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Welcome, back!
The halls are lively and Lab is in full swing. The Parents' Association is busy, too, working with the schools, in one way or another, on a daily basis. Parent efforts are vital to augment, complement and support the mission of our schools. We encourage your ideas and involvement, so if you haven't, as of yet, submitted a volunteer form, please do so (soon!) Volunteer Forms can be obtained from Renee Rehkemper via email and via the PA website which is updated regularly. Check it out!
The first PA meeting was held on Monday, September 13th. Projects completed, new programs implemented, and goals for the year were presented by Director, Dave Magill. A presentation on a new development strategy, stressing the importance of parent involvement, received enthusiastic support. Further information is forthcoming to all parents with the Community of Givers mailing. Nurse, Martha Baggetto announced the Walk-to-School day, scheduled for October 6th, and Eileen Epstein was acknowledged and applauded for her many years of service to our schools; she is now Director of Development for the Chicago Children's Choir.
Our next PA meeting will be at 7 pm, October, 18th in Judd
126. Our open forum is available for parents to raise
questions and present ideas as a positive contribution
to our community. Please email parents@ucls.uchicago.edu
in advance of the meeting so that we can include your topics of
interest on the agenda!
Innisbrook
catalogs are being sent to homes, committees for
Connections and Rites of May are being formed, and
each school council is busy making preparations for
Open Houses, programs, and activities. Please take a
moment to consider how you will be able to help this
year. Our students reap enjoyment and enrichment from
every opportunity made available to them. Giving has
a great return and together we can continue to keep
Lab the special place it has been for more than a
century!
By now you have noticed the new look of the Laboratory Schools’ website, bright, shiny, and reflective of what we’re about at Lab. This website is the result of ten months of planning and implementation that culminated in the August 2004 launch.
Last school year Lab Schools Director David Magill assembled a team of information technologies professionals, parents, teachers, and administrators, to explore the feasibility, gather requirements, design and then implement the new website. The team consisted of Kay Kirkpatrick (assistant to the director and Lab parent), Eileen Epstein (former director of development and parent of Lab Schools alumni), Curt Lienick (director of information technologies for the Lab Schools), Bruce Mitzit (information technologies manager for the Lab Schools), Marty Billingsley (MS/HS Computer Science teacher and Lab parent), Therese Allen-Vassar (director of web services for the U of C, and Lab parent), David Elfving (U of C web services staff member), and Nila Barnes (information technologies professional and Lab parent). Nila was invited to join the committee as a result of the application of her design and implementation skills to the PA website.
To conform to the look of the new Lab Schools site the PA website also received a makeover. Nila Barnes re-designed the PA logo using elements from the new Lab Schools' site such as the color palette, fonts, the masthead images, and re-worked the layout. The resultant PA site captures the uniqueness of the PA and yet is consistent with the new Lab Schools' look-and-feel.
There are new features currently being implemented at the PA site. A facility to submit the volunteer form online and allow PA committee members to search the volunteer database for volunteers, and a facility that parents can access via the link on the PA home page entitled “What’s on your mind?”, that enables parents to submit their ideas, questions, issues, parenting tips or news items via the “parents” email account parents@ucls.uchicago.edu. The Communications Coordinator accesses this account on a regular basis and forwards the messages to the appropriate persons.
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