Welcome to the 25/26 School Year

Hello Sugar Creek families!

Welcome to the 2025-26 school year. While school is still a few weeks away for our students, we are actively getting our school ready to welcome you and your children to what we are certain will be another fantastic school year. We never forget that each day, you are trusting our school with your most valuable “possession:” your child, and one way we honor that trust and relationship is by striving to make our monthly newsletters as informative as possible. Even if you are a returning family, do take the time to read through this, the first newsletter of the new school year, and also check the links, as the start of the year information is so important.

From our kitchens to our gyms, from our offices to our classrooms, from our playgrounds to our health rooms, and all the places in between and around: you will find at Sugar Creek that we have a stellar staff. Their positive approach to school, each other, and our students is evident in all they do. In fact, in a recent cycle of 59 separate one-on-one staff check-ins we held with them, the top three replies to the question “What’s going well at Sugar Creek?” were:

#1 SAVVAS (our new literacy curriculum)

#2 Team collaboration

#3 Relationships with students

Sugar Creek: doing our best for your children each day!

Mr. Todd Brunner, Principal

Mrs. Kirstin Houghan, Associate Principal

Thursday, August 7th-New Kindergarten Playdate 5:30-7pm

Friday, August 8th - Teacher placement communicated out

Thursday, August 14th-New Kindergarten Playdate 5:30-7pm

Thursday, August 21st-New Kindergarten Playdate 5:30-7pm

Wednesday, August 27th-New Family Welcome Back 3-4 pm

Wednesday, August 27th- Welcome Back Night for all Families 4-6pm

Tuesday, September 2nd- First Day of School!

A huge shoutout to Julia Crandell, who was the TOP patron of our school library in 2024-25! She is pictured above with Mr. Brunner, receiving a certificate of honor (which the top 25 library patrons all received.) She also received a gift certificate to Kismet Books. Julia is pictured by her favorite spot in the library: right where the graphic novels are shelved!

In addition to library time each week, Ms. Vitela opens the library up before the school day starts so that students can also visit the library then as well, should they wish. Sugar Creek students: keep on reading!

Sign up as soon as possible in order to get your child’s FREE T-Shirt by completing the link here. Sugar Creek’s all-school annual Fun Run is on Saturday, October 4th, with the race starting at 9 am.

Welcome Back (and supply drop-off) Night

Don’t miss it! On Wednesday, August 27th, 2025, all classrooms will be open and teachers will be here to meet and greet you. Families can drop off your child's school supplies at this time, should you wish. If possible, please adhere to these times:

4:00-5:00 Students with last name A-M
5:00-6:00 Students with last name N-Z

Grades 1-5 New Family event.
We do our best at Sugar Creek to ease the transition for new students in Grades 1 through 5 and their families to our great school and community. This fun event, giving you and your child a special time to see the school, meet key staff and get any questions answered, will be in our cafeteria before Welcome Back Night starts, at 3 pm in our Cafeteria.

On August 4th, we were notified that we have won a 2025 Alliance for a Healthier Generation award for “Increasing Family & Community Engagement, Improving Nutrition & Food Access, and Implementing Local School Wellness Policy.” Our Health and Wellness Committee members include: Laurie Tackett, educational assistant; Robyn Billig, VASD Food Service Director; Sidney Peach, VASD Staff Wellness and Community Programming Coordinator; Todd Brunner, Principal; Adrienne Eberhardy, parent; Vanessa Hodgson, parent; and Carissa Hodgson, parent.

All VASD families are informed each August that families can fill out the K-5 Device Take Home Opt-In, if they are interested in having their child take their school-assigned device home every day.

Please know that Sugar Creek teachers do NOT, ever, need students to take their devices at home.

What time is school each day?
See here for school times.

How do I drop off and pick up my child from school?
See here for our drop-off / pick-up procedures.

Picture Day!
See here to learn about your child’s school picture day.

Supply Lists
Our 2025-26 school supply list can be found on our website. Sugar Creek strives hard to keep your child’s school supply list simple, to save you money.

Important Sugar Creek information!
Can be found here, organized and designed with family feedback to be most helpful to you. Take a look!

Student placement information:

We are presently planning to share with you the name of your child’s teacher late on Friday, August 8th. Sometime in the days following that you will receive a welcome message from your teacher.

