Admin Welcome 2021-22

Good morning, South Charlotte middle families and students. Welcome to the new school year. I'm doctor Sharon Dougherty, and I am the interim principal in the absence of miss bales, who will be back soon. Welcome to south Charlotte middle, the south Charlotte way is doing the right thing all day every day. So welcome shockers. We're ready for you. We have been hard at work, and I know you've been hard at work this summer, getting ready for the school year. I'd like to introduce our administration, Lisa bales, is the principal, and she is out on leave right now. Again, I'm doctor Sharon Dougherty. I'm the interim principal. Andre Plaisance is the assistant principal and grade 6 administrator. Carl Sanford is grade 8 administrator and Kim young is the great 7 administrator. Current safety protocols have been sent out to parents. There is a lot of information out there about the current safety protocols for COVID. And they're changing. So it is a day to day change possibly. We will keep you updated as things continue to change and as they relate to what we're doing in the school building. Keep in mind that when in the building, students and adults must wear masks at all times when wearing a mask, social distancing should be three feet apart when possible with students. Students will be working in groups. We can avoid those things. Student desks may be in pods, but we do have three feet of clearance with that. The exceptions will be for eating and drinking, social distancing should be 6 feet apart when possible. And this involves our cafeteria students will eat in the cafeteria. And we have some other things planned in terms of where students may have their lunch. Guidelines will also evolve with community numbers as we see if those numbers increase if they stay the same or if they decrease. So we will also look at lessons learned from last year as students came back for the rest of their learning. Together, we've got this if you have any questions, we would appreciate you calling us, letting us know what those concerns are, typically we can address most of those concerns and anyone we can address will involve our area office. It's so nice to meet all of you and I'm looking forward to working with you soon. I'd like to introduce mister Carl Sanford, our 8th grade administrator. Hello, everyone. I'm Carl Sanford, serving as your 8th grade administrator this year. I'd like to introduce our PTO, presidents this year. Serving as co presidents are Kim susai and Christy hare. This next slide gives you information about how to stay connected with our PTO with our social media links, our website, our email address, Facebook, Instagram, and how to link your Harris teeter Vic card. Some of our school fees this year, students will be required to use agenda for school assignments and organization. Chromebook bags are paid. Your fees of your students three years at south Charlotte. PTO covers the call in advance to complete your order, please pay with your credit or debit card at pay for school stuff dot com. Checks can be made payable to the south Charlotte middle school PTO and cash will be accepted if you are unable to go online. Payments are due Friday, September, the third. Some of our fees are the student fees or $30. It covers south Charlotte middle school required items. Such as agendas and Chromebook bags. PTO membership fee is $5 per family and the 6 7th and 8th grade enrichment fund fees. The annual fund donation building a legacy has different tiers, such as platinum, gold, silver, and bronze, supports south Charlotte middle school, PTO by being an annual fund donor. A few examples of what your donations go towards are Jim sound system, landscaping, staff development, classroom support, health room supplies, library books, teacher supplies, hospitality, and et cetera. These can also be paid for at the website, pay for school stuff dot com. Spirit ware is also available this year. You can show yourself Charlotte middle school pride with new gear from online store. The online store offers continuous access to sizes and styles. Multiple color options and personalization are available. Products are delivered to your home or to school for a nominal fee within two weeks of ordering. A portion of the proceeds from the store goes to south Charlotte middle school, PTO. That can be accessed at south Charlotte middle spirit ware dot com. Amazon smile can be linked, a percentage of your payments comes directly to our school. And Harris teeter can also be linked to support the school as well. Here are some ways that we can communicate with the community. We have our shockwave, which is a weekly newsletter of south Charlotte middle school. To receive our weekly newsletter and school emails, be sure to update your address and phone numbers and power school. If you have any trouble with this, you can contact our front office secretary for assistance. We also have an ability to link with Facebook, please like our Facebook PTO page. Good morning. My name is Kim young and I am the 6th grade actually this year on the 7th grade administrator. I have moved up to the 7th grade and I'm one of the deans here. So now let's talk about how you can communicate with the school. We know that one of the most important things is good and strong and frequent, parent, school, communication. So if you ever need to contact a teacher, please reach out via email or phone and we strive to respond to those phone calls and emails within 24 hours. We will say that dropping by the school and expecting to see somebody is a little bit difficult to accommodate and we really encourage you to, if you want to meet in person to make an appointment ahead of time by calling your emailing. Please note that parent teacher conferences are almost always held in a group. So if you want to make a conference with a teacher, please contact the counselor and that counselor will contact all of the core grade level teachers for that student and then we'll meet as a group because we really believe in always considering the whole child during a conference. And please remember we are now using canvas and all teachers have a canvas website and general information about the teacher in the class and homework can be found on the canvas website. About our cafeteria, misses Sweeney is our cafeteria manager. And this year, all students are receiving free breakfast and free lunch, all students, free breakfast, and free lunch. We begin breakfast service at 8 a.m.. Students do need to be in their first black class by 8 30, not so they're not marked tardy. So if you intend for your child eat breakfast, please have them here in time to being classified 30. If there are any dietary concerns, please contact misses Sweeney. Immunization in compliance with MC law parents and guardians must prevent certification of immunizations by the first day of school. However, we do have a 30 calendar day leeway, which brings us to September 24th. So if there are some immunizations that are required by law, we do need a documentation of that by September 24th, otherwise the student is excluded after that date until proof is documented. Nurse Nancy, our wonderful nurse, can answer questions about