Hello all! I hope each and every one of you is enjoying this mild weekend. Please take note of important dates, storm procedures, and important announcements below.

Reading Assessments: Reading assessment folders will be going home on Tuesday. Please make sure to take a look through each one noting each aspect of the final grade (Comprehension, Fluency, and Accuracy) before sending the folder back on Wednesday.

Hats and Mitts: We have had several students, each day, come unprepared for the cold weather. Please ensure that you’re sending your child to school with a coat, snow pants, mittens, and a warm hat. Recess time is a very important part of our day to get our students outside in the fresh air. We’d really appreciate the effort on your part to make this part of our day as enjoyable as possible.

Friday’s PD Day

We have a scheduled Professional Development Day this coming Friday, February 2. However, if school is cancelled throughout the week, this PD Day will be cancelled, and we will have regular classes on Friday to allow high school students time to complete their exams.

School Cancellations & Delays

When announcements are made for a delay or closure, GCS follows the PEI Public Schools Branch.  Alternatively, sometimes only certain schools will be delayed or closed and will be announced by “family of schools”; GCS follows the Bluefield Family, Colonel Gray Family, and Charlottetown Rural Family of schools.  If any of these are delayed or canceled, GCS will be also.

In the case of a “one hour delay”, school will begin at 10:00am, while a “school closure” or “system wide shutdown” results in no school at all for the day.

There are a number of ways to know if there is a school delay or closure; they are as follows:

  1. We will post on the GCS Facebook (Grace Christian School – Prince Edward Island), Twitter (@gcs_pei), and Instagram (gcspei) accounts.
  2. Each PEI radio station regularly announces delays/closures (as “Public Schools Branch”)
  3. The CBC Stormcentre website (http://www.cbc.ca/stormcentre/pei/) (as “Public Schools Branch”)
  4. The PEI radio station websites also post delays/closures on their sites (as “Public Schools Branch”)
  5. Families can opt in to a GCS text message notification.  If school is delayed or canceled, a text message can be sent from GCS to one cell phone in the family to notify of the delay/closure.  This is an OPT-IN ONLY program.  If you would like to use this option, please email Jordan Ellis (jellis@gcspei.ca) with the cell phone number that you want to have the text message notification be sent to.  If you opted in last year and still have the same cell phone number, it is already still in the system.

We strongly encourage you to follow us on one of our social media platforms and to register for our text message system for cancellations if you haven’t already. Please note that if school is closed (not simply delayed), any after-school or extra-curricular activities will also be cancelled (such as sports, after school care, clubs, etc).

This Week: February 2 – Professional Development Day (No Class)

February 8 – Parent Teacher Conferences (pm)
February 9 – Parent Teacher Conferences (am) (No class)
February 12-28 – GCS Olympic Celebration
February 12-16 – Love of Reading Week
February 19 – Islander Day (No Class)

Spelling Quiz: Our next spelling quiz will take place February 9th unless we have a snow day this week which will turn this Friday into a regularly scheduled school day.

All for now,

Ms. Jenkins