Please join us in supporting our final 5th grade fundraiser, a bakesale for tomorrow, Wednesday, June 2, 2010, to benefit fifth grade promotion activities.  We encourage each family to send your child with a dollar or two to purchase home baked goodies as an after-school treat or to save for after dinner tomorrow evening.  Thank you in advance for your support.  

Please contact Kerry Ricketts-Ferris at ferrisfamily4@att.net or 508-9416 if you have any questions 

Thank you in advance for your support,

Kerry Ricketts- Ferris and Sherri Carpenter

Crocker Highlands PTA will receive a percentage of the sale.  This is a great opportunity to stock up for summer reading and purchase gifts for Dads and grads with Father’s Day and many graduations coming up.  It is also a really easy way for the Crocker community, friends and extended family to support Crocker Highlands Elementary School so please feel free to pass on vouchers and send out an email to others with the Crocker I.D. number.

To encourage families to come out to Barnes and Noble personally, we have planned a kickoff event for Sunday, June 13 featuring students and teachers telling stories each hour in the children’s area.  If you or your child has a favorite book that they would like to share and read to others on Sunday, June 13th please contact Kerry Ricketts Ferris at ferrisfamily4@att.net with a preferred time and the name of your book and you will be included on the kickoff schedule.

There will also be a book signing event on  Thursday, June 17th featuring Mark Fauenfelder, author of Made by Hand and cofounder of BoingBoing, one of the world’s most popular blogs.

Tomorrow is also an additional minimum day. Students are dismissed at
1:40. Please make sure your child is picked up on time. If you are
having a childcare challenge, let me know and we will arrange something.

This upcoming weekend is a 4-day weekend; Friday is a holiday for
Oakland Unified Schools. (In lieu of Lincoln’s Day holiday – I know,
it sounds strange…or a little delayed.) So I hope everyone comes to
see the wonderful Open House and then enjoys the loooong weekend.

Beth Rhine

Thursday, June 3, MetWest High School, 314 East 10th Street , 3:30 pm

Oakland parents will meet with Jennifer LeBarre, Director of Nutrition Services to learn about the progress of cafeteria food reform by OUSD for the past school year.  The annual event is sponsored by the Oakland School Food Alliance.  The Alliance is a grass roots organization of students, families, health professionals and community organizations from dozens of Oakland neighborhoods, hills to flatlands, who have banded together to push for the overhaul of Oakland’s school lunch program to learn about the progress of cafeteria food reform by OUSD for the past school year.  Other speakers are Chuck Davies, Associate Director of Residential Dining of UCB, parents from Stonehurst and East Oakland Pride.  Refreshments by Ester Dixon’s students, the Castlemont Chefs will be served, along with childcare and translation services.

The local campaign is part of a national effort to increase healthier fare for American children and increase healthier choices.  Underserved communities rely on the school cafeteria for food security, yet the food over the past two decades has become increasingly high fat, loaded with high fructose and processed resulting in high levels of child obesity and onset of early disease.

Beginning in 2001 OUSD began to reform the program and they can count among their successes removal of sodas and transfat  foods, on-site farmers markets, salad bars and a recent partnership with California Association of Family Farms.  But there is still much to do, to eliminate the main diet of highly processed foods that Oakland student are served each day,  which is all that OUSD can afford with the present budget.

Oakland School Food Alliance was formed in the fall of 2008.  The Alliance works on two main prongs of the fork –to unite community partnership that can provide resources to a beleaguered financially strapped program and to increase and mentor parent leadership, which will support access to healthy food for all the kids of Oakland.

Contact Information:

Allison Rodman  593-6978   arodman@earthlink. net

Visit us on Facebook Oakland School Food Alliance

As you may know if your child is singing at home with you, our final song this year is We Are the World.  Allison Nelson, mother of Max in the second grade and artist extraordinaire, has come up with a great idea to celebrate the theme of We Are the World.  From June 1 through June 4, we’ll be creating life-sized cut-outs of our Crocker kids who, when put together, will be holding hands all around the Multi-Purpose Room.  We need your help!  Here’s how you can get involved:

From Tuesday, June 1^st through Friday, June 4^th, Allison and some parent volunteers will be helping kids to make their cut-outs.  We’ll be working with the Adventure Time kids and, if your child is not registered in AT, please come with them to help with their cut-out on one of those days.  We’ll be working on Tuesday, Thursday and Friday from 3-4 and on Wednesday from 1:45-2:45.

You can also make your cut-out/s at home.  Come and get paper from us, do your tracing, coloring/painting at home, and bring it back to the school by Monday morning, June 7^th so that we can put them up in the MPR.

If you’d like to help out with the concerts and/or with this project, please let me know.  You can e-mail me at redros1214@aol. com or leave a note in my mailbox at school.

Thanks so much.  I am looking forward to June 8^th!

Jill Rose