Ramona Community Montessori School

Student Hours & Bell Schedule

Parent and Student Handbook

RCMS Newsletter

August 30, 2026

GREETINGS RCMS Community!

This newsletter comes out every Sunday evening to keep you informed of upcoming events and to celebrate highlights of recent happenings and celebrations. We also have a live link on the RCMS Website. This week features (click on the title to jump to the section):

Click on an event to see more details!

Heat Advisory

We continue to anticipate extremely high temperatures throughout the week. If possible, please send your student to school each day with a water bottle to help them stay hydrated. When temperatures become excessive, we adjust recess activities and may move recess indoors. We’ll continue to monitor conditions closely and make every effort to keep students cool, comfortable, and safe.

PICK-UP LINE REMINDERS

If using the pick up lane, you may only pick up at the curb in one of the 4 marked spaces. There is no loading unless you are in one of these 4 spaces.

Please remain inside your vehicle when picking up at the curb. If your child is not yet able to get in the car and/or buckled on their own, you need to park and then walk up to meet your child.

Handicapped spaces are for vehicles with handicapped placards only. Please do not idle or park in these spaces unless you have a valid handicapped placard on display.

Spirit Day: Wear School Colors - Wed. Sept 2

🩵🖤🤍 First Spirit Day of the Year! 🦓 Let’s kick off the year with some RCMS spirit! Our first Spirit Day is all about showing off our school pride. Wear teal, white, and/or black, rock your favorite zebra print, or sport your RCMS T-shirt!

Let’s see just how much RCMS spirit we can show! 🩵🖤🤍🦓

BACK TO SCHOOL NIGHT - Thurs. Sept 3rd

We cherish our partnership with you and are looking forward to seeing you all on Thursday, September 3rd for Back to School Night.

This evening is designed just for parents and guardians where teachers share important information about the school year and your child's learning. To help us keep the focus on these conversations, we kindly ask that students remain at home. Thank you for your understanding and support.

We have two sessions to accommodate families with students in multiple classes. Here is the evening's schedule:

6:00p - 6:15p PTSA Association Meeting (in the MPR)

6:20p - 7:00p Session 1

7:00p - 7:40p Session 2

LABOR DAY - NO SCHOOL MONDAY Sept. 7

Support Our Health Office

Ms. Lety, our amazing Health Tech, is a campus hero, repairing bruises, scrapes and heavy hearts everyday. If you'd like to help us keep our Health Office stocked and ready to care for our students, we’ve created an Amazon Wish List with items our Health Office can use throughout the year. Every donation, big or small, is greatly appreciated and directly supports our students!

Thank you for helping us care for our RCMS kids!

NOW HIRING: Campus Security Officer (CSO)

Please join me in congratulating our beloved CSO Claudia on her new position in Food Service here at RCC. We are thrilled that we are keeping her on our campus.

This means we will soon have a CSO vacancy. The job is already posted by the district office, CLICK HERE to view the posting. Please spread the word that we need someone new!

Job Title: Campus Safety Officer II

Location: RCC

9.5 Months; 10 hrs/week (M, T, Th, F, 10:20am-12:50pm)

$16.90 - $21.43 per hour

Application Deadline: 9/9/2026 3:00 PM Pacific

Huge THANK YOU to Cub Scout Pack 768

We are so grateful to Cub Scout Pack 768 for their generous service to our school community! They worked hard to build, finish, and install three beautiful new benches surrounding the RCC front lawn, replacing the old, deteriorated benches that were long overdue for replacement.

There is something especially meaningful about this project: the original benches were built for our school by Boy Scouts many years ago. Now, years later, another generation of Scouts has continued that tradition of service by giving our campus a beautiful and much-needed refresh.

Thank you to the entire pack for donating your time, labor, materials, and talents to make this wonderful addition to our campus possible. We truly appreciate your commitment to our school and community!

SCHOOL SITE COUNCIL – Parent representatives needed

Our School Site Council (SSC) guides RCMS’ goals and expenditures in line with our district goals and action plans of the RUSD Local Control Accountability Plan (LCAP). For this school year we have three parent representative positions open. Our SSC meetings are open to anyone and we value all voices.

SSC will meet on Tuesdays at 4:00pm throughout 2026-2027 on the following dates:

Sept. 22, Oct. 27, Jan. 12, Feb. 23, Mar. 23, Apr. 13, May 11

If you are interested in serving our RCMS school community as an SSC parent representative, please email Mrs. Sawada (csawada@ramonausd.net) with a 1-2 sentence statement about why you would like to participate.

