News from the Principal's Office:
Family Fun Morning – TOMORROW - September 22 2007
Please support the Family Fun Morning being organized by the P.T.A., the P.E. Department and the students. It will be held at Saborit Stadium and everyone is welcome. Please let the P.T.A. know if you are planning to attend.
Room Parents
Thank you very much - to all those parents that have volunteered to serve the school community in this very important role as Room Parents. The Room Parents link the students and parents of each class as a group and also between the group and the school, serves as a vital channel of communication between the school and the home.
Emergency Phone Tree
We are still very much in the hurricane season here in Havana . In the event of an imminent strike by a hurricane or other natural disaster, the school takes the following precautions:
When the local media (radio and TV particularly) announce the precautionary closure of Cuban Schools – the authorities are extremely vigilant and normally give plenty of warning in this regard – the school will follow the closure notice instructions.
If that notice comes with little time to spare – this is quite unlikely for reasons mentioned above– the Room Parents will be contacted and advise you of school closure.
After a hurricane, the Room Parents Phone Tree will also be activated to announce re-opening of the school. This is likely to be before local schools re-open as they are designated as evacuation centres while our school is not. You can be sure that the school will exercise due diligence in ensuring that when the school re-opens it will be safe for your child to be on campus. Of course, your personal decision on the safety or otherwise of traveling to school will determine when you choose to send your child back.
Clearly, in order for the Phone Tree to work effectively, it is vitally important that the school and the Room Parents have up to date telephone contact information, so your cooperation in that regard will be much appreciated.
Lost and Found
Already the Lost and Found locker is getting quite full this school year. If your child has lost something please check for it in the locker which is located outside the Support Services Manager's Office facing the main play area.
School Fees
May I respectfully remind all parents that school fees are due on the first day of each school term. Invoices for this term were distributed in June but if you need a replacement please just ask the Finance Office staff.
Please make arrangements to settle your account promptly. Those families that receive financial assistance of any kind at all, are reminded that prompt settlement of the parental portion of fees is required no later than the end of the 30 day grace period the school permits. For this term the cut off date is September 30, 2007.
The School's Duty of Care
In response to some questions I have received I would like to explain why it is not possible for students to be unsupervised while on the campus. Student safety is paramount and although we can not guarantee that students will not have accidents even when they are supervised, we can at least ensure prompt action in the event of an accident, if supervision is in place. Supervision begins at 7.50 a.m. each weekday morning.
On the same line, we do not provide supervision for the use of the school's computers and/or Internet connections over the weekend. The I.T. Appropriate Use Policy – that all Secondary students sign – makes supervision a pre-requisite for student usage in order to protect students themselves and the school from inappropriate content material, which we all know is only to easy to access on line, sometimes inadvertently.
Therefore, if students wish to use the school's I.T. facilities at the weekends or any other time after normal school hours they must ensure that they have made an arrangement with a teacher to provide the necessary supervision.
The Security Upgrades
I have received some questions about what exactly is planned. I would like you to know that any plan for alterations has to be agreed to by the owners of the school compound CUBALSE and also the Local Commission that controls and regulates buildings in the areas facing directly on to 5 th Avenue here in Miramar . At this time it is therefore not possible to provide you with a definitive plan until an agreement in principle has been reached with the authorities. Once that is achieved the Board of Directors' Operations Committee will be working out the plans and a possible implementation schedule, at which point the community will receive further information.