Welcome to the 2024-2025 School Year
On behalf of the Parents’ Association (PA) Board, welcome to the 2024–2025 school year! We are excited to begin a new year together. The PA Board and our volunteer families work hard to support programs, events, and traditions that help build a Lab community to which every member feels that they belong, whether your children are new to Lab or long-time Labbies. Through the PA’s efforts, we hope all of us learn to lean upon each other as we navigate our children’s Lab journey; partner effectively with faculty and administration to support that journey; share what we know with each other; and always celebrate and give thanks together.
PA volunteers are at the core of our work - please join us by filling out this volunteer form! Whether you are interested in leading our efforts, helping out, or simply learning more, we welcome the opportunity to connect.
Please explore the PA website to learn more about who we are, what we do, and especially the efforts of the Divisional Councils, whose activities are at the heart of the PA. The Early Childhood Council, Lower School Council, Middle School Council, and High School Council work closely with parents, administration, faculty and staff, and in some cases Student Council and often have a hand in what goes on at Lab, great and small. They have been busy this summer with Back-to-School plans and welcoming recently admitted members of the Lab community.
This year we are taking a cue from the community-building success of Lab’s existing Early Childhood and Lower School Room Parents program and piloting a Class Events program for Middle School and High School to build similar camaraderie among parents within each graduating class. Between 6th through 12th grade, parents often find increasingly fewer opportunities to interact with each other in person than before. These grade level social events are meant to help families stay connected (or in the case of new families, connect names to faces and get acquainted). To paraphrase what two of our Class Event chairs have pointed out, we need to hold hands in person because we’re on this roller coaster ride together!
We’ve expanded our support for the existing Affinity Group and Spirit Council (athletic team parents) programs because of how effective they are in cultivating community, whether centered around cultural interests, advocacy, or simply celebrating teamwork and our children’s athletic efforts.
From these initiatives, teachers grants, Book Swap, Holiday Book Fair and Bazaar, LabArts, Rites of May and more, the PA has a lot planned this year! We know that a lot of information is coming your way through several channels. To help streamline and simplify PA communications with families, the PA uses three primary communications vehicles to share details about events and programs:
labparents.com is the PA’s website where you will find detailed news and information about the PA, events, programs, and recordings of online events
ENews is Lab’s bi-weekly e-newsletter which includes key information about meetings, events, and more – everything you need to know about what’s going on across the Schools, not just the PA
School Calendar - PA events will be posted to the All-Schools and Division calendars. Be sure to subscribe to Lab’s School Calendar feed and alerts (available via the grey and orange popup buttons in the upper left hand corner of the School calendar)
Finally please join us at our first General Community Meeting on Monday, October 7 from 6–7:30 p.m.
Feedback, questions, or ideas? Please don't hesitate to contact any of us. We look forward to connecting!
Sincerely,
Gaea Gomez Fidler
PA President 2024-2025
Jill Cross
PA President-elect 2025-2026
Early Childhood Council (grades N3–2)
n2parents@ucls.uchicago.edu
Lower School Council (grades 3–5)
lsparents@ucls.uchicago.edu
Middle School Council (grades 6–8)
msparents@ucls.uchicago.edu
High School Council (grades 9–12)