Cayuga Elementary School

Principal's Message

Dear Cayuga Families,

Happy New Year! I hope this edition of the Cayuga School Newsletter finds you well! After getting settled back into our routines, our classes began work on their “One Word” to focus on and use as their driving force for the year. Often times (as I’m sure many of us know), more conventional New Year’s resolutions get bogged down and these goals are rarely kept. Finding “One Word” sticks and can serve as the catalyst for immediate, laser-like focus and life change! It has the power to change the way you think, speak, and how you handle life’s speedbumps.

I’m super proud of the work our students accomplished on this reflective task. Sometimes the “One Word” activity was a more personal and private endeavor, but the students who were willing to share really seemed to embrace and even acknowledged the power focusing on “One Word” can have in our lives! Miss Rosenman (one of our 3rd grade teachers) put together the video below this message that shows some of the work our kids accomplished with this project and we hope you enjoy!

Looking ahead, the New York State Testing season is coming up for grades 3-5 in ELA and Math. This annual testing will be starting in April. A noteworthy change this year at Cayuga will be that our 4th and 5th grades will be moving to a computerized version of these assessments (3rd grade will continue to take in paper format). We have been taking various assessments online for the past couple of years so this is another step in this direction that will hopefully provide us with results in a more expedited fashion that can be used to plan your child’s instruction. If you are not comfortable with any of this, be on the lookout for an “opt out” sign up that will be coming from our District Office. If you have any questions about any of this, please feel free to reach out to me.

In other "housekeeping" news please be aware that our school day starts at 8:50am and students are marked late after 9:00am. It could be a result of bad habits from the pandemic but we are still seeing a lot of students arrive late. This not only gets your child's day off to a rougher start than is necessary, but it disrupts the class as well and they have to be caught up. "Heads up" notification letters will be sent in the next couple of weeks to parents whose children's absences or latenesses have become a concern.

I would like to thank you for your continued support and desire to work together with us for the benefit of your child(ren). As our Head Custodian Mr. Mike likes to say, “Teamwork makes the dream work!”

Sincerely,
Matthew Wells
Principal