Yale Elementary

The school day for all grades, K-5, is 8:55-3:25. Students need to be in their lines at 8:52 for the first bell so they can be in their classrooms, ready to learn, by 8:55. Students are tardy at 8:56. There is no playground supervision before 8:40, so please make sure your child does not arrive before then. If your child/children participate in our breakfast program they may arrive as early as 8:30.

On days students will be lining up inside the building before school because of cold or wet weather, there will be a yellow flag displayed on the front of the building, near the office.

If you are enrolling a new student at Yale, or if you need to update your address, you will need to go to the Aurora Public Schools Centralized Admission Office. You will need to have proof of your address and a photo ID. For more enrollment information, including location and hours of operation for the Centralized Admission Office, please click here.

Links to other important information, including cafeteria menus and bus schedules, are located in the "General Information" box on the right side of this web page.

Every year, each school in Aurora Public Schools writes a School Improvement Plan based on data collected from a variety of sources. To view the Parent and Community Engagement Goals from Yale's School Improvement Plan for the 2010-2011 school year, please click here.

Dear Parents/Guardians,

We would like to partner with you in a new structure we are designing for celebrating our children’s birthdays in school.

We are intent on providing a solid educational foundation for your children so they may lead literate, thinking lives.  Our instruction is well planned, focused, and requires every minute we can capture to provide the necessary time for students to investigate, explore, discuss, and produce quality work.  We are working diligently to eliminate all interruptions to the student learning day.  With over 500 students in our school we are presently experiencing interruptions throughout the days for birthday treats that arrive with family members.

In order to honor your child’s birth anniversary, yet maintain the learning atmosphere at school, we will be implementing the following plan at the beginning of the new month, March 1st, 2011.  We ask that you not bring treats to school.  This can be reserved for your family/friends party outside of school hours.  If you would have been planning to bring treats to school, we ask that you instead consider donating a book to your child’s classroom in honor of his/her birthday.  If you would like to donate a “birthday book” but are unsure of a title to purchase, the teachers will have book titles available on a wish list.  These books will be read to the class in honor of the donor and labeled with the donor’s name and birthday.  Thus children presently in your child’s class and many children in the future will benefit from this birthday honorarium and know where the book came from.

For our part, we will announce birthdays every morning immediately after the tardy bell rings, and sing a birthday celebratory song at lunch time in recognition of the special day.  We will also have a system for recognizing summer birthdays so all our children have equal opportunity in enjoying this moment in the spotlight .  We appreciate the trust you place in us every day in leaving your child in our educational care, and we join with you in celebrating their lives.

Thank you for supporting this birthday book program.

Sincerely,

Nancy Klinedinst, Principal

For the second year in a row, Yale has been named a Center of Excellence by the Colorado Department of Education! Yale is one of only 32 schools in the state of Colorado to receive this award for 2010.

The Centers of Excellence Awards are distributed annually to schools in Colorado that demonstrate the highest rates of student longitudinal academic growth and enroll a student population that is at least seventy-five percent at-risk. This program was authorized by the legislature in 2009, to recognize and reward the success of those schools that produce outstanding academic growth, even in the face of significant challenges.

For more information, visit the Aurora Public Schools, or the Colorado Department of Education web sites. You can see our award banners from 2009 and 2010 above the front doors outside of the school.

Our school day begins at 8:55 and ends at 3:25. Outside supervision begins at 8:40 and ends at 3:35. For your child‘s safety, we ask that he/she arrive on school property no earlier than 8:40 and be picked up upon dismissal at 3:25. If your child/children participate in our breakfast program they may arrive as early as 8:30.

If your child/children need supervision prior to this 8:40 or after 3:25, you may enroll them in the YMCA child care program at our site. Please contact our YMCA program at 720-810-7311 for information regarding the program and fees. Children who are on school property outside of the supervised times may be placed into the YMCA program for safety reasons and parents/guardians will be charged.

If you have any questions feel free to call us at 303-751-7470.

