MMM: Welcome to the 2026-27 Monday Morning Memo!!!!

Thank you, Don, Russ, and Eddie (and anyone else who helped) for being so awesome with getting my new room patched, painted and set-up. It made coming in to organize so easy! You're the best!

Thank you to my first grade team, Jennifer Groot and Kendra Logar, for getting a great start to the year by coming in, collaborating, organizing, and planning for our new Bridges Math Program. We've got this!

I want to give a kudos to Sonia Miller. Not only does she run the kitchen like a dream but she helped with summer school and painted at Lotus this summer. You are amazing!

-Cary Scarpino (1st Grade Teacher)

Kudos to Amanda Lorenz for helping 3rd grade get our first writing unit updated and helping us understand a bit more about SRSD!!!

-Lili Tosado (3rd Grade Teacher)

Kudos to Sue Pinkawa for helping me out with a small request so quickly!

Kudos to Lili Tosado and Kaitlyn May for being flexible during our meeting. Thank you both for your patience—I truly appreciate it!

-Mollie Crow (Special Education Teacher at Lotus)

Kudos to bus driver, Erik Linquist, for sharing birthday treats with us in July!

-Michele Burgess (Administrative Assistant at Stanton)

Kudos to:

*Everyone who helped in any way with Summer School! What an amazing 4 weeks of learning and happiness!
*The Stanton Wellness team for your work with Tom and Matt on standards, targets, and processes...your summer work time is truly appreciated!

*Everyone who worked on curriculum writing or summer trainings for our resources!

*The SRSD training team--can't WAIT to see this in action!

*The fabulous group who attended the PLC Institute...I hope you learned a lot, and it meant SO MUCH to me that you were there for my keynote!

*Our facilities teams who worked SO HARD on all things cleaning and landscaping!!!!

*Michele Burgess, Jeff Fewell, Sue Pinkawa for all you did ALL summer to set us up for a successful back to school!

*The Admin and Business Office teams for being the BEST TEAMS EVER that I've been lucky enough to work with! What a gift to co-labor with you all!!!!

-Heather

Please send me your "Look Up" kudos by Friday at 4PM to add them to the next Monday Memo! THANK YOU!

Try some of these to keep LOOKING UP as we get ready for the first day!

Welcome Back Info

Linked here is the Welcome Back letter as well as an at a glance schedule for the first few days. More details are coming soon, and you'll also receive more in the mail in the next few days. Be sure to email me your summer pictures and LOOK UP inspired songs for Opening Day!!!! Feel free to reply to this email if it's easiest!!!!

WELCOME, PATH TEAM!!!!!

We're thrilled to welcome our new PATH program team to D114!!!! In the STAR room at Lotus and The DEN at Stanton, we'll now be hosting specially designed therapeutic programming ON SITE!!!! Think of it as a therapeutic school where we would enroll kids when our programming wasn't enough to help them learn expected behaviors and coping strategies...BUT RIGHT IN OUR SCHOOLS!!!! For more information, please check out this brochure.

New Staff Learning and Support System

Check out how we have updated our New Staff Learning and Support System!!!! Thanks to EVERYONE who helped create this update to what our mentoring program looks like!

Staff Device Upgrades

In an effort to streamline device replacement and get all students and staff into a predictable replacement cycle with devices that remain under warranty, we have a plan for making sure all devices are up to date, under warranty, ready to roll...all within our budget!

25-26--All support staff devices we replaced.

26-27--Lotus certified staff, Lotus office staff, and District office staff devices will be replaced. 💥

27-28--Stanton, it will be your turn! 😀

What does this mean?

*Given the fact that we are on Google platform, staff will be provided with Chromebooks. Staff who cannot do their jobs without a PC will be provided a PC (meaning they require specific programs/software that will only run on a PC).

Here's what you need to know...

By the time you trade in your current device, you'll need to follow the steps below:

Moving from Windows Laptop to Chromebook

In preparation for the move from Windows Laptops to Chromebooks, users will need to transfer any school related documents (from Desktop, Documents, etc.) that you would like to keep for next year to your Fox Lake School Google Drive.

Before uploading files to your Google drive, please take some time to do some maintenance/cleaning up by deleting any old/unused documents, pictures, and videos. All copies of files or anything that is over 2-3 years old should be deleted, if it is not going to be used in the near future.

Any personal files, pictures, or videos can be saved to a personal external drive if you want.

If you need help with the steps above, Mike Szotek (Lotus) or Tyler Fish (Stanton) will be happy to help and can partner with you by appointment over the summer or upon our return to school in the Fall.

All LOTUS certified staff will be expected to complete the device exchange by TUESDAY, SEPTEMBER 15.

Injury Reporting

If you are injured on the job, you MUST IMMEDIATELY do the following:

1. Report this injury to an administrator.

2. Report the injury to Company Nurse.

Thanks in advance!

Absence Reporting

Please carefully review this updated document will all you need to know about reporting absences during this school year!