Action Items and Important Dates

Literary Magazine

We are searching for a student designer who will handle the visual layout of the Carlos Rosario School’s magazine In Our Own Words. The student designer will use photos, graphics, and other forms of artwork to create the cover and inside pages of a magazine. You can review the previous digital versions of the Magazine by clicking HERE. If you know any student interested, send an email to [email protected] or contact the librarian at your campus.

Students who would like their work published in the student literary arts magazine can submit their best writing and/or art sample by February 13th! Please send it to [email protected] or turn it in to their campus librarian.

Questions: Contact Librarians Steven [email protected] at the Harvard Street Campus and Fidel [email protected] at the Sonia Gutierrez Campus.

1:1 Office Hours with the CEO

Please remember that Allison Kokkoros, CEO, is holding office hours for one-on-one, 20-minute chats with employees. The one-on-one chats are opportunities to informally talk about anything that’s on your mind and for Allison to hear directly from you.

Upcoming Office Hours during February:

• February 5 from 11:30 am – 1:00 pm virtual or in-person at Harvard Street Campus
• February 12 from 12:30 pm – 2:00 pm virtual or in-person at Sonia Gutierrez Campus
• February 20 from 1:00 pm – 2:30 pm virtual or in-person at Harvard Street Campus
• February 26 from 12:30 pm – 2:00 pm virtual or in-person at Sonia Gutierrez Campus



Contact Karla Vasconez, Executive Assistant at [email protected] to reserve your spot!

News and Updates

Exceeding Our Enrollment Target!

A Huge kudos and thanks to our Registration and Assessment teams for our spring registration. Despite significant weather-related challenges, we surpassed our enrollment goal of 600. There are countless hours of work that go into each event. Thank you to everyone for their role in making our enrollment successful- it is truly an all-hands-on-deck effort!

Shout out to Gaby Bonilla's team of placement testers, who completed 1,300 tests and applications before the event even started. Gaby also audited countless records to ensure that we wouldn't have duplicates between applications and former students, to prevent slowdowns during our stressful registration days.

Jennifer Zoeller and the Registration team worked hard to plan for every contingency and continued to strategize when we had 1,000 applicants show up on our first day of registration due to the inclement weather. 

Thank you to Donald Ndebeka and the Development and Communications team for getting the word out and keeping applicants engaged from the time they put their names on the interest list and for communicating changes due to inclement weather. 

Thank you, everyone, for your contributions to this success, everyone played a role in this huge initiative! Faculty, Administrators, Communications, Finance, Front Desk, Drivers, IT, SILS, Learning and Evaluation, Facilities, Security and countless colleagues stayed until very late in the evening on Wednesday to make sure we served our community. Thank you. 

We are grateful for everyone's enormous efforts whether you greeted applicants, prepared food for sustenance, advised for our workforce classes, or supported our text campaign. This accomplishment is all of ours!

Our total charter enrollment is over 2,300!

Quick Highlights:

• We have 2,300+ students enrolled for the start of spring.  
• Our morning and evening classes are filled with nearly 1,100 students in each session across our campuses.  
• We still have many applicants who were unable to enroll, but are excited to begin their educational journey.  
• The Registration team will continue to have mini-registrations to get in as many students as possible before mid-semester.

First Week of Spring Semester

Happy first week of the Spring 2024 Semester! Welcome to all the students joining us for the first time and those who are returning! We’re looking forward to a great Spring semester ahead! Please enjoy some photos from both campuses.

Climate Survey Update

Thank you, Carlos Rosario School Staff Community, for your participation in our annual Climate Survey! We had 75% of our employees participate for a total of 172 individual completed surveys. This means that we met our strategic plan goal of 75% response rate!

On average, 78 percent of survey participants responded positively to the ratings-based questions about employee engagement, management, DEIB, and more. When we looked at all of the comments about what is going well at the school, here is what you said:

What surfaced through the Climate Survey as areas in need of further discussion and improvement? There are two topics that we will focus our deeper-dive conversations around (beginning with our managers who meet together this week!):

• Sustainability and Staff Retention
• Collaboration across the School

You can see the organizational-level climate survey data here, and more to come from team leaders about engaging in deep-dive conversations! We look forward to continued partnership in developing a vision of success and action plan for our culture and climate. Reach out to Chrissey Klockner with any questions about the Climate Survey!

Congratulations to Silvia del Aguila, the winner of our participation raffle prize, a custom CR School Swag bundle (custom jacket, water bottle, and bag).

Welcome, New DEIB Advocacy Committee Members!

The DEIB Advocacy Committee recently welcomed nine new members to the group. This committee helps sustain a more diverse, equitable, and inclusive school culture for our students and colleagues in alignment with our DEIB plan. The new members will help support the continued growth of our school's DEIB efforts. 

Welcome to Nicole Theus, Heather Tatton-Harris, Genevieve Rene, Andrea Drost, Andrew Hinshaw, Renee Hawkins, Gabriella Woo, Keanya Clifton-Roach, and Admassu Zeweldie!

Spring 2024 Community Spanish Class

Carlos Rosario School is offering a Beginner level of Spanish class starting Saturday, February 3, 2024. The class is offered on Saturday mornings from 9:30 am to 12:30 pm virtually via Zoom. 

The cost for the Spanish class is $275 for the public but employees of Carlos Rosario will receive a 50% discount, only paying $137.50. If you are interested, please sign up here for the class or reach out to Elsa Haile at [email protected] or Vincent Scott at [email protected] for any additional information or next steps.

