Please note on our master calendar that we have added 3 minimum days to the 2025-2026 school year. These days will be like our normal 1:30pm dismissal days and be used for our staff to review student benchmark and other assessment data. We will use this data to drive our instruction and make changes to best meet our students' needs. The first minimum day is Thursday 9/4 (9/3 will also be a minimum day). The other dates are 11/13/2025 and 2/12/2026. After school program will be available on these days and our bus schedule will run like it normally does on early dismissal days. If you have any questions, please feel free to call the school office!
Our first Community Bingo Night of the year is tonight- Thursday, 8/28/25, from 5:00 PM-6:30 PM in the Elk Hills cafeteria! This a free event open to all! We hope to see you there! All Bingo Nights will be held on the last Thursday of the month with the exception of November, December, and May.
Reminder: 5th-8th grades will be attending Swim Day at McKittrick Elementary tomorrow, August 29. Please see the post for more details. Please note that McKittrick School is a cell phone free school. Students must leave their cell phones at home or check them into the Elk Hills office before attending. Chaperones are welcome to attend!
Week two at Elk Hills was full of learning, playing, and reconnecting!
We ended last week with a 96.98% attendance rate, which is great! We were very close to meeting our goal of 97%! Thank you to all the parents, guardians, and students who are striving for AMAZING ATTENDANCE this year! Your efforts have not gone unnoticed. 7th grade closed out the week with the 97.3% attendance, they were the class with the best attendance for the week! Please be sure to call the office to clear absences.
We continued with Acadience assessments for our literacy intervention program and began iReady assessments so we can begin grouping for our math intervention program. Our math and literacy intervention programs are designed to hone in on skills that students need a little extra help with in order to grasp bigger concepts. We do this by analyzing data to determine groups of students who need extra instruction in similar skills. Those students are then placed into small groups and worked with four days a week for about 25 minutes, this time of the day is called "Walk to Learn." This data also helps teachers to understand if a skill needs to be retaught to an entire class.
TK/K, 2nd, 5th, and 8th grades were all administered hearing and vision tests last week through a new program we are using called KidSense. KidSense is a local business that provides hearing and vision testing services to schools, particularly rural schools who may not have a school nurse on campus.
Students were assigned their mentors for our Staff/Student Mentorship program! We will begin our monthly Mentorship Meet & Greets on Wednesday, September 10th at 1:00 PM, so make sure your students are here that day and don't leave early! This is the fifth year we have hosted this program: all students and staff participate and it's just one more layer of support offered to our beloved Elk Hills students!
A reminder about this week's events: Swim Day for TK-4 is Wednesday (8/27/25), Swim Day for 5-8 is Friday (8/29/25), Community Bingo Night is Thursday (8/28/25 from 5-6:30 in the cafeteria), and RSVPing for our third annual Grandparents' Day celebration opened this week! Please be advised that all students not attending the Swim Days are still required to attend school.
Reminder: TK-4th grade will be attending Swim Day at McKittrick Elementary tomorrow, August 27. Please see the post for more details. Please note that McKittrick School is a cell phone free school. Students must leave their cell phones at home or check them into the Elk Hills office before attending. Chaperones are welcome to attend!
It is hard to believe that we are just wrapping up week two of the new school year! We will be having our first benchmark testing session next week, August 25 - August 29 for grades K-8th. We use a nationally based test called NWEA. The data that we receive from the testing results is utilized to align our instruction to best meet your students' instructional needs and track the growth of each student and each grade level in math and ELA. Please see the NWEA website for more information! We ask that your students attend next week prepared and rested. Thank you for your continued support!
We had a wonderful first week here at Elk Hills! We had AMAZING ATTENDANCE with eight classes having 100% attendance all week! All students from those classes were rewarded with a shout-out during Friday Morning Announcements and they also received a small piece of candy as a token of our appreciation for the efforts made to be here everyday! We know how hard it is to shake off the sleepiness of summer and jump back into the swing of things. We ended last week with a school-wide attendance rate of 99.7%! Thank you to everyone who made that possible!
The TK/K and 1st grade classes got to start playing on their brand new playground and thanks to Mr. Murray and Mr. Cowboy they also got a cool new track on which to ride their new tricycles!
We also began assessing for our Walk to Learn literacy intervention program and will begin our first Walk to Learn cycle on Tuesday, September 2nd!
Thank you for all your first day photo submissions!
We are looking forward to a fantastic 25-26 school year with you all!
We would like to give a HUGE shout out to all the parents, guardians, and students for the amazing attendance we've seen this week! What a way to start the school year! Being in school every day is crucial to a conducive learning environment, building bonds with peers and staff, and creating good habits for the school year. We appreciate all the efforts made this week! Here's to an outstanding 25-26 school year!
We had eight classes with 100% attendace for the week and a schoolwide attendance rate of 997% for the first week! WOW! Let's keep this momentum going for the whole year!
