Buildings and Facilities Usage

Sunnyside Elementary is a welcoming place for students, families and community members. With student safety in mind, all visitors during the school day will need to ring the doorbell next to the front door. School office staff will let you in. After signing in at the office, you will find yourself in the community room. We use this room for school assemblies, and you will often see individual classrooms using this space for projects or active activities that require more space. This room can be used by community groups and organizations outside of school hours. The community shares a kitchen with our “Family Room” that is used by school volunteer and our PTO. Hallways containing classrooms are off the community room. The hallways all have locking doors that can seal the classroom space from the community space. Each classroom has interactive whiteboards, students response systems and is wired for audio so teachers can use microphones, and broadcast sound. The school is decorated with class art projects and student work. Framed pictures of “graduating” 5th grade classes line the halls of the office. We hope you find our school to be a welcoming place, no matter the reason for your visit.

Parent and Community Relations

Student’s parents and families are welcomed, and encouraged to be a part of their child’s school life. Sunnyville School has a “Family Room” for parent and family members who would would like to volunteer or meet in our school. Teachers leave projects they need assistance with in the Family Room for volunteers to work in. This room also contains a small kitchen so volunteers can make popcorn and pretzels for weekly sales, and assist classrooms with cooking projects. PTO meetings are held in this room as well. There is also a computer available for parents to log in to check their child’s progress in class, or to e-mail their child’s teacher. A parenting library is also housed in the “Family Room”. It has books on parenting skills, and other school related issues that family members can check out. We value our families, and want them to be a part of our school!

Curriculum

Read, read, read.
Our goal is to teach children to be proficient readers in grades K-3, and to have children reading to learn in grades 4-5. To meet this goal, we have set up our daily schedules for grades K-2 to include two blocks of Reading/Language Arts time, 1 block of math instructional time, and one block of enrichment time. Grades 4 and 5 will have 1 block of Reading/Language Arts, 1 block of Math, 1 block of Science/Social Studies, and one enrichment block.
Science and Social Studies content will be delivered through authentic reading and writing activities during the Reading/Language Arts part of the day in grades K-2. The enrichment period will include opportunities to have extended time for reading books at the appropriate reading level, time for working on curricular projects and time for computer use. The real life experiences and training of local professionals is valued as resource to use in our content area instruction.
Our community is full of valuable resources and we use them as often as we can to provide real life connections for our students learning experiences. These resources include university arts departments, sports teams and facilities, and business professionals.

Personnel

Sunnyville schools is staffed with a community of caring, responsive educators, support staff and has numerous volunteers and community partners. Teachers at Sunnyville are committed to meeting the needs of all children by getting to know children and families on a personal level. Staff members are part of professional learning communities and participate in job embedded professional development on an ongoing basis. A building leadership teams meets with the principal on a monthly basis to determine progress being made towards building goals. Building leadership team members head up teacher based teams that meet every other week to plan together and share successes and concerns from the previous week. Support staff take on the responsibility of preparing materials for daily lessons to allow teachers additional time for planning together to help ensure students across grade levels have similar, enriching learning experiences.

My Realities

Many parents at my school feel uncomfortable coming to school unless it is to attend a fun evening event. Many parents seem hesitant to volunteer in the school and seem unsure of how to help their children. I think having a “Family Room” would be a wonderful way to bring parents in the building in a comfortable way. They could contribute to what is happening, but not feel the stress of not knowing what to do by being in the actual classroom. As their comfort level rose, hopefully they would feel comfortable to become involved in other ways as well. Most of the buildings in my district are very full, and there isn’t any extra space that could be readily dedicated to a space like this.
Changing the daily schedule to focus more on literacy seems like a great idea, and a simple change. I do not see this change occurring in my district because it would require a huge change in the way teachers currently do things. Our district has faced many changes this year, and teachers are anticipating the changes Senate Bill 5 could bring. A change like this, which would most likely end up being positive, would not be well received at this time.