Sugar Creek strives to create a bilingual, bicultural Spanish - English school. One of those ways is by partnering with the Futura Language Program to offer Spanish language enrichment classes, this year with brand new content. Classes are Monday mornings before school starts, right here at Sugar Creek, and kids then transition directly from their Futura class to their school day. See here for enrollment information.

Our fabulous PTO is sponsoring Kindergarten Play Dates for new Kindergartners and their families! They are 5:30 – 7:00 p.m. on August 7, August, 14, and August 21. These are held at Sugar Creek’s Kindergarten playground area, behind our school. A great time to meet other students and families. You can attend one…or all! (The back door (Door 9) by the playground is open for bathroom access.)

At each play date, Sugar Creek staff will be present to meet and greet you, and if you are interested your family can even join an informal school tour (at 5:30, 6:00, and 6:30).

The VASD Elementary School Handbook can serve as a helpful resource. You can find it here. Relatedly, VASD uses a Progressive Response Model to support healthy relationships, growth, and positive development among students. See here for more information about this.

While the occasional family may want their elementary school-aged child to have one, our students are not allowed to have these visible or powered on at school. Now, more than ever, we all as adults should be limiting and closely monitoring children's use of technology, and we are doing our part by keeping these from playing any role with our student body when at school.

Sugar Creek has a therapy dog that visits with some regularity, thanks to its owner (and Sugar Creek parent) Kevin Scully. You and your child may see Rinny at some school events, and Rinny will again this year be visiting our school, with a particular focus on periodic recess visits.

Kelly’s Market recently donated $500 to our Field Trip Fund! The Sugar Creek Field Trip Fund allows our school to provide FREE field trips to our students, and every dollar helps.

A safety gate was installed this summer on our Front Playground (when facing Sugar Creek, this is the playground you see off to the right).

How long is lunch?
Students at Sugar Creek have up to 25 minutes a day for lunch.

Is the school lunch good?
Sounds like a funny question, but it’s one that new students frequently ask. Well, it must be: “the food is good here” was one of the top noticings of the 44 new students between Grades 1 - 5 whom I interviewed last year.

How does mealtime work at school?
Breakfast:

• Breakfast is available FREE to ALL students at the start of each school day. Many parents take advantage of this fabulous offering at our school by having their children just eat breakfast at school!

Lunch:

• Students have a choice of bringing a cold lunch from home or having hot lunch at school each day. In order to eat hot lunch at our elementary schools, a family should first create a lunch account via e-Funds for Schools. To do so, call the VASD Child Nutrition office at 608-845-4139 . If a student brings a cold lunch, a carton of milk can be purchased or the student can have a drink from home. For convenience’s sake, families may add funds to the child's meal account via e-Funds or make out a check to Child Nutrition Services (and drop it off at the school office).

• Free or Reduced Lunches are available to students whose family qualifies based on income and can provide a variety of assistance options to families beyond just for school meals. Applications for Free/Reduced Meals are available on-line or hard copies may be obtained from the school office.

• Monthly menus are available on the district website.

• This year, we will no longer be using lunch lanyards.

In middle and high schools, each student has a different schedule. In elementary schools like Sugar Creek, a class has its class schedule. Being a large elementary school (last year Sugar Creek was the second largest elementary school in Dane County), our master schedule is complex and must take into consideration such factors as: timing of two daily recesses and two daily meals, the availability of staff shared with other schools, district and state curriculum requirements, building spaces, age appropriate learning styles, providing adequate blocks of planning time for teachers, agreements with various unions / bargaining units, teacher input, blocks of time for literacy and math, the unique needs of our Two Way Immersion program, etc.

Our teachers are provided with their class schedules each July, and they will share with you at a later date when such things as Art, Music, Physical Education, and more are scheduled.

We still have a few of last year’s school yearbooks available. (Our yearbooks are always free.) If you happen to have misplaced yours or need a replacement, let Ms. Espinoza in the office know soon at espinozb@verona.k12.wi.us

At times, we need substitutes in all positions. If you’d ever like to learn more about the options and ask any questions that you may have, in a low-key conversation, please contact Mr. Brunner at brunnert@verona.k12.wi.us