May 3, 2019
Dear Urban Academy Families,
We hosted our first athletic event in our new gymnasium yesterday, a very exciting time for us. Our students played host to St. John’s School in badminton, another great first for our school!
We have a number of points of information that we have want to share this week as we move through the Spring term. Please find attached to this email the school calendar for 2019-2020. It includes all of the decisions made on school instructional time, holidays and the school activities we have confirmed. By early June we will also share the timeframes of the school day as I am working to tighten up the dismissal and start times as well as align the two old Robson and Uptown timetables now that we are together in one building. The basic bookends of instructional days and holidays for 2020-2021 are also included so that families can plan two years out.
Our Mothers’ Day Tea is next week on Friday, May 10. It is a little different in format this year as we no longer host the event off-site. Our JK-Grade 5 students have prepared a program of entertainment for their moms and we are looking forward to hosting you. We will open the doors at the school at 1:15pm and welcome our guests in. Tea and refreshments will be laid out in the Multipurpose Room and we encourage all of our guests to help themselves to the goodies and enjoy each others’ company in our foyer. Our senior students will be on hand to help out. We will hold the entertainment program in our theatre space and will open those doors at 1:45pm to get everyone seated and enjoy the performance. The program should conclude at around 3:00pm and we will have the students packed up and ready to go home with you for the weekend. Senior students will be dismissed at their regular time. Please park on the streets in public parking areas. This is not a time that JK, K or OOSC parents can access the parking lot due to the timeframe that you will be with us. We look forward to hosting you and the children are busy preparing as they so enjoy this event. It is a lovely tradition at UA and one we are pleased to carry with us to the new school and to so many new families.
We have changes in our back parking lot with the lines having been painted in the WesGroup parking lot where we lease spaces for our staff parking and JK, K and OOSC families for drop off. It is great to have the lines and we will have signage up soon so that all of the users of the lot are conversant with what each has agreed to in terms of use. It is looking good out there and is another step forward. This week our students used the fourth floor deck in the lovely sunshine and that was fun for them and a wonderful use of our new space. It is truly lovely up there and they are enjoying the space and fresh air.
Our students enjoyed two great experiences in the school this week. The Indigenous Museum visited us on Monday and the display and presentation for students was excellent. The Book Sale, hosted by PAX, was a successful second Book Sale, the students so enjoy this one! They browse and select what their loonies and toonies will buy. Thank you to PAX for bringing this to our students and to families who donated the wonderful books to find new homes, it is becoming another UA tradition.
Thank you for your support and encouragement as we continue to work through the accommodation of our new building. This is a significant project for a small school community and the team, composed of design, construction and school leadership, spend most of every day working through how we can make sure this is an excellent learning environment for our students. As you can see, we are now working on very different tasks than we were at move-in!
Enjoy the weekend,
Mrs. Cheryle Beaumont
Head of School
