Hello Timber Wolves!

It is exciting to start gearing up for staff, students, and families to join us in our Cedar Park community.  I hope you have all had a fun, relaxing, and rejuvenating summer.  I wanted to take a moment to introduce myself to new Cedar Park members, give some reminders about the school, and share some important news.  

For those of you who have not met me yet, I am the proud Principal of Cedar Park, Andrew Zillig.  I have been an educator with Seattle Public Schools for the past 15 years and have worked in a leadership role for many years in a variety of capacities in the district.  I am a father of 4 and my family enjoys spending our time together hiking, camping, watching movies, playing games, and building LEGO.  Actually, most of my family has grown out of the LEGO phase except for me. 

This is an exciting time for students, families, and educators who are anxious to start the school year and engage in learning and friendship–and Cedar Park is the place to do it!   I will continue to use this platform to send out a weekly communication, the Friday Howl, to let you know about our amazing community of learners at Cedar Park and important news to share about our school.  Ms. Kelley, in our office, will also occasionally send out timely notes to inform you of upcoming events, due dates, and other important information from our office.  Watch for “Notes from Ms. Kelley” to come out soon.

Here is some important news about the start of our school year.

• KidsCo is at Cedar Park for after care.  You can visit the KidsCo website  to learn more about their program here at our school and to enroll.
• Each student will be checked out a device for use at school.  The iPads and laptops will stay at school and not travel back and forth between home and school, unless otherwise directed by a classroom teacher for a special project.
• Cedar Park is growing!  Our enrollment numbers and our current budget allocation for staff necessitate split classrooms.  There will be a 2nd/3rd grade split classroom and a 4th/5th grade split classroom.  The staff and I have worked hard to carefully create classrooms to accommodate this split and the needs of our students to create the best outcomes for all.  Given our growth this year, we are hopeful that an adjustment will be made to our staffing allocation this fall.  The process for this takes time and relies upon students physically being at school.  We literally do headcounts in the first few days of school and again on October 1st.  These counts will determine whether or not we could be allocated additional teachers.  If we were to be allocated additional teachers, please know that it will mean an adjustment to classroom lists.  We are painfully aware of how disruptive such a change can be and are preparing to have supports in place should we need to make an adjustment.
• Teachers will email student class assignments to families on Thursday, August 31st.  Please come join us on our playground for the PTA sponsored potluck to meet and greet your student’s new teacher on Thursday, September 5th at 3pm.

I look forward to the start of the new school year.  We Timber Wolves take pride in how we learn and grow together, how we include and support everyone in our community, and how we find fun and joy in our learning.  We are going to have an outstanding school year and I hope to see you in the halls soon.  Go Timber Wolves!

Principal Zillig