Principal’s Message

Supporting Our Sharks: Safety, Belonging & Student Support

At La Mesa, we want every child to feel safe, known, respected, and supported. We know that growing up includes learning how to navigate friendships, conflict, emotions, and challenging moments. We take concerns seriously and want families to know how we work together to support students.

Safety & Supervision

We have established supervision, visitor check-in, emergency response, and dismissal procedures to help keep our students safe. We appreciate families following these procedures so we can maintain a safe and predictable campus for everyone.

Helping Students Learn Through Challenges

We use a multi-tiered approach to behavior support, beginning with proactive teaching, relationship-building, and clear expectations. When students need more support, we provide additional coaching, check-ins, problem-solving, and individualized interventions.

We also know that not every difficult peer interaction is bullying. Students may make unkind choices, have disagreements, exclude others, or make mistakes. These behaviors matter, and we address them while also helping students learn, repair relationships, and make better choices.

When a concern may involve bullying, harassment, or student safety, we listen carefully, gather information from multiple perspectives, and determine the appropriate next steps. Our goal is to keep students safe while helping every child learn and grow.

We consistently use Second Step across TK–8 to explicitly teach empathy, communication, problem-solving, responsible decision-making, and healthy relationships.

We Are Partners

We appreciate families bringing concerns to us. When challenges arise, our goal is to work with you and your child to understand what happened, provide the right level of support, and help students develop the skills they need to navigate future challenges.

Please join us for our upcoming School Site Council Meeting on Thursday, August 27 at 4:30 p.m. in the La Mesa Library. I will share an overview of our safety procedures, dismissal practices, and approach to student behavior, followed by an opportunity for families to ask questions.

Thank you for trusting us with your children and for partnering with us as we help our Sharks learn, grow, and thrive.

As always, here is a copy of the La Mesa Family Handbook to answer many of your questions!  You can expect to receive “Shark News” from me - every week.  Please make sure to read the Shark News every week so that you don’t miss any important information!

Thank you for your continued partnership,

Julie Alderete

Principal

jalderete@mpusd.k12.ca.us

Back to School Connections begin next week.  

The purpose of the parent–teacher home connections is to listen to families and learn how we - as a school - can be most supportive of your child’s unique needs. We acknowledge that our families have a lot of wisdom to share about how to support children academically, socially, and emotionally.  Our goal is to strengthen positive and proactive connections between teachers and families.  

• Back to School Connections for 1-8th Graders: August 17 - August 21

• School will dismiss at 12:50 pm next week for all students TK - 8th

• If families have trouble signing up, they can call the front office or email their teacher directly

This event is designed for the staff members to listen to parents.  This is not a typical conference where teachers will share student progress. Our teachers are prepared to ask meaningful questions so that they can duplicate the academic, social, and/or emotional practices that families are using with their children.  Our hope is to create more positive and proactive connections between teachers and families.

Please check backpacks for information related to School Picture Day on

Friday, August 28, 2026

All Photo Purchases are directly through LifeTouch

We will not have cash or change on hand, so please send exact amount.