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A Welcome Letter From Your Child’s Elementary School Principal

By Stephanie McMaster

Welcome back, Roosevelt Bobcat parents! I hope everyone is having a great start to the school year. Now that we’ve all had a chance to settle in, I have several reminders to help make this school year the best it can be for everyone:

Dress Code

Let me start by saying I understand the current political climate has caused significant emotional anxiety and exhaustion for many of our families. It’s a difficult time for everyone. The urge to give up can be overwhelming, I get it. I mean, Betsy DeVos is my boss.

Please be aware, however, that Roosevelt Elementary has a strict dress code that applies to all students. While the full dress code can be found in the school handbook, please be advised that students are to wear pajamas to school only on days designated as official pajama days.

On a related note, while parents are free to come to both student drop-off and pick-up wearing bathrobes and slippers, street clothes, including hard-soled footwear, are required to attend school events and functions, including upcoming parent-teacher conferences.

Also, although not specifically stated in the school’s dress code, parents should ensure their children maintain basic levels of hygiene. You may be sad and scared and stressed, but please ensure your child bathes or showers with some regularity.

Be aware that children at this stage of development can be opportunistic. While you’re screaming at CSPAN or furiously typing tweet 12 of a 39-tweet thread, they will take advantage of your distraction to skip washing behind their ears, or in the case of one student this year, begin brushing their teeth with Karo light corn syrup.

Drop-Off Loop

As you’ve likely noticed, there have been some hiccups with the morning drop-off process. I understand how much restraint it takes to maintain your composure in front of your children when there are literal Nazis marching in the streets and you had to unfriend your own sister on Facebook.

However, please resist the impulse to break down immediately after your child exits your vehicle. To facilitate the drop-off process and avoid traffic backups, a portion of the faculty parking lot has been designated for parents needing to sit in their vehicles and cry, read the president’s morning tweets in horror or just stare off into the middle distance.

Please wait until you have fully exited the drop-off area before engaging in these activities or opening any breaking news alerts.

Lunch & Nutrition

Students who do not wish to purchase lunch in the school cafeteria are welcome to bring a packed lunch from home. Please be advised that food in your child’s packed lunch must be already prepared and should contain nutritional value, or you know, have at least somewhat of a semblance of lunch.

Based on what we’ve seen in the cafeteria so far, some things to avoid include: jars of condiments (including pickles), taco seasoning packets, handfuls of mints and gum rummaged from the bottoms of purses, raw eggs, any kind of pet food.

Curriculum Changes

On a somewhat unfortunate note, music classes have been canceled due to budgetary reasons. Instead of going to the music room, students are to report to the first-floor computer lab, where they’ll hone both their computer literacy and writing skills by posting ads for the musical instruments on Craigslist.

Recent Incident

As some of you may have heard, yesterday we experienced an incident in one of our third-grade classrooms. A student interrupted a teacher’s spelling lesson to ask what the point is to learning “any of this stuff,” stating that, “I can be president without even knowing how to spell the word heal.”

The teacher, unable to articulate an answer, instead retreated to her desk and began eating from a jar of peanut butter. While there were no injuries, two students with peanut allergies were removed to an adjacent classroom as a precaution.

Student safety is of paramount importance at Roosevelt and to help ensure a safe learning environment for all our students, we request that you discuss the complexities of having a president with both intellectual and moral depravity with your children at home.

Parents Night

Lastly, because we know this is a difficult time, you’re invited to leave the kids with a sitter every other Friday night and meet up in the school gymnasium to play with the giant parachute. Because remember how awesome that was?

And while I’m legally required to tell you alcohol is strictly forbidden on school property, it’s also worth mentioning that no one is going to be inspecting the contents of your Nalgene bottles, ya know?

Now let’s have a great school year and get all the learning in we can before science is made illegal!

*****

About the Author

Stephanie is a writer who lives in West Texas with an assortment of kids, cats, and dogs. She once accidentally lit a girl’s hair on fire in church. You can follow her on Twitter at @smethanie.