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Hansen Elementary School

Hawks soar together

March 19, 2026

The Hawk's Nest Hansen Community Newsletter October, 2025

The Hawk's Nest Hansen Community Newsletter October, 2025

Image with the word 'NEWSLETTER' in a gold-bordered box.

A Message from Mrs. Jones
Fall is here! At Hansen, we have had a wonderful start to the school year. Students have quickly resumed routines and procedures that are familiar and consistent. I am so proud of how we have been able to pick up where we left off back in June.

Please keep this October newsletter handy, as it has a lot of important information that pertains to the entire month.

School Day Logistics
AVID at Hansen
Hansen is in our second year of implementing AVID strategies within our school. AVID stands for Advancement Via Individual Determination and is a nationwide program. AVID schools seek to explicitly teach skills and encourage students to become career and college-ready upon graduation. For our students at Hansen, we are working to streamline and teach the skills of what it means to be an active and prepared student. Our students are learning specific organization skills, note-taking skills, and ways of collaborating with others.

Families are encouraged to be an active part of our school. This shows our students that we are all working together to support them! Our green Friday Folders are one of the ways we are all working together on communication. Every student at Hansen brings home a Friday Folder that has important information and work they've completed through the week. Look for your student's folder and talk with them about the items they are bringing home.

One of the wonderful things about being an AVID school is the connection for our students K-12. Thurgood Marshall Middle School and Capital High School are also implementing AVID in their schools. We have exciting partnerships happening with our middle school and high school students as they are trained to be mentors and classroom helpers for our Hansen students.
The strategic skills we are teaching our Hansen students now will continue to be referenced as they move through our K-12 system. We are excited to see our students gain life-long skills that will help them excel in their post-high school options.

Panorama Survey
This is our final week that the Panorama survey will be open. If you have not completed the survey yet, please do so ASAP! The results of this survey really help our school set goals for the future. We highly value your feedback!

Here are links for the online survey:

Playground After School
Our playground is a wonderful community hub. As the weather permits, many adults are taking students to the playground after school. This is a great way to connect with other families at Hansen. When taking your student to the playground after school, we have a few reminders:

  • Students must be accompanied by an adult. There is no supervision
  • Ycare has use of the playground. Please respect their expectations. 
  • Please wait until our buses have all exited the premises before taking your student to the playground. With that area being a bus loading and bus driving zone, we want everyone to be safe. The buses are usually gone by 2:50pm. Families are welcome to wait out on the baseball field or the preschool playground until the buses have left, and it's safer to be on our general play structures.

Family Income Survey
We are getting really close to 100% participation in filling out our Family Income Surveys! We just need a handful more!
Getting 100% participation helps our school continue to provide free breakfast and lunch to ALL students who choose it. Please, whether you utilize the free breakfast/lunch or not, fill out this form. We need everyone!
If you have not already done so, please complete the following forms as soon as possible:

Announcements
"Opening Night" Hansen Family Event
October 24th is an exciting night for Hansen! EVERYONE is invited back to school at 5pm for the opening of the book fair! There will be various reading activities for students to participate in as well. Please come celebrate READING with your Hansen community.

At 7pm is opening night for our school's musical production of "The Little Mermaid, Jr." We are so excited about this musical! Tickets are $5 at the door, but all Hansen students and young children are FREE!

Along with the reading celebration and the musical production, we are holding a costume swap- if you would like to choose a Halloween costume or swap a Halloween costume, this is the place to do it! We ask that all costumes be school-appropriate to be swapped. Please feel free to bring in costumes you are not using anymore anytime in October. There will be a costume donation box outside the front doors of the school.

Conference Week!

Conference week is October 24-31. Our office staff and teachers are currently working to set up their available times for families to sign up for a conference. Participating in a conference for your student(s) is an extremely important way to partner with our teachers. Please plan to attend one conference for each of your students, if you have more than one at Hansen. Families will have access to choose a conference date and time through the Qmlativ system beginning October 13th.

Attached here is a link with a tutorial on how to schedule a conference, once the option in opened up.
Dismissal is 11:35am every day during conference week. Students will have the option to choose a "grab-n-go" sack lunch to take home with them at dismissal.

School Picture Day
This Friday, October 10th, is school picture day. These are individual student pictures only. Students should have brought home a picture purchase packet. If you still need a picture order packet, please let us know or stop by the office to pick up an extra.

Snacks!
At Hansen, we have a snack time in classrooms. Students are encouraged to bring a healthy snack with them to school each day. We also provide snacks to any student who needs one. Please join us by donating snacks, if you'd like! We are looking for:

  • Goldfish Crackers
  • SmartPop popocorn
  • Pretzels
  • Saltine crackers

REMINDERS
Electronics & Toys at School
Please help our school days run smoothly by double-checking your child's backpack, ensuring there are no extra toys, trinkets, or unnecessary electronics inside. These types of things really add to the distractions and stress levels of the kids. As an AVID school, one of the things we are teaching kids is how a school backpack plays an important role in their success. We are teaching kids the types of things that belong in a school backpack, such as our Friday Folders, a lunch box, a water bottle, a book to read, and maybe a change of clothes. They are learning that toys, candy, and certain electronics from home do not belong in their school backpack.

Our school policy follows the OSD policy of "Students will not use telecommunication devices in a manner that poses a threat to academic integrity, disrupts the learning environment, violates the privacy rights of others, or as part of bullying, harassment, or intimidation."

At Hansen, we ask that students with cell phones or smartwatches store them in their backpacks during the school day. This helps ensure a safe and focused learning environment.
Sometimes, really important items end up lost. If your student would prefer to store their device in the school office (and pick it up every day), that is always an option.
Thank you for double-checking that your student's backpack is set up for success each day.

If you or your student needs to get ahold of each other for any reason during the school day, there are phones available in the office that students may use.

Birthday Celebrations
At Hansen, we love celebrating students! We do this in a relational way. When it's your student's birthday, their class will acknowledge this with a choice game, song, or activity. It's important to us that students continue to build positive connections and relationships with their classroom community, and celebrating birthdays through relationships helps achieve this.

We do not celebrate with cookies, cupcakes, or treats. Many students have allergies in many of our classrooms that prohibit them from participating in these types of snacks. We ask that families please do not send treats of any kind to the classrooms.

Volunteer with Hansen!
Parents, Caregivers, Community members, and Guardians are welcome at Hansen! If you are interested in helping our school in any way, please fill out a background check form here. The volunteer background check form must be filled out every school year. If you are interested in helping directly with your child's teacher, please contact the teacher directly after filling out the background check. There are many jobs around our school for volunteers to help with. When you are visiting or volunteering at Hansen, we ask that you please not take any photos of kids who are not your own.

HCC/HAP
Monthly Meeting
Please join us every month for the HCC and HAP parent meetings. You will see a reminder in each month's newsletter about the meeting date and time.

  • Date: Tuesday, October 14th
  • Schedule:    
    • HCC @6PM
    • Principal's Report @6:45PM
    • HAP @7PM

Both HCC and HAP will hear the monthly principal's report at 6:45pm. Please consider joining HCC and/or HAP. This is an excellent way for all community members to be a part of the wonderful things going on at Hansen!

Visit the Hansen HCC website here or email hansencouncil@gmail.com to find out more information.

Important Upcoming Dates
October

  • 10/8, 10/15, 10/22: early release @ 1:55pm
  • 10/9, 10/16, 10/23: Afterschool Club: Bricks4Kidz
  • 10/10: Individual School photo Day
  • 10/24: "Opening Night" All-school evening event! 5pm Bookfair; 7pm School Musical
  • 10/27-10/31: Conference week-dismissal @11:35am