Dear Parent/Carer

As you will be aware the academy is organising an amazing trip to New York on Saturday 8th April 2023 for 3 nights. This forms part of our 10 year anniversary celebrations. Stone Soup Academy are paying for everything for our young people. Our four staff that are accompanying them are also giving up some of their Easter Holiday and without their commitment to the Academy and our young people this trip would not have run. We know that this will be life changing for our students, it will widen their view of the world and add to their own personal cultural capital.

We have had a great deal of interest in this trip and many students have returned their forms with the support of you as parent/carers. Last year Jim Robison, a native New Yorker, joined us at the academy and completed workshops with all interested students. The main focus was ‘you cannot change the past but the future is down to you’. Lots of our young people were enthused about the possibility and during this workshop made a commitment to get on the trip by improving all aspects of their attitude, behaviour, attendance and punctuality.

With only six places the difficulty was always going to be how we chose the students who could go. I know that we have lots of young people who are really trying and also really want to go. To make it fair we will be choosing the successful students by looking at:-

• Attendance (to school and lessons)

• Punctuality

• Behaviour

• General attitude in school and with staff and students

Where two students have the same data we will complete a draw to establish who will go.

Once the students have been chosen I will issue a letter and this will need to be brought home for you to again agree that you are still happy for your child to go. You are also making the commitment to complete any required paperwork for Visas etc which we will organise and pay for.

Successful students will be told on Monday 23rd January 2023.

Please be advised that names can be changed up until the end of March. If we see a drop in the performance of the six chosen students, then we will remove them from the residential. We will replace with other students who just missed out but who were also keen to go and who were also really doing well.

As always thank you for your continued support and I will be in contact soon if your child has secured a place. Please let me know if you have any queries or questions.

Kind regards

Kerrie Henton

Principal