Dear REMS Families, Our Parent Crew Foundation has joined the state wide charitable initiative, Colorado Gives Day, and we have been awarded a $5,000 Newbie Prize for simply joining. We are so grateful to FirstBank for sponsoring this prize, and to the Community First Foundation for hosting this annual event. We are honored to be a member of such a supportive, positive community that helps us further benefit our kids. Colorado Gives Day is on December 6 and early giving starts on November 1st. We are asking our Crew to participate by simply sharing our Giving campaign page with friends, family, and employers. The more we spread the word, the more our shared community can benefit. All donations starting on Nov 1 count toward our Dec 6 goal, and the $1.6 million Colorado Gives Day Incentive Fund! All participating Colorado Gives Day nonprofits earn a percentage of the fund, so the more we raise, the more we get! Our campaign can be found at https://www.coloradogives.org/story/Wearecrew. As we get ready for the biggest giving day in Colorado, we reflect on the difficult times we’ve weathered together over the past two years. Despite these challenges, we are strong and remain committed to the mission and vision of Renaissance Elementary Magnet School. We’re asking you to join us for Colorado Gives Day and to share our campaign, and to donate to causes you value if you can. Every year, Colorado comes together as a community, sharing stories and raising funds. Your continued support and generosity is part of what makes our Crew amazing. With gratitude, Allie Waltee, Bri Mowen, Brooke DiDomenico, Ashley Cammack, Rachael Kelley, Lindsey Smithson Renaissance Elementary Magnet School Parent Crew Foundation Board Hi, I’m Nora. This fall I will be heading out on my SEVENTH overnight voyage! Voyage used to be scary- I was away from mom and dad. I was worried about wasps and mosquitoes and bears, and the weather was terrifying! But now, with my upcoming voyage, I can’t wait to be on that bus and gone! Here are a few tips to get you calmed down and enable you to have fun on your voyage!
P.s. Wear bug spray, please! Greetings REMS Parent Crew!
The Parent Crew Board wanted to take a minute and bring you up to speed with everything that is going on with our volunteering and fundraising efforts! This year, we welcomed Gina Meachum as the new board President, Jen Mouttet as the new Vice President, and Sheila Townsend as the new board Treasurer, and have opened up a new position for a Member at Large, to be filled soon. Existing members of the board remain Jackie Bradley and Rachael Kelley. We have been working together to get big things planned for this year and are looking for ways to get REMS back up and running! Please reach out to any of us with questions or concerns. Our information can be found on the school website under “Parents” and then click “Parent Crew," or simply go here. The Purpose of the Parent Crew Board sometimes is unclear and while our main purpose is to support the school’s mission and vision, you can check out these slides for more information. You can also learn about what the School Accountability Committee (SAC) does compared to Parent Crew Board here. Volunteering – we are SO EXCITED to be able to support our Crews in the school again! There are dozens of ways to get involved and we can’t wait to see the halls full, the classrooms humming, the voyages underway and our parent volunteers back in action. Did you know that there are grants given away to schools based on the amount of ours parents volunteer? Each year, REMS parents, YOU, help donate over 10,000 hours of service to help keep our school unique and running smoothly. (Be sure to log all your hard work on the Track It Forward website or app!) The extra reading, writing, and classroom support provide hours of increased learning opportunities for our kiddos. Not sure what all there is to do? Check out our Volunteer page & fill out the interest form. For more information, please reach out to the Volunteer Coordinator, Shannon Simmons, or one of our Board Members. Planning for our two main fundraisers is also already underway! Renaissance Adventure Day is scheduled for Friday, October 8th. RAD is our student-led fundraiser that focuses on building community through Adventure Education-style challenges as well as supporting our core values through service. We will have all the details about what we want to raise funds for and what our community service project is VERY SOON, as well as sign-ups for volunteers to support that day’s fun activities. Also, our Auction Fundraiser has been moved to the spring, with a date to be announced in the next few weeks. This event helps bring funds need to ensure our unique programming, including much of our Adventure Education expenses and classroom supports. Even though spring feels like a long ways off, our new co-chairs are beginning to plan and form committees around all the moving parts of this event, and will need lots of volunteer support to make it come together as the celebration of tradition we love! Finally, we want to thank all the volunteers who have already worked to make our Back to School Carnival a success, and those who have stepped up to be Crew Parents and other classroom, lunch room, and recess volunteers, and of course, our fearless Voyage Chaperones. Renaissance traditions and values live in all of us, and we cannot express enough gratitude for helping us carry on as Crew! Yours in Crew, Gina Meachum, Jen Mouttet, Sheila Townsend, Jackie Bradley, and Rachael Kelley Parent Crew Board On June 5th, 2020, the Parent Crew Board and the Renaissance School Accountability Committee sent a memo to the School Director, the District Superintendent and Assistant Superintendent, as well as the Board of Education members regarding the upcoming selection of a new principal for Renaissance upon Ms. Deborah's retirement on June 30th. The district leadership responded by inviting all members of the Parent Crew Board and SAC to attend a meeting with them to discuss the next steps in their selection process in order to "[honor] the mission, vision and heart of REMS moving forward."
