Dear Parents,

As we prepare to celebrate the holiday season with our students on December 15th, 2022, I want to make sure we address all of our procedures with our families in advance to ensure a safe and fun end to the first semester. Please read carefully below.

Our last day of school this semester, Dec. 15th, 2022, is a full day (8:10-3:50). As a result, we will have lunch and specials at the regularly scheduled time. During specials, students will participate in a Christmas Sing-a-long. Students and staff will also participate in holiday parties at the scheduled grade level time. Sadly, these parties will not be open to parents, as we are striving, more than ever before, to provide a safe and secure environment for our students. Unfortunately, when hundreds of parents come and go on and off campus all throughout the day, the campus is anything but secure. Allowing parent visitors also diverts essential staff support from supervising and supporting the children, to supervising adult visitors. We also will not be allowing parent visitors during lunch that day. While we encourage all parents to leave their students at school for the duration of the day, we know that historically on this day we always have a large number of parents who check their children out from school early. Since our front office staff needs to be available to assist those parents, we will not have adequate staff to support checking in and out for lunches as well. Please know that if you do arrive before the day's end to check your child out from school, you will have to wait in a first come first serve line. We only have one Raptor machine (which scans the licenses), so we are only able to check out one child at a time. Thank you for understanding the "why" behind these difficult decisions and for trusting WCE with your precious child[ren]. It is of the utmost importance to us that WCE is the safest place on earth for our children, especially at the most beautiful time of the year.

Please accept my sincerest appreciation for being such a loving and supportive community in which to serve. I genuinely wish each and every WCE student and family a blessed and merry holiday season.

Sincerely,

Mrs. Bolton, Principal
West Columbia Elementary
979.799.1760