KMS WEEKLY UPDATE

Dear Parents/Guardians,

We hope this letter finds you well. It is with great pleasure that we invite you to our School Open House, which will be held on Thursday, September 14th from 4:30-6:00pm. Families are invited to visit with each of their child’s teachers during this time. Families can enter the school through the Main Entrance doors, the Powell Street ramp doors, or at the doors near the Auditorium parking lot. If you need a printout of your child’s schedule, we will have a copy available for you in the Main Office for 7th & 8th grade families or in the 6th grade hallway for 6th grade families.

We believe that a strong partnership between school and home is crucial for your child's success. Your active involvement and support make a significant difference in their educational journey. Open House provides an excellent opportunity for you to become better acquainted with our school and the dedicated educators who play an essential role in your child's education. During this event, you will have the chance to:

• Meet Your Child's Teachers
• Explore the Facilities
• Learn About School Programs
• Connect with Fellow Parents
• Talk with the School Administrators
• Purchase Limited Edition KMS Swag

We look forward to welcoming you to our School Open House and fostering a productive and collaborative relationship throughout the school year. If you have any questions or require further information, please do not hesitate to contact us at 907-486-7460.

Sincerely,

Geoff Smith

Principal

Rena Rankin

Assistant Principal

This is where we will have a quick reference for the upcoming week. More info is usually listed lower in the newsletter, if needed.

MAP stands for Measures of Academic Progress and KMS will administer these tests 3 times this academic year. Please see the attachment below for more info.

We would love to have you join us in supporting our students and teachers this year!

Your voice matters and we can all work to make KMS BETTER TOGETHER!

If you can't make it, we will stream it live, so click HERE to join us Tuesday at 6pm.

Nurse Amber has informed us that our clothing closet is getting low. If you have any gently used items of clothing, especially bottoms, that you would like to donate for our students that require a change of clothes, we would really appreciate them! We are down to very few options and hope to build up a decent inventory of sizes (Small to Extra Large) for our students in need.

Donations may be brought to the main office and given to Mrs. Tricia. Thank you so much!!

Mrs. King still needs MANY pieces of plastic, wood, or metal to give the bus ramp art a facelift! If you have noticed the bear and fishes along the Powell Street bus ramp - several pieces have come off and need to be replaced. Anything you can spare to send in to the main office (bagged, please) will be put to use and GREATLY appreciated!! Thank you in advance!

Please make sure your student has a reusable water bottle to bring to school each day.

Thank you!

Lunch Bunch for 7th and 8th graders start next week on the 11th!

6th graders will start the following week.

If you're interested in Lunch Bunch, click below for more information.

During the course of the school day, teachers and staff like to recognize students who are caught exhibiting the KMS values of Respect, Integrity, Citizenship, and Kindness. We do this by giving out Grizzly Tickets. Every Grizzly Ticket goes into a bucket and from that bucket, we draw one winner per grade. The winners get to sit on the stage with up to 7 of their friends for the rest of the week!

THIS WEEK'S GRIZZLY TICKET WINNERS:

6TH GRADE - Will Malutin

7TH GRADE - Grace Daly

8TH GRADE - Jacob Vizcocho

Congratulations to all!! Keep up the good work!

If you have not done so already, please plan to send the Cross-Country activity & gear fee of $27.50 in with your runner.

The fees go toward balancing out the costs to run an activity, and includes team shirts.

If you need any other arrangement you can contact Mrs. King privately.

Thank you!

OTHER OPPORTUNITIES AND ACTIVITIES

Ms. Lhotka’s 6th grade Skills Development students made beautiful acrostic poems and blind contour portraits of their classmates. Look for your student’s poem and artwork in the 7th grade hallway at our KMS Open House next Thursday!

Nice job this week KMS Agriculture students! This week students harvested garlic and are learning how to cure it for storage. Students are also learning how to pollinate tomatoes and harvested our first crop of green beans. We have Italian prunes almost ready to pick on our fruit trees, strawberries developing and ripening, and we will have a huge crop of sugar snap and snow peas soon. Our sunflowers are so tall that they have reached the tops of the greenhouses (12.5 ft.)! Fall growing and harvesting is underway in our greenhouses. Students are so positive and have been working hard. What a great start to the year.

Parents, please read the attached Citizenship Project Press Release.

Discuss with your student their ideas and plans to complete this project. All forms are available through Schoology, one is available here for you to download, and students received a hard copy of the Individual Plan form. I am asking for a parent signature on the returned form. In addition, you will find a time sheet for students to begin tracking their volunteer hours.

If you have any questions, please email me. Hnorton01@kibsd.org

Here you will find events that will be happening in the next couple of months, but not during the coming week.

We want to give our families plenty of time to plan around our activities and opportunities.

Details will be posted later in this newsletter and/or another newsletter in the near future.

• 9/19: KMS Picture Day
  
• 9/29: Migrant Education Family Social @ 6:30pm at the Kodiak City Pool
• 9/29: KMS PTSA Cookie Dough Fundraiser Begins

• 10/1: Migrant Education Family Social @ 1:30pm at the Kodiak City Pool
• 10/11-13: KMS Dance Team Auditions @ 3:45-5:30pm at Community Schools Dance Studio (across the hall from KMS Green Room)

Families must be present to sign their students up for their beloved annual swim and ice rink pass.

September 29 and October 1st Migrant Education Family Socials are the only opportunities to sign your students up for this pass.

We will no longer be taking requests throughout the year.

Please plan to attend if you wish to have your annual City of Kodiak facility use fee covered by our department.

If you have any questions, please contact KIBSD Federal Programs at 907-486-7596

It's almost time for the annual KMS PTSA Cookie Dough Fundraiser!!!

Are you ready?

Because I. AM. READY!

Kodiak Middle School Dance Team Auditions

Open to all students in grades 6-8

See below for more information:

DonorsChoose.org has several current Kodiak projects that are looking for funding, including a few at KMS.

Some are even eligible for matching funds today.

If you are interested in donating, please click HERE.

*If your student arrives after the morning bell please direct them to the main office entrance, to see the attendance secretary, Mrs. Tricia. All tardies will be marked unexcused unless a parent calls the attendance line (907-486-7460) and leave a message to excuse them.

Students will not be marked tardy if there is a bus delay.

Your student's lunch account can be paid via cash/check to main office, or online via the PowerSchool Parent Portal.

FOR INFO ON FREE/REDUCED MEALS, CLICK HERE

Click the button below for directions to set up a new account, check balance, or add funds.

To make sure you are receiving all communication from KMS, please take a moment to verify that your emails and phone numbers are correct in the PowerSchool Parent Portal.

This is the main way we will send home general school-wide information.

If you do not have a PowerSchool Parent Account, click <<HERE>> for instructions on how to set one up.

If you do not know the ACCESS ID and Password for first-time set-up, please call our main office secretary at 907-486-7460.

If you have already set up your PowerSchool Parent Portal, click <<HERE>> to sign in.

Feel free to bookmark this link for a quick way to see your student's :

• grades
• assignments
• lunch balance, etc.

If your student has an allergy or asthma that is not on file, please call our school nurse and update your student's info.

KIBSD-issued iPads are to ensure each student has the technology to participate and complete the coursework for each of their classes. If you would like to enable parental controls to manage your student's device, the app below is free to use and compatible with iPhone, iPad, Apple Watch, and Android.

The graphic below is clickable, as well.