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Principal Matthew DeBlois

Welcome to Vergennes Union Elementary School! We are excited to have you here for the 2024-2025 school year. We hope your summer included time to enjoy water, play outside, and read a few books. I know I read a lot. This year the school will look and feel a bit different. We had a lot of work done over the summer on the building. We cannot wait to share all of it with the students and community. 

VUES is a special place with diverse opportunities for students, families, and the community. VUES is a special place with diverse opportunities for students, families, and the community. In the coming year we are excited to continue to focus on literacy, math, and social emotional wellbeing. We look to get outside more, look after our chickens, continue to grow our mentoring program, cultivate our community's collective wisdom and skills, learn more about nature through Four Winds, continue offering enrichment activities through our Fusion afterschool program, and much more.

We look forward to continuing some relationships with families and growing even more. We can be reached by phone at (802)-877-3761 or by email. 

Principal's Corner

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Princpal's Corner 12/8
Princpal's Corner 12/8

Greetings all,

It was a big week back. We had our first snow, which is regrettably or thankfully gone, depending on who you are. We continue to go outside everyday with all of the students at least once a day, but ideally more. We recognize that students have various levels of preference for wearing gear, skills at changing, putting on cold appropriate clothing and the like, but appreciate you sending things with your student each and every day. We have some back up for emergent situations for both indoor and outdoor, but our stocks are limited. If, however, your child is in need of something please reach out to us in whatever way makes the most sense to you and we will do our best to accommodate.

Related to the outside, we are thrilled to announce that our Beaver Way Trail is now back up and functioning. Timber and Stone did the work, which looks fantastic. Thank you to Lynne Rapoport, Robyn Newton, VUES Community Schools, and the ANWSD Facilities Committee for ensuring that this work is complete and the pathway will again be safe, secure and aesthetically pleasing for years to come. This kind of project both literally and figuratively bridges the way between school and community and increases recreationally opportunities for students in school and the community at large. We can’t wait to use it for walking, running, and maybe even skiing this winter!

We have lots of learning occurring here at school and try to build overlapping opportunities to ensure that students transfer their knowledge. In some of these images you can see opportunities for students to practice writing their names, finding letters that they are working on learning, and sorting letter sounds into columns. All of these interactive learning opportunities support student understanding, encourage feedback and contemplate the position of learning within their environment. We are working actively as a school to communicate with students about what they are learning, how we will know that they learned something, and the ways in which we use that information to let us know how they are doing. I had the opportunity to chat with the fourth graders about what checkpoints and assessments tell us. They were surprised to learn that we use them to tell not only what students accomplish individually, but also the effectiveness of our instruction and instructional practices. These were indeed interesting conversations. 

We are wrapping up our calendar year here over the next two weeks. Many people are visiting from near and far to check in with us next week. A team from Fair Haven is coming to check out ABL, a UVM professor is checking out our rural mental health partnership, the Stern Center is coming to work with some of our teachers and students on structured literacy practices, another school is coming to view our structured literacy practices in action, and some middle school agricultural students are coming to meet with some of our students. We are a busy place with lots of learning experiences and excitement for teachers and students alike. We are looking forward to ending the calendar year strongly with lots of learning.

A reminder that next Wednesday is a half day of school with a dismissal of 11:30. It is also Wild Wednesday and we are asking that all students come prepared to be outside for a couple of hours that day. Our last day of school for the year will be Friday, December 20 and we resume school on Thursday, January 2, 2025.

Best,

Matthew DeBlois, Principal

VUES Weekly Newsletter
VUES Weekly Newsletter

Weekly newsletter

We have had a busy first few weeks at VUES. We continue to work on building community and a sense of belonging through our morning meetings, focus on our ROARS expectations and emphasizing the importance of transferable skills. Growing our sense of belonging and building community is built in deliberate ways through our school wide morning meeting plans. These plans permit us to focus on the different aspects of our ROARS expectations - next week, we will spend time considering respecting ourselves and considering the relative differences and similarities between wants and needs. Having these classroom based conversations with adults we hope will build community and understanding. 

Our classrooms continue to build community further through ROARS celebrations. Each classroom has a PAW Chart (we are the Thundercats after all). These charts have 50 opportunities to notice when classes and individuals are effectively and demonstrably meeting the expectations agreed to by the class. When the classroom completes their PAW chart, they celebrate their success. These look different in different spaces, but the students take ownership of their celebrations by suggesting ideas and voting on how they will celebrate. Relatedly, when each classroom completes two PAW charts, we will have a whole school celebration. 

New this year, we have a couple of new ways that we will celebrate students and staff at VUES. Each month, all staff members receive a Student of the Month nomination form. Over the course of the month, staff may complete the form. At the end of the month, we will choose from among the nominations and students will be recognized at our All School Meeting. We have a similar process for employees. Look for those being recognized here in upcoming newsletters and more.