The Spanish class is open to all residents of Washington, DC, Maryland, and Virginia.

Carlos Rosario School Small Business Workshops

Starting Saturday, February 22nd, the Carlos Rosario School’s Small Business program will begin a series of 8 workshops. 

Are you or know of someone who is interested in starting or growing your own business? Register now! The workshops are offered this Spring in Spanish (Tuesday evenings, 6 pm-9 pm) or English (Thursday evenings, 6 pm-9 pm). You can sign up here: www.carlosrosario.org.



Listen to Raul Medrano, the Carlos Rosario School Small Business Program Manager and Instructor to learn more!

Black History Month and Lunar New Year

Happy Black History Month and Lunar New Year from the Carlos Rosario School Community! Black History Month is an annual celebration of achievements by African Americans and a time for recognizing their central role in U.S. history. 

The Black History Month 2024 theme, “African Americans and the Arts,” explores the key influence African Americans have had in the fields of "visual and performing arts, literature, fashion, folklore, language, film, music, architecture, culinary and other forms of cultural expression."

Lunar New Year is the festival that celebrates the beginning of a new year on the traditional lunar calendar. It's the most important and most widely celebrated holiday in Asia! This year ringing in the Year of the Dragon, the Lunar New Year kicks off on Saturday, February 10th. In Asia, this celebration goes from the first new moon to the next full moon, from February 10th to February 24th in 2024. 

Learn more about Black History Month here and Lunar New Year here.

Reminders

Stay Healthy This Season!

As we enter a period with a higher risk of respiratory illnesses such as colds, flu, RSV, and COVID, let's prioritize our well-being. Please remember to stay home if you have a fever, cough, or other respiratory symptoms. In case of a positive COVID test, promptly inform your teacher, principal (for students), or HR (for employees).

Free COVID tests are available at both campus security desks. Our wellness reminders include wearing masks, 20 second hand washing and staying home if unwell or in contact with a confirmed case. Let's work together to maintain a healthy community!

Questions? Contact Carmen Ramirez, at [email protected]

Complete the DC State Broadband and Digital Equity Office Broadband Access and Digital Equity Survey

This survey requests input from DC residents and will support the refinement of the draft proposals and plan to access unprecedented federal funds for broadband, including the BEAD and Digital Equity Programs. The survey is available in English and Spanish.

Please click here to take the survey! The survey will remain open through the end of January 2024.

Around Our School and Community

One World Education

Carlos Rosario School ESL 8 and Advanced English students presented essays this month as part of the One World Education writing and speaking project. The One World showcase is a celebration of student learning. During the showcase, our students “pitched” their solutions to social justice problems, which they have developed in argumentative essays throughout the semester.

Representatives from each classmate gave 2-3 minute live pitches of their solutions on stage. Additionally, all students had the opportunity to give poster presentations about their arguments. Prizes were awarded for the best pitches, as well as students who displayed exemplary effort in completing the project.



The event included special guests from One World Education, Jessica Leader, the Director of Curriculum and Instruction and Dave McGloin, the Director of Impact and Communications.

Fall 2023 IT Series

IT Fundamentals graduates learned valuable tips from IT Advisory Board members:  Nate Solloway from Matrix, MSP shared valuable tips on project management; David Dawson from Community IT Innovators included topics on Windows 11, Microsoft 365 and Cybersecurity. We also had a guest speaker presenting on the use of artificial intelligence by James Stanger, Chief Technology Evangelist, CompTIA.

Workshops for Bilingual Teaching Assistant Graduates

The Office of the Ombudsman for Public Education presented a workshop series on Special Education 101 and career options to our Bilingual Teaching Assistant program graduates.  Sessions were led by Trianna Downing and Hannah Blumenfedl-Love from the DC Special Education Hub.

ESL 3 Class Plays Traditional "Old Fashioned" Board Games

Guess who took a Risk? ESL 3 students are taking a break from the Game of Life to use their Cranium(s) to play a board game. Sorry Hasbro, you're in Trouble because you don't have a Monopoly on games though, we'll give you a Clue, this one was crafted by their teacher, Magdalena Mendoza modeled after Chutes and Ladders.

Who won the Key to the Kingdom? It won't Boggle your mind that it was Magdalena's students of course!

Sorry! If this post is too Parcheesi for your taste.

Carlos Rosario School Alumna Opens New Restaurant in DC

Carlos Rosario School Alumna Judita Doliveira Baiza is opening a new restaurant in DC mid-February. Grilled sardines prepared with butter and garlic were a longtime hit at Pesce Seafood House, as was the calamari marinated in thyme, rosemary, and olive oil. You can also enjoy a short selection of oysters alongside a list of bivalve-friendly beers, wines, and cocktails.



Please click here to read more about her success story. Judita also has another small business called Judita Arte, featured in our Small Business and Virtual Marketplace.

CR Bi-Weekly Bulletin Reminder

We will continue to bring important updates to you via this internal bulletin on a bi-weekly basis. Please expect to receive our CR Bulletin every other Wednesday. The next bulletin will come out on Wednesday, February 7th, 2024. Remember, you can submit information and/or feature your class activities to [email protected]. 

Our bulletin is not possible without the contributions, support and ideas from our team members. Please consider what you’d like to share with our staff community, and encourage your team to do so. Thank you for reading the bulletin and helping to create an impactful and informative communication channel for our team.