January News From CMS

January 4th, 2012

Good News From CMS

Dear Parents/Guardians:

Happy New Year!  The New Year provides us with an opportunity to reflect on the previous year and look forward to a new beginning.  This year, CMS welcomed students from the rural schools and several new faculty members to our school community.  I’ve been very pleased with how well all of our new students and staff have adapted to life at CMS and I hope that they have found it to be a warm and welcoming place.  I’m also very proud of our students and their accomplishments.  Our athletic teams represented our school with pride, our 5^th and 6^th grade Quiz Bowl teams did exceptionally well, and we had some great service learning projects that included: a makeover for the CMS cardinal, painting trash barrels, campus clean up, and the Caring for Sharing Food Drive.  Students in Ms. Cattnach’s 8^th grade Health class lead an effort that resulted in CMS students fundraising over $800 to bring Mike Smith to Chadron Public Schools, and once again Mrs. Kaus and her 8^th grade class put on a fantastic Veteran’s Day celebration.  It truly was a GREAT semester!

I’m looking forward to a new beginning with our Friday School program.  We learned a lot from Friday School last semester and we recognize the need to make some adjustments to help our students be more successful.  Specifically, we learned that two weeks is too long of a period of time for students to not turn in their work.  In many cases, students would have so many late assignments that it was impossible for them to complete all of them during the 2-hour time frame.  Therefore, we are going to implement a daily, 30-minute after school period called Overtime to give our students a daily opportunity to work on their assignments.  All students are welcomed to come into their teacher’s classrooms after school, but students that are failing will be required to attend Overtime until they are no longer on the F-list.  Friday school will still be required for those students that have missing work, but hopefully most students will get their work completed during Overtime, or at least make the list of missing work more manageable so that they have a chance to get it done.

In our continued effort to streamline the school’s budget, we will no longer mail 1^st, 2^nd, and 3^rd quarter report cards.  However, we will continue to mail report cards at the end of the school year.  We will send a copy of your student’s report card home with them and you can also access your student’s report card online through the Infinite Campus Parent Portal.  You may call the school to request an additional copy of your student’s report card, which you can pick up in the front office.  If you do not have access to the Parent Portal yet, or if you are having difficulty logging on, please contact Mrs. Schommer at 432-0708 and she will assist you.

Thank you for the many ways that you support your student(s) and the programs at Chadron Middle School.  We are looking forward to another great semester!