7:40 - 7:55: All students should arrive and enter through the main doors. Breakfast is served. Students may not enter the building until the bell rings at 7:40.

8:00 am: School begins

2:35 pm: Dismissal for all walkers

2:40 pm: Dismissal for bussers

FEBRUARY
3 - PTA Meeting
3-7 - Snow Week Dress Up Days
7 - Family Bingo Night
17 - NO SCHOOL - Presidents' Day
26-28 - Book Fair
26 - Evening Conferences
27 - Evening Conferences
28 - NO SCHOOL - Conferences

MARCH
3 - PTA Meeting
17-21 - Spring Break

A New Way to Report Absences

Introverts rejoice! You no longer have to call anyone on the phone to report your child's absence! If it is a full-day absence, you are now able to report it via your parent portal. Please see the instructions below and head here for more information.

INSTRUCTIONS FOR SUBMITTING AN ABSENCE REQUEST

1. Log into your Campus Parent Portal Account (via a computer or using the mobile app)

2. Select MORE and then ABSENCE REQUEST (or look under "Shortcuts" for the Absence Request link)

3. Fill in the required information including:

   • Mark the student(s) who will be absent

   • Select the reason the student will be absent from the Excuse dropdown list

   • Select "Full Day Absence" as the Absence type.

   • Select the date(s) the student will be absent.

   • Use the comments field to provide additional details on the absence

4. Click on the Submit button to save and submit your request

2025-2026 Class Placement

If you wish to provide specific input in regards to your student's 2025-2026 classroom assignment, you may pick up a Class Placement Form in the Main Office. Please have these forms returned by Friday, April 11th.

Keep Sick Kids Home

We have seen an increase in the number of people sick lately with diseases like Influenza, RSV, Strep, and Covid-19.  

If your child is ill, please keep them home from school and school-based activities. People who are ill spread the disease to others! The Center for Disease Control recommends that people who are sick stay home for at least 24 hours after the fever is gone except to get medical care or for other necessities. The fever should be gone WITHOUT the use of fever-reducing medicine.

A student should not come to school (and may be sent home from school) if they have or have had:

• a fever of 100 degrees F or more in the past 24 hours

• vomiting or diarrhea in the past 24 hours

• an undiagnosed skin rash

If you have further questions, please reach out to Carly in our health office at 651-480-7286.

Report Cards

Semester 1 Report Cards were available on Infinite Campus Parent Portal beginning January 28th under Documents. If you do not have access to your Parent Portal, please email pzais@isd200.org for your Activation Key.

Parent Teacher Conferences

Parent teacher conferences will be in the evenings of February 26th and 27th and during the day on February 28th. The link to sign up will be sent out on Friday, February 7th. Please make sure you sign up for a conference as soon as you can after you receive the link.

Click HERE to order your yearbook!

Join the Pinecrest PTA! Meetings are held the first Monday of each month at 7:15 pm in the Pinecrest library. New members are always welcome!

Visit our Pinecrest Elementary Community Facebook Page for more information!

Music Notes

The Music Room has been a busy place as we finally completed our first round of formal assessments. We are excited to welcome Miss Natalie Robuck to our school as she will begin her student teaching with us on Monday, February 3.

Grade 4 just learned their new rhythms ti-tika and tika-ti. Ask your student to try and write these new rhythms for you. In addition, we are practicing our melodic houses, Low La and Low Sol. It is so exciting to hear the children share what instruments they tried to play at the instrument fair!

In 3rd grade, we are practicing reading, writing, performing and creating with our new house rhythm, ti-tah-ti. We are preparing for some new melody houses to move in this month since there is a new housing development beginning construction!

Grade 2 is busy practicing reading, writing, performing and creating with their melodic houses “Do, Mi, Sol and La”. In addition, we have been practicing our new rhythms, the half note and half rest. We are looking forward to a new house moving in on music street.

Grade 1 students are working on the difference between beat and rhythm and recognizing the time signature, bar lines and double bar lines. We are practicing the reading of tah, ti-ti, and rest, (that is quarter note, eighth notes and quarter rest).

Kindergarten students are recognizing the difference in instrumental timbres. From the sounds of drums, to triangles, to shakers, each instrument has a different type of sound. We have had a lot of fun discovering how music can be loud and soft as well as fast and slow. New this month will be determining if music is high or low. In addition, we have been working on our rhyming words.