At the end of the 2008-09 school year, Yale was chosen by the district to become an Expeditionary Learning School. Expeditionary Learning (EL) is a curriculum designed to promote critical thinking skills and habits, academic achievement and personal development through in-depth investigations. EL brings experts into the classroom, takes students into the field, and engages students in real world learning experiences. Along with Yale, Tollgate Elementary and William Smith High School are also Expeditionary Learning schools.

Aurora Public Schools staff were recently asked to take a survey about various aspects of their work experiences.

To view the results of the Yale climate survey, please click here:

Yale 2010-2011 Climate Survey

Yale 2008-2009 Climate Survey

Yale 2007-2008 Climate Survey

According to state law, it is the obligation of parents to ensure that every child under their care and supervision receives adequate education and that children of compulsory attendance age attend school.

It’s All About Your Child’s Learning by Nancy Klinedinst

Learning doesn’t happen by chance, or only during certain parts of the day. The minute the tardy bell rings we are off and running on our learning path. We start with a ten-minute crew, which is a critical community-building feature of the day. This is where the sense of belonging and membership in a group with common purpose is developed. If a child is ten minutes tardy he/she misses this inviting beginning and group processing which sets the tone for the entire day.

If a child is a few minutes tardy and walks into the classroom during this ten minute block, he interrupts the flow of the entire group. It’s not like slipping unnoticed into the back of a movie theater a few minutes late; it’s more like shutting down the factory for a few minutes to wait for a late employee to take his place on the line. It affects everybody’s ―pay rate because time was lost during the working day. Just so, it affects every child’s learning rate because a distraction resulted in lost time during the learning day.

If a child is more than ten minutes late, he/she now misses out on content learning which widens the gap between him and the rest of the class. Learning time occurs throughout the day, so when a child leaves school early he/she is missing a learning opportunity. Continued tardies and early withdrawals add up, and this accumulated lost learning time has a deep affect on a child’s achievement.

Illnesses will strike, and we certainly don’t want you to send your child to school sick. Seeking a doctor’s care immediately can cut down on the time your child must suffer, and shorten his/her time away from the learning routine. Please call in your child’s absence before 8:45 in the morning, and have a doctor’s note with you upon your child’s return to school for an excused absence.

Teachers plan focused and long-term goals where each day’s learning builds on the next. So much of the learning is through mini-lessons, teacher demonstrations/modeling, and group processing that it really isn’t a case of ―making it up the next day or doing the homework. Time missed is truly unable to be recaptured.

We have had requests to pull students out prior to a parent’s arrival at school, which results in a child sitting in the front hallway losing valuable time away from the classroom. We have had requests to pull students out of class to take phone calls, again losing valuable time away from the classroom. We have had requests to get messages to students throughout the day. All of the above results in interruption to others.

For this reason, we ask that you work diligently to schedule appointments prior to the start of our school day at 8:55 or after 3:25. We ask that you monitor the time to ensure your child arrives at school on time and ready to learn. We ask that you thoughtfully plan your vacation time so that it doesn’t conflict with your child’s ―job during the 175 days of the year he’s needed on-site.

This is also why we are communicating our procedures to you at the beginning of the year so we can work closely together in the interest of your child. We will not be pulling students out of class for phone calls, and all messages will be held until 3:15 in the afternoon. We will not be pulling children out of class without a parent/guardian present in the office to request the withdrawal. Sending a note or calling the teacher at the beginning of the day to alert him/her of an unavoidable early withdrawal would ensure your child would have homework, hand-outs, and materials organized for a smoother departure later in the day. Please plan ahead and make your arrangements with your child before he leaves home for school in the morning.

It is our mission to provide the opportunity, structure, and instruction so your child can achieve to high levels of proficiency and beyond. It is also our mission to provide the same for all other children in our building, which means protecting them from interruption outside of their control. We can’t take your child to the levels he deserves-- and is capable of-- if he isn’t here. Learning occurs bell to bell, which means during every minute from 9:35 to 4:05. Please partner with us in taking advantage of every one of these minutes we devote to your child in helping him develop life-long habits of

work and learning. Our success is measured in the success of your child. We need your help in developing and sustaining a culture of excellence.