Elementary News and Updates (05/21/21)

Volunteering and giving to STEM are vital to the success of our school.  Our school has a charter that requires a commitment of 30 volunteer hours per family (15 hours per single-parent family).

To make volunteering easy and seamless, please refer to the Volunteering Basics section that will allow you to set up your volunteer account and keep track of your hours.  We are extremely grateful for the time and energy donated by STEM parents each year.

With COVID 19, and visitors or volunteers not being allowed in the building this year, STEM has continued volunteer needs as the year finishes.
Please consider what your family can contribute with time or donations.

The hummingbird represents an ancient symbol of joy and happiness. Its colorful appearance brings good luck and positive energy to our lives.

Thank you for sharing your energy!!

We would like to thank these volunteers, who even though we have not been able to have volunteers in our school, have found a way to fulfill our charter commitment.

• Elizabeth Banko
• Olena Beck
• MacClain Figueroa
• Jennifer Gonyea
• Laura Graber
• Jane Kim
• Brett Kingman
• Karen Lee-Toy
• Jeong Lee
• Jue Liu
• Jane Parsons
• Julie Prince
• Brett Smith
• Amy Winans
• Jan Zhu-Gilje
• Kelly Reyna

Please come to the Middle School Front Office to pick up a gift of appreciation.

Saturday, May 22, from 6-10 p.m. at the Backcountry Outdoor Park

STEM PTO Community Movie Night Featuring Back To the Future will be on May 22, from 6 – 10 p.m. at the Backcountry outdoor park.

This will be a complimentary outdoor event in Backcountry for our STEM School Highlands Ranch families, staff and community. Community partners are invited to set up tents/booths.

PTO will be providing Free Popcorn and Food Trucks and Candy will be available for an additional charge. Email pto@stemk12.org with any questions.

Semester grades are available in the Parent/Student Portal. Grades will be posted to transcripts by 5 p.m. on Tuesday, May 25. If your student is enrolled in a Concurrent Enrollment class on STEM campus, credit values will be adjusted over the week after school has closed. For students that are taking courses off the STEM Campus, please send an official transcript of your grades to the registrar, Tiffany Klenke at tiffany.klenke@stemk12.org.

The Yearbook company said that yearbooks will not arrive until the week of the 24th-28th or later due to slow processing and machine issues while printing. If you ordered an Elementary Yearbook, you will receive an email about pickup information once they do arrive.

This survey is for our Parents to provide us with feedback on families’ projected plans for the new school year. Thank you for taking the time to complete this survey to allow us to gather data for our Leadership Team to review and to assist with planning. Our projected plan for the 2021-22 School Year is to return to five days of In-Person learning.

VIRTUAL LEARNING: We are hoping to have a virtual learning option available, but need to gather the data in order to plan. Families choosing the Virtual Academic Plan would have to remain in that plan for the entire semester and understand that if in-person enrollment is at capacity for their grade level, they may not be able to switch to in-person learning for the next semester. For Secondary, the number of course offerings will be limited for each semester so some students’ schedules may need to be adjusted. Virtual learning will also include more synchronous learning opportunities per the updated guidance from CDE.

Please fill out one survey per student that you have.

Please check Infinite Campus to make sure we have your current address. If you have a change of address please email Tiffany Klenke (tiffany.klenke@stemk12.org), K-12 Registrar, with a proof of residency. Douglas County School District and STEM School Highlands Ranch only accept the following legal documents as proof of residence:

• warranty deed
• deed of trust
• lease agreement
• tax notice
• county assessor
• notarized letter

On Tuesday, May 25, the accounts with outstanding fees that fall into the following categories will be sent to collections:

All outstanding student accounts over $200 that have not:

• Contacted Ashley Westfall (ashley.westfall@stemk12.org) personally or responded to outstanding fee emails.
• Actively set up a payment plan with the school
• Made any payments against the balance

If an account goes to collections, it will not negatively impact your credit if you respond to them within 30 days. Once it is sent to collections, STEM can no longer accept payments on our end so you will have to work it out with Alpine after they are submitted on May 25.

As we prepare for the 2021-22 School Year, we’d like to remind our families on the important medical documents that will need to be completed. There have been some updates to the non-medical exemption forms. Please take a look at them in the Health Services section of our website.

We’d like to thank our entire community for their cooperation this school year in keeping our school nurse Karen Lewis informed of COVID-19 positive and presumptive cases. Your collaboration with our team helped to keep our school doors open with only two outbreaks throughout the entire school year.

As we move into the summer, we’d like to let our families know that you will no longer need to update our school nurse if your student has tested or is a presumptive positive for COVID-19. You will only need to inform us if your student is taking part in any event at STEM, where we would need to quarantine. Please email communications@stemk12.org with any questions. Thank you again!

We are excited to host a variety of summer camps this upcoming summer.

• Camp Invention (K-6) | June 7-11, 2021
• Cyber-SPY Camp (K-2) | June 14-18, 2021
• Cyber Detectives (3-5) | June 21-25, 2021
• FRC 4418’s Lego Mindstorm Camp (K-5)
• Peter Pan Theater Camp (K-5) | June 21-25, 2021

Please visit our Enrichment page to view current openings and sign up.