Thank you to all of our Downey Unified families for another great start to the school year!
The end of September marks the end of Attendance Month, but we want to keep up good attendance all year long! One of the core ways to ensure good attendance? Being on time.
As we get deeper into the year, we know it can potentially get more challenging to get everyone in your family out the door on time. However, we strongly encourage all of our families to do their best to get students to school on time daily. This ensures our students start the day at their best, unrushed and ready to take on their first lessons.
Carpenter Elementary Morning Schedule
- 8:15 am: Class begins
Given our schedule, if you arrive exactly at 8:15 am, your student will actually already be late to class, as they still need to walk from drop-off to their classroom and class will have already begun. This can cause students to feel rushed and unprepared as they get into class late. This also interrupts any lessons that have already begun.
To ensure students have enough time in the morning to get to their classrooms, we highly recommend dropping students off between the time gates open and 10 minutes before class begins. This gives you some extra time in case of traffic, a less chaotic goodbye, and time for students to walk to class.
Plus, arriving earlier gives students time to power up on breakfast…Did you know that we serve free breakfast for our students?! Well, we do! Save even more time in the morning while your student starts their day off right.
As part of our Your Presence is Powerful campaign, we’ve shared how important attendance is for our students, their classmates, and our staff members, that includes being late. It may not seem like a lot of time, but it adds up.
In fact, being late even just 10 minutes per day is equivalent to missing 1 1/2 weeks per year, which adds up to missing a half year of school by the time a student graduates!
Let’s help our students feel prepared and confident every morning by getting them to school on time.
Please reach out if you have any questions or concerns about getting your student to school on time. We’re here to offer support and help our students as much as we can.