Dear Shining Star Parents

SocorroIndependentSchool District

July 28, 2014

Dear Shining Star Parents,

I hope you had a wonderful summer and enjoyed time with your families. We spent our summer preparing to start another wonderful year with your children! You will notice that we had some remodeling done in the front office in order to accommodate our growth. Due to the increase in our student population, we have been fortunate to receive an additional assistant principal, Ms. Gloria Martinez. We will start the year with three assistant principals that work well together and are anxious to support you and your children. Ms. Leticia Terrazas and Ms. Michelle Romero are kicking off their second year with the Lujan-Chavez family and are looking forward to another successful year. They are an awesome team and I feel very fortunate to have them.

One area of preparation that we focus on in the summer is professional development. Our teachers spent two days in staff development in the area of mathematics instruction with Singapore math trainers in an effort to support the new math curriculum for the state of Texas. The standards are rising and our teachers are armed with knowledge and tools to prepare your children. They have planned for a solid nine weeks of instruction and have hit the ground running! They are such a dedicated group of professionals. Your children are in great hands!

While we are awaiting information from the state regarding the STAAR campus rating system, we have received our raw data. We have met the state standards and made gains in all areas! Our commitment is to work hard every day so that these gains will continue. We pledge to provide students with a rigorous but well-rounded approach to the curriculum so that they will be college ready!

Each year we choose a song and a theme to represent us and have fun with! This year our theme song is STRONGER by Daft Punk and our overall theme is LujanSTRONG!. Our mantra for the year is, “We are Lujan Strong and getting STRONGER!” Our focus will continue to be on goal setting. We all need to know where we are and where we need to go, in order to get there! We look forward to sharing our student goal sheets with you.

Communication is imperative in the educational process. Each month I will send home a newsletter summarizing the month and sharing important future events. This letter will also be placed on our school webpage. This webpage will be kept up-to-date for your information and convenience. We also have purchased agendas for each student. These agendas should go home daily and will provide you an opportunity to communicate with your child’s teacher as needed. On occasion we will send out important messages via our Global Connect Phone system. Please make sure we have your current phone numbers in our system so that you can receive this information.You can also stay up-to-date on the latest news from Lujan-Chavez on our school website. You can visit and click on the schools tab. There you will find Lujan-Chavez. We will keep you current on the most important information

Please note: In an effort to keep students safe and to minimize our traffic concerns, last year we added a change in our protocol regarding taking students out of school. If you need to take your child out before the end of the school day, it must be before 2:45. We will not be able to release any student after this time as we will be in the process of dismissing the whole student body. Also, if you will be picking up your child through our valet line, you will receive a name plate for your dashboard. This will be color-coded and will have your child’s name as well as the teacher’s name printed on the card. This will help speed up the process as we place children in cars at dismissal time. Please keep these on your dashboard and have them ready when you pick up your child.

There will be a two week grace period for uniforms. If you are in need any uniforms, please stop in and see our parent liaison, Michelle Olivas.

Starting tomorrow, Tuesday, July 29th, all Kindergarten and 1st grade students will enter the building and line up by their classroom doors. We will have staff to supervise them. All other students will be on the playground. All students must enter through the gates in the large parking lot. School starts at 7:40. The tardy bell will ring at 7:45. Any adults needing to come into the building must enter through the main doors and follow our sign in procedures.

Thank you for attending our Meet and Greet Open House on Saturday, July 26th. It is our hope that it eased those first day jitters and that your child had a restful weekend. We are so looking forward to another exceptional year at Lujan-Chavez.

Forever LujanSTRONG!

Jennifer Parker

Upcoming Dates:

August 11th: Open House ( 1, 3, and 5) 4:00-6:00

August 12th: Open House (K, 2, and 4th) 4:00-6:00

August 14th and 15th: Fall Pictures (Uniform for Yearbook)

August 20th: Progress Reports go home

August 27th: Early Release (11:00 K and 11:30 1st-5th)

"Many things we need can wait. The child cannot. Now is the time his bones are formed, his mind developed. To him we cannot say tomorrow, his name is today." –Gabriela Mistral