June 23rd, 2020

Dear Families,

We hope you are all well, and managing to balance school, work and family life!  

We wanted to provide you with some updates as we wrap up the school year and look towards September.

First, we would like to congratulate two very important staff members on their retirement!  Mrs. Helga Zielke, our ESL teacher will be retiring after many years as an ESL teacher with the WRDSB in many different school settings.  She has given so much to our school community, and has supported many newcomer families as they transition to life in Canada.  Best wishes to you in your retirement Mrs. Zeilke!

Mrs. Danita Crewson, our Junior Special Education Resource Teacher has also announced her retirement after 24 years of teaching!  In her SERT role, Mrs Crewson has been insightful and compassionate, and has made a huge impact with her gift of connecting and supporting staff and students.  We hope you enjoy every minute of your retirement Mrs. Crewson!

We also would like to bid a fond farewell and a great big thank you to the staff who are leaving us after short term assignments at our school this year- Thank you to LTO teachers Mr. Roth, Mlle Stampatori, Mrs. Schmidt, Ms. Wang, Ms. Baskett, and Ms. Plomske.  Thank you to Mrs. Heisler and Mrs. Hall for your support as EAs this year, to Ms. Almazan for her work as a DECE, and to Mrs. Gibson in the main office and Ms. King in the library!

We are so thankful for the great staff at Empire.  We will be welcoming many new staff to our team for September, and as our school grows, we are also gaining two more portables to accommodate the 27 classes that we will have in September!  

Also coming to our playground next year will be an accessible buddy swing!  We were thrilled to receive a $2000 Grant from Kitchener Grand River Rotary.  These funds will go directly towards the purchase and installation of an accessible swing on our Empire playground!  The additional funds were raised from student/family donations from our World Cerebral Palsy Day event, and from our pizza fundraising.  What an incredible addition to our school!  We are so excited!

With the school closures, we have not been able to host a Welcome to Kindergarten event, and will be sharing more information with incoming students and families on School-Day at the end of August.  

We also have not been able to host an in-person celebration for our Grade Six students who will be moving on to new schools in the fall.  Please know that their classroom teachers are planning virtual celebrations this week, and we look forward to congratulating you “from a distance” later this week!

Please continue to follow the WRDSB and Empire social media platforms to get further information about the 2020-2021 school year.

We wish you all a safe, healthy summer, and look forward to seeing you all in September!

 

Ms. Mohr

Principal