001Good evening everybody. Good evening and welcome to Anchor Bay Middle School North. So happy that you guys could come here tonight so we can kind of meet each other and get to know each other and find out a little bit about our school tonight. That's our goal. Uh my name is Mr. TD. I'm the principal here and I'm super excited to get to work with you guys over the next couple years as you uh enter our school. Um a little bit about me. Um I am a teacher and a coach at Harvard. I started off as a teacher and football coach um many years ago and that was not the original plan. And my original plan was to work with my dad who owned a medical testing laboratory and kind of follow that career path.
002And things didn't go as planned and uh I went back and visited my old football coach and uh he sat talked to me for quite a while and offered me some best advice I've had and that was to go back in education and to really make a difference. And um I did that. And it was a struggle to get through cuz I'd already gone through business classes and things like that, but got through, became a teacher and a football coach. I served uh as a coach in Riverview down river for 10 years and then I became a football coach in Elen for 10 years. From there as a teacher, moved into being an athletic director, assistant principal, came to Anchor Bay about 12 years ago and uh started off an assistant principal here and an
003athletic director and then moved up to be principal. So I've kind of gone the whole gamut of education. I've had experiences that really shaped my views and uh philosophies and it's really helped me in a rush. Um so this is uh the last voyage of the traditional Anchor Bay North where we were a 6 through8 building for a number of years. Um and it's been it's been a good year but it's also been a challenging year. Um I'm very proud of our students and our staff uh for sailing the ship. Um, and I believe very much in honesty and transparency. And so being in front of you, I'm going to tell you that I had a lot of mixed emotions about this transition, right? It started with a little bit of sadness, some frustration, maybe
004some anger, maybe even some pouting, right? But if I'm going to be transparent and honest, if I did not have those feelings, then I probably did not believe in our school, right? So going through those feelings is the normal course of feeling strongly about, you know, school culture that we have here. And I say this right in front of our our superintendent, Mr. Janowski. Um he is a good man. He is um a lot of integrity. He respects his staff. He listens. Um also, he's probably one of the smartest educators I've met around. So, I am jumping on board the ship. I'll do everything in my power to make sure this transition to our new school is going to go smoothly. So, this is a new beginning uh for our building to be a fifth
005and sixth grade building. That's kind of a relatively new concept. Um, but that is starting to catch on as I found out over the state and throughout the nation. Um, this year, every student that's in this building currently will not be here next year. They will either go to high school from 8th grade to high school or they're going to be going to South. So, that in itself poses some challenges, right? Because we have set expectations. Uh we've set standards. Our kids kind of know our building. And so when they go from sixth grade to 7th grade, they know it a little bit more. When they go from 7th grade to 8th grade, they know a little bit more. And then they pass down those traditions and those standards and those expectations on the younger
006kids. So that's all going to be changing. So we're entering all new students coming into our school. And uh so that's going to post some issues. We're also losing some staff, uh, some people that, you know, been family to me and to each other for a number of years. But we're also welcoming in a bunch of new teachers from elementaryaries that I've met and I've been very impressed with them uh, and the little bit of communication I've had so far. So, I'm super excited about that. Um, we also have bond work going on, right? So, you can't see it now, but in the back corner over there, a whole wing has been shut off where we have construction going on. Our counseling offices were there, our life skills office, um some other classrooms are down
007there, computer lab and things like that. And that's all but shut off. And so, that's going to be almost getting completed. Uh that'll be the first stage that's done. Once the doors close tomorrow at around 11:30, our teachers have about a half hour so they can get ready, but they're going to have to be out of their rooms and we're going to shut down a big chunk of our our building to start the bond work. So, those are some some challenges that we have. Um, but trust me on this, there has been a lot of planning that's gone into this whole transition. A lot. And uh we're working super hard uh to get this to be as smooth as possible. I think there'll be some hiccups along the way. Uh but anything that's worth anything
008that's going to probably add a little bit. Uh a little bit about us. Um I call it the Northway. Um we have a great school culture here. Uh we are a team. We care about each other. We respect each other. We don't talk about each other. We help each other. Um, this has been our our family here for quite some time and we're going to continue that. We're going to build on that. Um, when kids and staff feel respected, uh, when they feel appreciated, they're going to give a little bit more. They're also going to have a little bit of confidence and they're also going to have willingness to experiment which is a very essence really of learning to be able to have that confidence to experiment put yourself outside the box expose yourself to
009new ideas. So we are a team that is our culture here. That's what we try and build. Sales ship you're going to hear that a lot over the next couple of years. Um, everything that we put out, we always end it with that. And what that means is that's kind of our motto. Um, traditionally we were the sailors. We're going to be the tars now. Sailors and tars are pretty similar, right? They're on a ship. Well, I consider I told all my kids that have to come here. I consider this big building a ship. It's our ship. And to get that ship sailing properly, we need everybody's help. Everybody's got to have a role to play. From our teachers to our staff to our students, everybody is important. We got to have that belonging, that
010sense of belonging that kids feel part of something. That is how you make strides to be great. That is our goal here. It's always been to sail our ship and we need everybody's help doing that. Another thing that I truly believe in is a long time ago a great leader that I knew spoke to me um in his office and he said any organization you belong to whether it's a school whether it's a business whether it's a team you are what you preach and we preach I preach preach that we want to be the best middle school in the state. We preach that. I talk about it. I talk a lot about it. I talk to my staff about it. I talk to my students about it. I want our students telling you about it.
