Registration is Open for Spring Elementary Parent/Teacher Conferences
Registration is open for our spring elementary school parent/teacher conferences, which will take place on March 21-22 (Thursday-Friday). As in the fall, we will be using the Meet the Teacher platform for these meetings. Video conferences are encouraged and set as the default within the registration system; however, requests for in-person conferences will be accommodated.
Cell Phones, Smartwatches, and Texting During the School Day
We recognize that some parents will provide their children with smartwatches for convenience or for safety reasons, such as emergency communication or location tracking. Inside our school buildings, smart watches are treated like cell phones. During the school day, students should not use their watch for calling, messaging, texting, accessing the Internet, recording audio, or taking photos except in the case of a real emergency. A teacher may ask for smartwatches to be turned off and put away if it becomes a distraction to learning and in situations such as standardized testing.
Parents can help to support these expectations by not texting/calling their children during the day and by making sure that notifications on the smartwatch are set to silent to minimize disruptions within the learning environment. If a parent needs to contact their child during the day, they should call the school office and the message will be relayed to the classroom. Cell phones and smartwatches have become a major distraction to the learning environment in recent years and we thank you for your help.
Parent Education Event
Please join us for our next Parent Education event, “School Refusal and Encouraging Positive Attendance,” which will take place on Wednesday, March 13 at 11 am. Families can participate in-person at Highcrest Middle School or virtually via Zoom.
Registration is currently open for this event. Visit
our D39 Parent Education website for our full schedule of events, registration links, and archived recordings.
Welcoming Instructional Coaching to D39
One of the best, research-based methods for supporting various student needs is through sustained, personalized, and collaborative partnerships between teachers and instructional coaches. We are thrilled to share that District 39 will have eight (8) instructional coaches on staff beginning with the 2024-25 academic year - one at each of our four elementary schools, two at Highcrest, and two at WJHS. We are excited for the new opportunities that will be provided to our teachers and our staff through instructional coaching as well as for the ongoing growth and learning of our students through this supportive professional development. We are excited about the opportunities that will be provided through regular, onsite instructional coaching.