Our Pinecrest Panther Choir will continue our Tuesday morning rehearsals. We will be combining with the Kennedy and McAullife choirs for an evening concert on Monday, May 5 th at 6:30pm in the Hastings Middle School Auditorium.

Please mark your calendars now for the annual Children’s Orchestra Concert. It is scheduled for Tuesday, April 1 at 6:00pm in the Hastings High School Auditorium. Admission is free. Local celebrities read and act out some of our favorite children’s books while the orchestra accompanies the re-tellings of these books. I am confident that there will be some surprises since it is April Fools Day! Hope to see you all there!

Art Corner

After winter break we came back strong here in the art room! The artworks that are being created look beyond amazing!! If you have had the opportunity to see the display of all the art outside of the art room you’ll understand how talented these student artists are!! 

We are continuing to learn about the different elements of art. We started with the element of LINE and have used that prior knowledge as we move on to learning about SHAPES in art!!

Fourth graders are learning all about POP ART!! Pop art is a very fun style of art that focuses on the simple, everyday items like soup cans, comic books, and even bananas while adding in bright colors and bold letters! Through this project fourth graders will be creating a collage, which is a layered piece of art, to create their own Andy Warhol inspired artworks influenced by everyday items.

Third grade artists are now mixing together their knowledge of lines and shapes as they complete their “Abstract Agates” project. We studied the appearance of different kinds of rocks including the Lake Superior agate. We looked at the color, the concentric rings, and the shape of these rocks before ripping up colorful paper to create our own collages! 

In second grade our project follows the same theme and is all about shapes and collage! We learned the difference between organic and geometric shapes before learning about the American artist Henry Matisse. We studied his famous collage artworks and were able to point out the different types of shapes we saw. We then cut out shapes influenced by his artwork to create our own collage!

First grade artists used their knowledge of geometric and organic shapes to draw their own unique monsters. We took a day learning about the process of brainstorming ideas for a project and even played a fun drawing game! We then picked one of our sketches to turn into our final monster drawing! This was a fun project that used all sorts of lines, shapes, and colors!!

In kindergarten we have been hard at work creating artwork inspired by famous artists all over the world! We recently looked at artwork that was created by Canadian artist Ted Harrison! We made a connection between what they learned about landscapes in Wit and Wisdom to our own projects! They were able to easily identify the foreground and background of different artworks. We then used bright colors, bold lines, and paint to create our own polar bear landscapes inspired by his art! 

Early Pickup and End of Day Transportation Changes

When there is a change to your child’s normal dismissal plan, please contact the main office at 651-480-7280 by 1:35 pm if possible so we are able to get a message to your child and their teacher before the end of the day.

Bring Your ID

Please bring your valid driver's license with you and check in at the front office when you are checking out your student or visiting our school.

Parents of students with special needs are invited to join Hastings' Special Education Staff in discussing how to support one another and providing input on district programming. Please mark your calendars for the Special Education Advisory Council (SEAC) 2024-2025 meeting dates!

• February 24th - time and location to be announced

• April 2025 - All Dakota County SEAC - Date, time, and location TBD

For more information about SEAC or if you are interested in becoming a member, please contact Jill Petersen at 651-480-7008 or jpetersen@isd200.org

Order your Spirit Wear! Can be customized to our school!

Hastings Public Schools

The Hastings School District consists of approximately 4,300 students. Please click on the links below to email the building principal or site leader. We've also included the phone numbers to the main offices of each of our district's sites:

• Tilden Community Center 651-480-7670

• Kennedy Elementary (K-4) 651-480-7221

• McAuliffe Elementary (K-4) 651-480-7390

• Pinecrest Elementary (K-4) 651-480-7280

• Hastings Middle School(5-8) 651-480-7060

• Hastings High School (9-12) 651-480-7470

• Hastings Alternative Learning Center 651-480-7690

*If you need any assistance in translating this newsletter, contact us at kgorr@isd200.org.

Website: www.hastings.k12.mn.us
Location: 1000 11th Street West, Hastings, MN, USA
Phone: 651-480-7000
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/hastingspublicschools