ALL THINGS PTSA

(Parent Teacher Student Association)

Next Association meeting: September 3rd (Back to School Night) at 6pm in the MPR

Interested in getting involved in PTSA?

There are so many ways to get involved with our PTSA, and there’s a place for everyone! Whether you have a few minutes, a few hours, or can contribute in other ways, your support makes a difference. Help with an event, share your talents, volunteer occasionally, donate supplies, or simply lend a hand when you can. Every contribution—big or small—helps make our school community stronger. We’d love to have you join us!

Click on the links below to take a look at our committee sign ups to see if there’s anything you’d like to volunteer for or donate to the following events.

Fall festival Committee

Movie Night Committee

Please provide some feedback to PTSA and indicate your general interest in participating by clicking here!

BREAKFAST AND LUNCH at School

Food Services continues to provide FREE breakfast and lunches for ALL students. Breakfast is served from 7:25-7:45 am. Breakfast and lunch Menus are published monthly. They will be linked in this newsletter as soon as they become available.

If you plan to have your child eat breakfast, please arrive in time for the student to finish eating before the start of class.

Students are always welcome to bring lunch and snacks from home. We kindly ask families to consider avoiding peanut products when packing food for school. We have a few students with severe peanut allergies, and while we make every effort to prevent cross-contamination and keep these students safe, limiting peanut products on campus helps us create a safer environment for everyone.

August Cafeteria Menus

RCC BKFST-August 2026.pdf

RCC Lunch-August 2026.pdf

PARENT VOLUNTEERS

We are so very happy to welcome volunteers to our campus.

Level One volunteers must go through a clearance process which includes: photo identification, negative tuberculosis test, the clearance process takes a few days. Pick up a volunteer packet in our main office if you are interested.
Level Two volunteers also require a physical and fingerprint clearance.

Not all classrooms use parent volunteers, and our Montessori teachers typically prefer to wait until classroom cultures are normalized before including other adults in the mix.

ATTENDANCE

We cannot emphasize too much how important it is to their success for students to be at school, on time, for the whole day of instruction.

STUDENTS LEAVING EARLY

Due to the traffic congestion and the busyness of the end of each day, students needing to be picked up from school early, need to be checked out from the front office before 1:45pm (at least 30 minutes prior to dismissal). Please plan accordingly when your student needs to leave school early for appointments.

Ramona Community Flyers - Click HERE to view Flyers

ARRIVAL & DISMISSAL - Efficiently & Safely

Please take a moment to review the protocols below to ensure that we keep all students safe and maintain maximum efficiency.

It is no secret that our parking lot can be a challenge during drop off and pick up times. As we share the campus with our sister school, Mountain Valley Academy, we have strategically timed our RCMS and MVA arrival and dismissal times in order to minimize the traffic as much as possible. Please show extra grace and courtesy during the busiest times in the parking lot and follow these protocols:

The middle row in the parking lot is one way (southbound) only. If you pass through the middle parking row, please exit at the south into the inside lane for flowing traffic.
The inside lane is for flowing traffic only - students may not enter or exit cars from the inside lane, only the outside lane (curbside).
If using the pick up lane, you may only pick up at the curb in one of the 4 marked spaces. There is no loading unless your are in one of these 4 spaces.
Handicapped spaces are for vehicles with handicapped placards only. Please do not idle or park in these spaces unless you have a valid handicapped placard on display.
The school-side curb is for IMMEDIATE loading and unloading ONLY.
Please remain inside your vehicle when picking up at the curb. If your child is not yet able to get in the car and/or buckled on their own, you need to park and then walk up to meet your child.
If your student is not in front of the school ready and waiting for pick up, please park in an available parking space to wait for their arrival.
Please abide by all traffic laws. Do not enter the parking lot using the exit lane, and do not turn left when exiting the parking lot.
Pedestrians, please use the blue crosswalk in the parking lot to enter and exit campus. Do not walk in-between cars in the pick up line. This is not only dangerous for you and drivers, this also slows down the flow of traffic.
If a friend or family member is picking up your student, please make sure they are aware of and follow the parking lot protocols.

Please review the complete Ramona Community Campus Parking Lot Protocols HERE

RCMS Bullying Prevention and Reporting

We encourage our students to be up-standers and if they "See Something, Say Something" to reduce bullying on our campus. We investigate all instances of bullying that are reported to our school site. If there are any concerns please email our counselor, Ms. Bishop or Principal, Mrs. Sawada, and/or complete the bullying reporting form: Online Bullying Reporting Form (If you are a parent assisting your child with completing the form, you must be signed in to their student email.)

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