3/7/25
Upcoming Dates:
3/20- Early Release- Students dismissed at 1:30 p.m. and Conferences from 5:00 p.m.- 8:30 p.m.
3/21- No School- Conferences from 10:00 a.m.- 1:30 p.m.
3/24-3/28- No School- Spring Break
4/1- No School
Congratulations to Woodlawn wrestlers Jake Santefort and Matthew Owens for fighting their way to 3rd and 4th place in the regionals and qualifying for State this weekend!! Good luck boys, you have already made us proud!
Spring Fling is this week!
Sign your Woodlawn student up for the Spring Fling on the PTO Blog.
Science Olympiad
Our Woodlawn Science Olympiad team took 2nd Place at the regionals this past Saturday! The team will be off to State on April 12th. As a side note, Woodlawn also won the spirit award at the regional competition!
Daylight Savings Time
It is time to “spring ahead” with our clocks. Make sure you adjust all of your clocks to have the correct time of day. One less hour to the weekend but one more hour of sunshine.
OPEN NOW: *5Essentials Survey for Parents/Guardians*
Now through March 28th, KCSD96 invites you to share your thoughts on the inner workings of your child’s school. On behalf of the Illinois State Board of Education, the Illinois 5Essentials Survey will be administered online by UChicago Impact at the University of Chicago.
As a parent, this opportunity will allow you to share your thoughts on the important elements of school effectiveness in a survey about your child’s school. Your participation will help us understand the conditions at your child’s school and guide our improvement. Parent identity and survey responses will be kept completely confidential and will never be connected to you or your child.
Please visit https://survey.5-essentials.org/Illinois/ and select the appropriate survey to begin. If you have any questions or concerns, please contact UChicago Impact Survey Support at 1-866-440-1874 or [email protected].
5Essentials Student Survey- March 10th
Beginning the week of March 10th, KCSD96 students in 4th- 8th grade will be administered the Illinois 5Essentials Survey. This 25-minute survey is based on over 20 years of research at the University of Chicago and asks students about their experiences in school with the purpose of providing school leaders with critical student input to help develop school improvement plans. Students’ identities will be completely confidential, and teachers and administrators will never see individual responses to survey questions and will only receive aggregated information.
Please be aware that under the Protection of Pupil Rights Act. 20 U.S.C. Section 1232(c) (1) (A), you have the right to review a copy of the questions asked of your student(s). Survey questions can be found on the UChicago Impact Support Center (https://impactsurveyshelp.force.com/s/article/illinois-5essentials-survey-questions).
If you do not want your child’s input to be considered for school improvement purposes, please contact your child's principal by TODAY.
Family Educator Conferences-
Family/Educator Conferences are right around the corner! Once again, we are using Meet the Teacher as our scheduling platform for conferences on Thursday, March 20th (5:00-8:30) and Friday, March 21st (10:00-1:30).
All conferences are virtual via Meet the Teacher’s platform unless you contact the staff members and notify them.
- Elementary school families: When you open the Meet the Teacher platform, you will see your child's classroom teacher in the list of available conference sign-ups as well as some specials teachers, special education teachers, and related service providers if your child sees them during a school day.
- Middle school families: When you open the Meet the Teacher platform, you will see one of your child's core teachers in the list of available conference sign-ups as well as exploratory teachers, special education teachers, and related service providers if your child sees them during a school day.
Please sign up for a conference with any staff member listed who you would like to see. Meet the Teacher Conference Sign-Up will close at 4:00 pm on Monday, March 17th. After that, you must contact the building administrative assistant at the school.
Click on the link below to sign in to Meet the Teacher or copy and paste it into a browser: https://kildeerdistrict96.meettheteacher.com
For those who may be trying to sign up for a conference using a mobile device, please know that you may encounter issues navigating the platform. For best results, it is recommended that you try to access the link on a laptop or computer.
Families with multiple students in KCSD96 may experience issues when trying to switch between sign-ups. To mitigate any problems, please try using a different browser or logging out between sign-ups.
Student Registration Opens
Student registration for the 2025-26 school year opens on March 4th. Parents and guardians of new Kindergarten students (who have submitted all required documents) and returning KCSD96 students will be emailed a link to register their child for the 2025-26 school year.
Complete registration by April 15 to receive a $20 Early-Bird discount. Families with returning students who register after April 15 will pay the standard registration fee.
Registering early helps us to plan for the upcoming school year.
Registration fees paid by April 15 for the 2025-26 school year are:
- Early Childhood Blended Tuition: $2,870 (or $335.07 monthly)
- Kindergarten: $90
- Grades 1-4: $110
- Grade 5: $120
- Grades 6-8: $135
Families new to District 96 can find more registration information here: https://www.kcsd96.org/about/registration
If you have any registration questions, please contact [email protected].
Virtual Backpacks
District Virtual Backpack: https://www.kcsd96.org/about/virtual-backpack
Woodlawn Virtual Backpack: https://www.kcsd96.org/w/virtual-backpack
Click here for the Woodlawn daily announcements
Finally, I drove down to ISU for a job fair, looking for potential D96 teaching candidates this week. For the last 15 years (minimally), I have been making the trek down to Bloomington/Normal for this event. I love going to ISU because of the quality candidates that are there. The candidates are ready to teach and are eager and willing to share their educational beliefs. As a perk, I was able to be there with my youngest daughter, a senior in college, who just happens to be a Special Education major. My daughter lives with three other girls, all of them are fun and great to be around. The girls are, on average, 5’6” and tiny, but you would never have known that when we went to dinner together. The four of them picked Texas Road House as their restaurant of choice when I opened up the conversation with, “Where would you like to eat?” This is where it became amazing to me. For those of you who do not know TRH, they begin by grabbing baskets of buttery rolls and putting them on the table as you are seated. This group of women absolutely dominated the first two baskets of rolls to the point I didn’t get a single roll. Wow. Impressive. My daughter, who is not shy, ordered another round of rolls, and the feeding frenzy continued. This time, I scored one of the 10 rolls brought to the table. Doing a quick recount, college girls 19, Greg 1.
I like to look at it this way: college girls 4 ¾ rolls each, Greg 1. Woof.
Now, I absolutely love a celebration dinner, and that is exactly what we had. Appetizers, main course, sides, rolls, etc., it all added up to an incredibly fun time. I am jealous thinking of the fun you will have one day when you get to take your child and their college friends to dinner. My time for that is over. The good news is that great times await you!
I am going to end with this...the best part of the trip to ISU was the next day, watching my daughter interact with school principals, human resource directors, and other district-level professionals from a distance. Sometimes, it is cool to be a parent.
Have a great weekend, and remember to SPRING FORWARD!