Dear Lafayette Community,

It's time to catch up on your Lafayette news for the week! Let's get right to it.

In this week's Dolphin Digest:

🚨 Help Plan for Next School Year - SURVEY
🏆 African American Honor Roll - March 4 @ 6pm
📖 Get Reading with the Book Swap March 1 & Read-a-thon March 3-9
❤️‍🩹 School Social Work Appreciation Week - March 3-7
📰 News from School Social Worker Emily Newman
🌞 Summer Camp Recommendations from Our Community
📷 Lately at Lafayette (photos)
📅 Calendar at a Glance 
👋 Community (Non-PTA) Corner: Community Recommendations for Celebrating 5th Grade Promotions?

As you may have heard, schools have received their preliminary budgets for the 2025/26 school year from the district. Lafayette's PTA executive board is working with the school's admin to understand what next year's budget means for our school—and how the PTA can support.

Please look out for an announcement of a special PTA meeting coming soon with more information.

In the meantime, please fill out this Family Community Survey (English, Spanish, Chinese) that Principal Kassebaum sent out to help understand families' perspectives and priorities for the next school year. 

It won't take you long, and it's important for your voice to be heard. So please fill it out ASAP!

The entire Lafayette community is invited to celebrate our 2025 African American honorees. This special evening on March 4th at 6pm in the Lafayette auditorium will include:

• A talk and book signing with artist George McCalman, author of Illustrated Black History: Honoring the Iconic and the Unseen
• A pop-up family portrait studio
• Refreshments and more

In order to plan for the evening, we kindly ask that you RSVP here.

Each year, the Lafayette Read-a-thon celebrates our community of readers while raising money for our school. 

This year’s Read-a-thon Week is Monday, March 3rd through Sunday, March 9th. Please plan to maximize your student’s reading time that week, and help them sign up sponsors among family, friends, and neighbors. Everyone who turns in a reading log will get a prize!

If they haven't already, your students will receive their reading logs and pledge forms this week from their classroom teachers. New this year: In response to popular demand, you can use an online fundraising option instead of the old paper pledge form! It's super quick to create your student's fundraising page, and then you can text their link to friends/family or share on socials! Some of our young readers already have their pages set up, and we hope to see lots more in the coming week. 

QUICK LINKS:

• Sign up for the book swap (March 1st - get fresh books and give away old ones)
• Create your student's page to fundraise online - easy to share far and wide!
• Download extra forms here if you lose yours. Everyone needs a paper reading log to turn in!

Contact us at LafayetteReads@gmail.com with any questions. 

Happy reading,

Claire Mooney, Meghan Butler, and Patricia Wada, Read-a-thon Co-chairs

Lafayette is fortunate to have a dedicated and caring school social worker in Emily Newman. If you've ever stepped into her office, you have seen that Emily goes above and beyond to create a welcoming, accepting, calming atmosphere that sets kids at ease.

March 3-7 is School Social Work Appreciation Week. Let's show her how much we appreciate all she does to help students thrive at Lafayette! Emily would surely love a handmade card or any token of appreciation. Students (or their grown-ups) can drop these off at the school office.

Oh, and what's that? The next topic happens to be the monthly newsletter from Emily...

Our school social worker, Emily Newman, shared her February newsletter, which includes reading recommendations for Black History Month, tips on making a "calm down kit," recess committee plans, and more. Read all of her helpful info here! (English, Chinese, Spanish, Russian, Vietnamese, Arabic, Hindi)

Emily has also shared this one-pager describing the Coordinated Care Team Approach used at school. This helps explain "how we coordinate care for students' academic and social-emotional concerns." 

Since we know many families will be looking for day camps for their kids over the summer, we thought we'd ask you all: What camps do you recommend? Let’s help each other figure out summer!

View the list here!

Have a recommendation to share? Reply to this email to let us know!

The Lafayette PTA does not vet or endorse any particular summer camps. We share this list as a service to our community.

Thank you to everyone who signed up for Stop, Drop and Go this week! And extra thanks to those who jumped in to help at the last minute when volunteers didn't make it to their shifts. 

MARCH 1

- Neighborhood Book Swap

MARCH 3

- Read-a-thon begins

- Parent-Teacher Conference Week begins

- School Social Work Appreciation Week begins

MARCH 4

- African American Honor Roll @ 6pm, Lafayette Auditorium 

MARCH 13

- Recess Committee meeting @ 2:15

MARCH 28-APRIL 4

- NO SCHOOL - Spring Break

APRIL 26

- RESCHEDULED: Party & Auction to Benefit Lafayette Elementary 

Community announcements are shared as a service to our members and are not from the PTA. Do you have events, resources, or other info to share with the community? Email lafayetteschoolpta@gmail.com to request a spot in the Dolphin Digest.

The families of 5th graders will soon be looking for ways to celebrate as their kids complete the final year of elementary school. 😢 Do you have any suggestions or recommendations for how to celebrate them? Graduation lei sources, sweet traditions, etc? We're happy to share them in the Dolphin Digest, so bring it on!

Thanks for reading this week.

Go Dolphins! 🐬

Patricia Wada

VP, Communications 2023–25

Pronouns: she/her/hers

Lafayette Elementary PTA

501(c)3 Non-Profit Organization

Tax ID# 94-6172049