VUES Store

Looking to purchase some VUES gear? Check out this link for t-shirts, sweatshirts and more!

Please note that if you have a Kindergartener or a student who is new to VUES this year, VUES will be providing a ROARS shirt for those students!!

The online store closes Monday, September 23rd. 

Dates of significance at VUES

Please note that we have a couple of upcoming events of which families may wish to be aware.

On Wednesday, September 18 all students will be screened for vision by the Lion’s Club. Any students who demonstrate concerns will be followed up by Shelby Sullivan, VUES School Nurse.

Our Vergennes Union Elementary School Open House will be on Wednesday, September 25 from 5:00-6:00 pm. All families are invited to come and see what’s happening in classrooms that day. Please note that we encourage as many families as possible to walk or park offsite, since our parking lot cannot accommodate a lot of additional vehicles. Note also that the middle and high school open houses immediately follow ours. 

The annual VUES Fun Run will occur in the afternoon of Friday, September 27 in the afternoon. Additional details will follow later, but know that we anticipate K-2 students running at 1:15 and 3-5 students running at 2:15. Families wishing to take their children home afterwards should use SafeArrival or email the school at vesoffice@anwsd.org to indicate that prior to that day.

From Ms. Newton:

Please help your child remember to wear sneakers to school.  Sneakers are required for PE as students will be running, jumping, climbing and kicking in PE classes.  Crocs, flip flops, slides and sandals aren't safe for these activities as they fall off, don't have traction and cause slipping or expose their toes.  If sneakers are forgotten, students will be asked to borrow a pair from the sneaker closet.  Thanks for helping our kids be active and safe in sneakers!  Ms. Newton

Here is a list of your child's PE days:

Mondays: 5 Brooks, 5 Paquette, 3 Kepes, 3 Dwinell, K-Saunders & K-Intemann

Tuesdays: 4 Bissonnette, 4 Metzler, 3 Reardon, K-Intemann, 1 Kingsley & 1 Haggett

Wednesdays: 5 Brooks, 5 Paquette, 3 Kepes, 3 Dwinell, 2 Kiel, 2 Ambrose, 2 Cavazos

Thursdays: 4 Bissonnette, 4 Metzler, 3 Reardon, K-Saunders, 1 Kingsley & 1 Haggett

Fridays: 1 Haggett, 1 Kingsley, K-Intemann, K-Saunders, 2 Cavazos, 2 Kiel, 2 Ambrose

Dear Families, 

At ANWSD, one of our greatest priorities is ensuring that all students arrive safely to school every day. Part of this is the use of the student absence reporting system called SafeArrival. This system reduces the time that it takes to verify student attendance, making it easier for you to report an absence and easier for our staff to respond to unexplained student absences. 

You can report your child’s absence quickly and conveniently in one of three ways:

  1. Parents/Guardians can call the toll-free number 844-880-5323 to report an absence, delayed arrival, or early dismissal using the automated phone system.  

  2. Parents/Guardians can log on to our SafeArrival website https://go.schoolmessenger.com to report an absence, delayed arrival, or early dismissal. The first time that you use the website, you will need to select Sign Up to create your account. 

  3. Parents/Guardians can download the SchoolMessenger app through the Apple App Store or the Google Play Store onto their mobile device and use that to report an absence, delayed arrival, or early dismissal. The first time that you use the app, you will need to select Sign Up to create your account. 

The system and each of the above options are available 24 hours/day, 7 days a week. Future absences can be reported at any time, but please note that you will not be able to report more than three consecutive days of absences using this system. An extended absence of more than three days should be communicated to school directly. 

In addition, we will also be introducing an automated notification system to contact parents/guardians when a child is marked absent and it has not been reported by parents/guardians ahead of time. The automated notification system will attempt to connect with parents/guardians at multiple contact points until a reason is submitted for the absence. Notifications will be similar to those that may have been received in the past with some notable differences: 

  • Notifications will come earlier in the day so that school personnel and parents/guardians are all on the same page when it comes to a student’s whereabouts.

  • Parents/Guardians will be able to customize their notification options through the app or on the website. They can choose where they want to receive their notifications and allow them to excuse the absence right from the notification. 

If our system is unable to reach the designated contacts after 30 minutes, office staff will follow up and your child will be marked as absent - unexcused. 

If you report your child’s absence or late arrival in advance using the toll-free number, website, or mobile app, you will NOT receive these notifications. Schools will continue to monitor the channels previously used for any reported absences. 

If you have any questions or issues, please reach out to your school. 

Thank you, 

Melissa Strong

Data Manager & PowerSchool Administrator

802-377-1564