to parents more effectively. It is unfortunate that we did not have this system in place and ready to go before it was needed. Parents, we ask that you keep your phone contact information up-to-date with the front office.

While First Student is the primary contact for bus information it is not your only resource. SLLIS does have a point of contact at the school up until 6:30pm. If you ever feel you are not getting what you need form First Student you are welcome to call SLLIS and we will assist you where we can.

We appreciate your patience and understand your frustration regarding the general delays and discrepancies in bus arrival times. The consistent timeliness of every bus is a matter we are taking very seriously and working closely with First Student to achieve. This week we have implemented an additional bus and are attempting to reduce the number of stops on all buses to ensure better service. We have adjusted our internal protocol for the bus dismissal at the end of the school day to focus our attention on getting the children where they need to be when they need to be there.  Every time the bus routes change, we experience a delay in service while the drivers make adjustments.  We work to minimize the number of times the routes change, because we know that it inconveniences all of our families.

We are working quickly to produce better results for your family’s transportation service.

The work that is real

Two nights ago we were all anxiously awaiting the start of our first school year.  The wait is officially over and the daily work of educating our students and managing our schools is real.

We had substantial bus delays Monday and after we confirmed that every student was safely home, our administrative team stayed at school until 9pm to re-establish the morning drop-off and evening pick-up routines.  Today, both of those ran much more smoothly.  To give you an idea, Monday we weren’t able to release the first bus of students until 4pm after quadruple-checking that the right students where on each bus.  Today, all of our buses had left school by 4pm!  We will continue to have school administrators and teachers ride each route, morning and evening until we have the best system established for our families.  We’re making progress.

Tonight the admin team stayed until 9pm again reviewing and revising the drop-off and pick-up system.  We quickly realized that our lobby is too small for the number of parents who are picking up their small people afterschool.  Morning drop-off was much easier to manage because each family walked their child in at different times.  We hammered out the details of a parent drive-through pick-up for students who are not riding the buses.  Parents who drop-off in the morning will receive a map w/ directions for pick-up.  Imagine a drive-through system similar to what several private and parochial schools use: parents line their cars up along the route, administrators with radios greet and identify parents outside, and radio inside to have the children brought to the door.

We’re excited to start this system tomorrow.  Here are a few things to remember:

• this is only for afternoon pick-up
• there will be maps/written descriptions of the new parking distributed during morning drop-off
• there will be signs and administrators guiding parent parking in the afternoon
• the first car will pull up to the door after the buses leave (3:45 at the earliest)
• parents will be asked to wait in their vehicles until their child is ready

Our school doors will be locked to parents until 7:45am for drop-off and until 3:45pm for pick-up.  Parents will not be allowed to wait in the lobby.  The school day is from 8:40am to 3:40 pm.  We know that parents are anxious to be reunited with their little ones after a long day of school and we’re working to verify the safest, most efficient way to facilitate that.

Parent letter- second day of school

18 August 2009

Dear families, chères familles y estimados familias,

Thank you again for your support and enthusiasm for our first day of school!  As I visited classrooms this morning I was delighted to hear your children spontaneously greet me in Spanish and French.  I am pleased to let you know that each class is well settled in on our second day and students are adjusting well to their immersion environments.

Yesterday, as many of you know, we missed the bus!  Literally our administrators missed riding the bus with our children yesterday morning.  Today, every student rider was greeted by an administrator and we guarantee that a staff member will be on every bus for the remainder of this week.  Thanks to your patience and persistence yesterday we were able to get every child home safely.  Today is already better, and our hope is that by the time you read this, you will have noticed improvement in our systems.

If your child is currently listed on a bus route, attached please find your child’s updated letter from First Student with the route number, stop location, morning pick-up and afternoon drop-off.  Please understand that every time any family alters their transportation needs, every child on that route will have to make an adjustment.

Our school day is from 8:40am – 3:40pm. If you are dropping your child off at school, remember that our doors do not open before 7:45am.  Parents should arrive for pick-up at 3:45pm.  Parents will wait in the lobby and children will be brought to them.  We ask that parents wait near the stairs/photocopier and keep the ramp doorway clear for our bus groups to exit*.

Please remember to update your phone contact information with your child’s teacher.  Whether we are on the bus or calling from school, having up-to-date phone numbers will help us reach you faster in an emergency.

Each day we will tweak our systems to respond to our students’ needs.  We thank you for your reflections and suggestions on drop-off/pick-up flow and look forward to honoring our promise.  I cannot think of a more inspiring group of parents with which to begin this adventure.

Best, meilleures salutations, saludos cordiales,
Rhonda J. Broussard
Founder, President