Parent Weekly Update 03/24/17

Hi Parents,

There's kind of a lot of information this week. I would strongly advise taking the time to read through it. In short, you will learn about:

1. Next week's Group schedule
2. Another drop in meeting for March
3. Summer Program details and survey
4. Information about an upcoming webinar and available discount for families not participating in LUNCH Groups^®
5. The New LUNCH Groups^®web site (and how to get to the old one).

1. Next Week's Group Schedule.

This week we have just one group meeting and it will be at the office

• 6-8:  Tuesday, March 28, from 4 to 6 PM.

This group will go to UltraZone on April 25. You will receive complete information prior to group (same for the 8-11 Year Group. They are going on April 4.

2. Additional Drop In Parent Meeting Added for March

I have added a third meeting for March, Tuesday, March 28, from 7:00-8:30pm, please click here to RSVP if you have not already done so.

3. Are You Interested in Sending Your Child to the Summer Program?

Here is the Summer schedule. As a time-limited program, we do not expect families to continue beyond the current school year, leaving that to be a parent decision. However for some, summer represents unique opportunity for us to continue working on relevant areas. Below is the revised schedule, which is different from previous years. The biggest differences are as follows:

1. We are grouping students into the same age ranges as in our School Year program.
2. There is no treatment offered for children under the age of 7 1/2 during summer.
3. We have eliminated the two week break that occurred half-way through the program in previous years.
4. We have slightly shortened the number of hours children attend (56 instead of 60 hours for 8-11 and 11-13; 39 instead of 40 hours for teens), however we have lengthened the amount of treatment time per session for all groups. The additional hours are being transferred to parent support hours.

At present we are about 50% full and will be announcing availability through the website and email to colleagues. We typically fill up by the end of April. If you are interested in your child participating in the program, please click here to indicate your interest. I will contact you individually to discuss whether we feel your child will benefit from the increased treatment focus that occurs during summer and what specific areas should be addressed. The materials fee for this summer is $350, which covers chartered buses, public transportation, event admissions, snacks and lunch, plus raffle prizes.

Click here to access Summer Interest Form

4. Dr. Gale Giving Nationwide Webinar, March 29th: 50% Discount available

Every few years I give a webinar for Lorman Educational Services entitled Difficult and Disruptive Students. I do not advise that LUNCH Groups^® families attend because you have already received information for 80% of what I'll be presenting. However, I am letting you know about it in case you know of other parents who may be interested in this information. They can attend at 50% off, using the information provided below.

• Click here to view the brochure from Lorman
• Click here to register online or families can call 866-352-9539 and use the discount code: F7211414 and priority code: 15999.

Again, you do not need to sign up for this. I don't think you would gain much from it.

5. Final Item: New Website for LUNCH Groups^®

I have been working to develop a cleaner version of the website, www.lunchgroups.com and it is now up and running. Because the website can take a couple of days to fully "propagate," (techie definition: when domain name servers (DNS) on the Internet world-wide update their records (DNS tables) to reflect any updates to domain names and IP addresses), it is possible you will encounter problems initially getting to it. (This is why I'm doing it over a weekend when we only have one group the following week).

If you encounter any problems, you have three choices:

1.  When you visit www.lunchgroups.com, it may give you a scary message saying it is unsafe. That isn't true, but you will have to click on "advanced" to say, "proceed anyway," and ignore the dire threats you receive. This is occurring because the SSL certificate hasn't been validated as soon as that process finishes, you should be able to access it as usual.
2. As a temporary solutions, you can visit https://bruce-gale-wc52.squarespace.com and everything will work fine.
3. If you wish to revisit the old site, just go to www.lunchgroups.net. 

Also, it is possible that your "browser cache" needs to be cleared. Type "Clear Google Chrome Cache" (or insert the name of your Browser, e.g., Internet Explorer or Safari instead of 'Chrome') and you will find clear directions on what to do. This can cause a problem because your browser is remembering the old version of the web site rather than reading the information from the internet. It will resolve in a few days either way and you will see this:

For those of you wondering, how to get to the parent portal, I'll have that installed on the new site by Monday.

I know, that was a lot of information. Thanks for reading through this. Feel free to be in touch if you have any questions.