Open Communication & Meaningful Engagement with Families: We place deep importance on effective, open, timely and substantive communication and engagement with families. We utilize many technology-based and in-person tools to communicate with our families, including weekly whole-school and classroom-specific newsletters, our website, digital student portfolios, social media, individual conferences, classroom author celebrations, classroom performances, family education opportunities, and survey tools. We recently surveyed our families on their current understanding of and connection to the various communication tools we use —