We also invite the Renaissance community to contact us if there are any additional comments or concerns they would like us to bring before the school district. Click here to read notes from our Zoom chat hosted by the Parent Crew Board!
Ms. Janell & her husband, whose is the CTO and Information Security Officer for a company that does education technology consulting, put together a comprehensive guide to Zoom safety & security for the Renaissance staff, and suggested we share these tips with the whole community. Please make sure you review these and have a safe online experience! If you need to use Zoom to host meetings, take the following precautions to guard against "zoom bombing." We have direct reports of school class zoom sessions being accessed by malicious actors who then proceed to disrupt the group with profanity, pornography displayed via screen sharing, and inappropriate images or nudity on their webcam. Below are the steps that you can take to prevent malicious actors from disrupting your meetings and classes: 1. When you schedule a Zoom meeting, enable a password to prevent unauthorized users from joining. Use a numeric password so that those joining by phone and not computer can join. Open the Zoom application, click schedule a meeting, check the checkbox by "Require meeting password" and choose a number. Share that number with your class or other attendees in advance. 2. Disable allowing users to join before the host. Expand the Advanced option on the Schedule Meeting screen, and uncheck "Enable join before host". This prevents the attendees from getting into the virtual meeting before the host so that the host can intervene quickly if a malicious actor has joined. We recommend muting participants on joining as well. You will need to un-mute participants for them to speak to the group. (We've seen one Kindergarten teacher master that mute button during "group share", enable each child to speak during their turn). 3. When you end a meeting, make sure that you choose "End meeting for all." This ensures that all participants will forced to leave and the meeting will end. 4. Consider only allowing the host to screen share. Click on the settings gear in the upper right of the Zoom application window. This will take you to a web page (you'll need to log into your zoom account), scroll down to Screen Sharing, and set "Who can share?" to Host Only. 5. Consider what chat features you want to enable. You might want to turn off Private Chat so that attendees cannot send private messages that the host cannot see or moderate. If you don't need participants to contribute to a group chat, consider disabling chat completely. The shot below shows both Chat types enabled. These controls are on the web page as well. If you make changes, you may get various Save or Confirm buttons or dialog boxes (it is different for different settings - some enable immediately). If a malicious actor gets into your meeting, end the meeting and do not try to restart with that meeting ID. If the meeting has not been configured to require a password or guest can join in advance, it is very likely that the malicious actors will return.
The FBI released guidelines as well that include these recommendations. If you want to read more, here is the full guidance from the National Cyber Awareness System: The Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) has released an article on defending against video-teleconferencing (VTC) hijacking (referred to as “Zoom-bombing” when attacks are to the Zoom VTC platform). Many organizations and individuals are increasingly dependent on VTC platforms, such as Zoom and Microsoft Teams, to stay connected during the Coronavirus Disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic. The FBI has released this guidance in response to an increase in reports of VTC hijacking. The Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency encourages users and administrators to review the FBI article as well as the following steps to improve VTC cybersecurity: Ensure meetings are private, either by requiring a password for entry or controlling guest access from a waiting room. Consider security requirements when selecting vendors. For example, if end-to-end encryption is necessary, does the vendor offer it? Ensure VTC software is up to date. See Understanding Patches and Software Updates. CISA also recommends the following VTC cybersecurity resources:
Click here to read notes from our Zoom chat hosted by the Parent Crew Board!
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Parent Crew BoardGina Meachum, Jen Mouttet, Sheila Townsend, Jackie Bradley, & Rachael Kelley Archives
October 2022
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