Just a few updates this week on things happening around campus.
Cafeteria ID Card Initiative
We worked with the cafeteria this year to design and organize a school ID that would work with the cafeteria cashless system, but which would also work for other school wide systems including Library and general identification. In coordination with CPS, we distributed ID cards to all Upper School students in grades 6 to 12. During our pilot phase, use of the ID card for the cashless system provided by CPS, the speed of transactions increased significantly and lines were far faster. But, now students are relaxing their use of the cards and we would like to re-energize the use of cards as a better option when compared to the lookup system (with photo) and the use of cash. We plan in the coming weeks to work in partnership with CPS to separate the use of cards into identified lines during the lunch hours. Those using cash or the lookup system will be restricted to one line that is already currently labeled in order to get students ready. We are considering further the phase out of the lookup system in favor of identification cards in order to both speed the line and reduce the potential for erroneous entries. Please help us by encouraging students to bring and use their ID card. We will be doing the same in assemblies and classrooms in order to change our habits in favor of this preferred approach. If you don’t currently have a cashless account with CPS, applications are readily available and the account can be easily linked to the current ID card. Replacement ID cards for lost or stolen items can be handled at the divisional offices. Parents can also get a barcode sticker for their parent ID cards to use the system in similar fashion. Please contact CPS if you have any questions about this and thank you for your recent participation in their survey.
PD Day today…
Today was our last half day PD day and the work on our accreditation report and other important professional development went well. In particular, our work on accreditation is yielding great results as we close in on our development of the final report. We will be hosting the visiting accreditation team at our campus in February and will share more details of this visit in newsletters just after the holidays. Thank you for your flexibility on these additional half days and your ongoing support of this important work!