that. Attendance, oh, it's so important as food students should be at school every day. Truancy is when there's ten days of unexcused absences that have accrued. Please call or provide a written note within 5 days of your child being absent. And we all know that when students are missing instructions, they're missing all that academic information and practice time and socialization. And so we want students here every day. Bust information, expect delays the first couple days of school, perhaps even the first weeks of school, as everyone's getting used to, the bus routes. So we encourage you to be at your bus stop ten minutes early each day. If your bus is unreasonably late, there is a number there, 980-343-6715 that you can call to get information about your bus. And at the end of the day, if we have delayed buses, we try to send out a connected to alert parents that the bus will be late. We have plenty of opportunities to volunteer this year. We're looking forward to having parents back in the building. We will be needing test practices at the end of the year, possibly, depending on how testing is laid out this year. If we have a dance later this year, we'll need chaperones, PTO will be looking people to man the school stores. There are plenty of volunteer opportunities. Social and emotional learning was begun last year, the first period of our day. And we'll continue that this year and it's all about relationships. We will start our day at 8 30 with a 30 minute block of SCL. The topics range from responsibility to empathy, peer pressure, so wide range of topics. We survey students regularly and we based our topics based on the data from that survey. Homeroom teachers lead the SEL discussions and the student services counselor support to be homeroom teachers with that. The instructional day, so as I just said, the day begins with 30 minutes of SCL, then every student has a 70 minute block of math and language arts every day and science and social studies are also 70 minutes, but they alternate on the a day B day schedule. Embedded in our schedule, we have the academic enrichment block, which is about 40 minutes. Where students can participate in anything from robotics to jazz band, battle the books, a variety of enrichment activities. And also embedded in our day is a daily block for healthy living, kind of like recess, and that is usually around lunch time. Here is our bell schedule. There was one sent home in the shockwave and students will receive a bell schedule on the first day of school in their purple bag. And some other basic academic information, students will not receive their schedule until the first day of school on Wednesday. You remember you can always log in to power school parent portal to keep in touch with your students grades, the sign up instructions, you can contact this McKenzie in the front office for signup instructions. Hallmark policy is a maximum of 30 minutes per subject per night. When a student reaches 30 minutes in math and they're not done, that's okay. They maxed out their time. And you can just sign off that they have completed their homework. Chromebooks, all students will receive a Chromebook charger and bag on the first or second day of school. Students will be issued agendas on the first day of school at the student loses his or her agenda. He or she will need to buy another one for $5, but we use the agenda for a lot of things, not least of which is using it as an agenda. We really encourage kids to write down their assignments in the agenda. And now I'm going to introduce mister plays on. Thanks miss young. So some helpful tips for parents. Please make sure you're reviewing your students dress code policy with it's in the student agenda that you'll be receiving. The big thing to remember here is students need to be fingertip length, pants need to be up those kind of things. Cell phones are not to be seen during the day. Please do not call or text your child during the school day. The front office will call you if there's an emergency, please call the front office if you need to get a message to your child. Parents, it's important that you set those boundaries early from day one. Boundaries with regards to eating, sleeping, homework, extracurriculars, all those kinds of things. Please set those boundaries early and reveal them frequently with your child. We learned some habits last year that were great and we learned some habits that maybe were not so great. So please make sure you reviewing those boundaries with them. And it's really difficult to kind of implement those after day one. Couple tips for students. Sorry, I'm not advancing. Students, please make sure you're reviewing the dress code again with your parents. Please make sure you're keeping your cell phone away. Make sure you're keeping track of your valuables. Bring your agenda to school each day, make sure you're doing your homework, make sure you're getting enough sleep. And we really are advocating for students to advocate for themselves and to reach out to their teachers with questions and concerns. To send their teacher an email, parents feel free to reach out to us. So Wednesday is coming. First day of school is here. What do I bring? What do I do? Make sure you bring something to write with, make sure you've got paper, make sure you know how you're getting home. Students get so excited about what they're bringing to school, that they're not always sure how they get home from school. So please make sure you're reaching out that your child knows that you're picking them up in carpool that they're getting on the bus, which bus number. Lunch, this year, lunch is free. So please make sure you're either packing a lunch or you're planning to eat in the cafeteria. Bring a book to read, bring a positive attitude, and then if you have all your school supplies, make sure you're bringing those. But if you don't make sure you at least you've got something to write with and something to write on. Carpool. And I know this is everybody's favorite topic. The carpool routes are the same as they were at the end of last year. You're coming in that second entrance from 51, you're coming in, you're turning to the left going around the bus close to the bus line, and then you're coming right around the front of the school. We'll have two cones out there with big kind of X's. And anywhere in that zone is where you're dropping your child off, please make sure you're pulling all the way up to the front. So we can get as many cars out as possible. VM carpool, same route, we will do as we ended last year. We'll have kind of 6 stations where students will be called out and lined up waiting for you to get them. We are excited to start this school year. We can't wait to meet your child. We can't wait to meet with you and partner with you to make sure that we have a great and successful year. We have welcome videos on our website from the teachers. Please make sure you're going back and reviewing those. And then if you have questions, if you have concerns, please don't hesitate to reach out to us. We want to partner with you to make sure that your child is successful and ready to go to high school. Thank you and have a great opening of school.