Principal's Update 8/18/2022

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Dear Lafayette Community,

Thank you for making the first two days at Lafayette a wonderful experience.  We are extremely happy to be back and working with your children.

We will be starting our first full week of school next week and I wanted to let you know about a couple of important things as well as introduce to you our new policy on celebrating birthdays at school.

First of all, the Stop, Drop and Go program has begun and we have many volunteers helping receive your children in front of the school on Anza Street.  Please take advantage of this beginning around 7:30.  If you are parking to walk your child to the yard, please do not double park or block any driveways.  Do not drop your children off on 37th Ave and have them run across the street.

During pick up, we also experience a lot of congestion.  Please park in legal parking spots and do not double park with your vehicle unattended, park in white bus zones, or park blocking neighbor’s driveways.

Lafayette and San Francisco Unified School District offer free breakfast and lunch to all students.  We understand that there are always preferred items on the menu.  These items may not be available to all students by the time they get their lunch due to circumstances beyond our control.  We do try our best to ensure everyone gets what they want.  However, your child will always be given something from the menu that they need to take.  It is important that they eat something during lunch time and not throw the lunch away.  

If students bring lunches from home, please make sure they are completely NUT FREE.  I have attached our policy for being a nut free school to this letter.

This year Lafayette is going to a new birthday celebration policy to increase inclusion and equity for all of our students.  While we all appreciate the graciousness of our families that bring in food, treats and goody bags to celebrate children’s birthdays, we are implementing something new.

Each month, we will calendar a day for which we will dedicate 20 minutes to a whole school celebration to honor that month’s birthdays.  This means all students that have a birthday in a given month will be celebrated on the yard.  We will announce ALL students that have a birthday in that month, a juice bar will be given to all students and we will play music.  The first portion will be similar to our Splash Awards.  We think this will be a meaningful way for everyone’s birthday to be acknowledged and to get the special treatment they deserve.  We will celebrate all summer birthdays on the last month of school.

With this new policy, we are eliminating birthday celebrations in classrooms.  This means no food or goody bags will be brought in to share.  If you have questions, please contact the school’s office.  We want everyone to be celebrated and most importantly, in conjunction with our nut policy; we want everyone to be safe and feel included.  We appreciate your support in following this policy.  

Lafayette Elementary is a Nut Free Campus

Allergy Accommodations 

  1. Please do not send anything to school containing nuts.
  2. Students should not eat anything at school except for lunch and snacks they bring with them. If something happens to the lunches/snacks they bring, we will contact home so we can determine if there is another acceptable lunch or snack option. 
  3. Students should never be sharing or trading food. 
  4. We will reinforce the nut-free policy for all classrooms and collect the items as soon   as they are noticed, and store them out of reach to be sent back with the student at the end of the day with a note reminding them not to bring nut items to school. 
  5. Hand washing for all children in classrooms or in the bathrooms when they return to the classroom after eating (this is to prevent cross contact in case nut products were brought accidentally). For example, if anyone has something like peanut butter on their hands from lunch, then touches other student's desks. Wiping down cafeteria lunch tables and classroom desks before & after eating lunch and snacks. 
  6. No food used for class projects please - all school crafts and holiday activities should avoid the use of foods. 
  7. We want to eliminate homemade treats (or foods that don't have a food label) in the classroom please. 
  8. No Goody bags except for school sponsored events. 
  9. Anyone who will be in the classroom, such as parents and volunteers, will need to follow these same steps due to nut allergies and the severity level. 
  10. Substitute teachers will always be informed of student's life-threatening allergies. 

Once again,

Thank you for a great start to the 2022-23 school year.

Lafayette Admin Team