The new school year at Sandpiper is in full swing with 510 students enrolled at Sandpiper. Renewed energy and excitement were in the air as students met their new teachers and reconnected with their friends after the summer break. Everyone had an opportunity to mingle with old and new friends at an ice cream social sponsored by the PTA.

We are thrilled that — for the first time since 2005 – kindergarten classes have been reinstated at Sandpiper with 100 Redwood Shores kindergarteners! We also welcomed back many first through five grade students this year who previously attended Belmont schools because of the continued space limitations at Sandpiper.

The Sandpiper community extends a hearty welcome and best wishes for a successful first year to the new Redwood Shores Elementary School community. We look forward to collaborating with parents, teachers and staff at RWS Elementary — our sister neighborhood school here in the Shores. Thank you Redwood Shores taxpayers for making it possible for every Redwood Shores elementary student to attend a neighborhood school in Redwood Shores.

Sandpiper’s Green Team enthusiastically kicked off its activities to help our students be clean, green and ecofriendly as we continue to support the Cool the Earth program. Activities include Walking School Bus: also known as International Walk to School Day, where neighborhoods of children are encouraged to walk to school together, trashless lunches: encouraging reusable containers and drink bottles, Nike Re-Use-A-Shoe: collection bins for recycling of rubber soled athletic shoes, Ecophones: collection bins for iPods, digital cameras and video cameras, and empty ink jet cartridges.

Thanks to the Girl Scouts and Cubs Scouts for their hard work in planting beautiful flowers in over 25 planter boxes throughout the school campus. They are lovely and add a lot of color and charm to the school!

Finally, as Sandpiper encourages children to walk and bike to school whenever possible, we’d like to remind motorists to please be cautious at stop signs and crosswalks. Remember that our traffic laws provide that a pedestrian must be totally out of the crosswalk — safely on the curbside, before a motorist may drive through the crosswalk.