011I want them to tell their friends about it. I want them to tell their grandparents about it. We want them to be proud of where they go to school and strive to be the best. We always are striving to do better. We want to set the bar high and we don't want to lower that bar. We don't want to lower our academic standards. We do not want to lower our behavior standards. We want to help our kids get over that bar. We don't want to lower that to allow them to get over it. Couple things I also preach to my kids when they come in here is we want our students to be great. We don't want them to be average. I tell them that all the time. Don't be average. Anybody can be average.
012Be great. I say that in speeches very often. Be great. Do things to be great. And to do that, to be great, requires that you do some things that a lot of other people don't do. And I've kind of narrowed that down to a couple things. One is two questions that happen probably throughout the day often. The first one is there is something that you know you have to do today that you don't want to do. The question becomes is can you make yourself do that? That's a choice that you make. That's called paying the price. Do I want to go play with my friends right now or do I want to finish my homework? Do I want to study a little bit longer for that test? Those are steps you take to be great.
013That is an active decision we make. That's a question that we're asked over and over. I ask myself that often. Do I really want to write a newsletter today? I don't do that. I should do that. The other question is there are times throughout the school or throughout the day that there are things that you should not do. The question becomes is can you make yourself not do those things? That is a question that has to be answered because if you do those things that you're not supposed to be doing, that's not going to lead to greatness, right? That's going to lead the other way. And so I try, our teachers try to drive those points home to our students that we want to be the best that we can be. So next year we
014have a huge year of change, right? We're changing this kind of rock the ship a little bit. Next year, my goal from the very getgo is to study the ship to get it sailing straight again to have laser-like focus on not all the changes that are happening or happened. It's on the goal at hand now. We know where we are. We know what we're doing. We know the path forward. We're going. We're striving to be great. That is my job next year is to study this ship and stabilize things. Again, there's probably going to be some hiccups along the way, most road, but we're going to get through it. I can promise you that. I get this question a lot um from parents that are coming from elementary to middle school and that is, you
015know, what can we expect? What's going to be different when they come to middle school? And throughout the years, I've kind of narrowed it down to these three things. You're going to get a little bit more responsibility. You know, the school work is going to be a little bit more difficult, more challenging. You're also going to have a little bit more independence. They're going to have some decisions that they can make on their own. And they're also going to have a little bit more opportunities with some of the elective classes that we have, new friends that they make. Those are kind of the three things that I have noticed that you can expect when you transition from middle school to elementary. This is our schedule for next year for fifth grade. If you look here,
016it says one, two block, two other block. So, traditionally in middle school, uh you have six classes that you rotate through. We're trying to transition this, make this a little bit of a hybrid from elementary, transitioning to middle school, transitioning to high school, right? And so, one of those things that we decided to keep was a 2-hour block. So, those fifth graders that are coming into our building next year are not going to be traveling quite as much. They're going to have one two-hour block of math and science, and then they'll travel to their electives and their other core classes. The sixth grade schedule will be as it always has. They will travel to six different classes throughout the day. They'll have four core classes and two elective classes. Also, for the first time since
017I've been here, sixth graders will have a chance to have recess along with the fifth graders. We haven't had recess in the past. Another change that we're doing next year is something called trimesters. And that's a little bit different than what we've had for the year a number of years as semesters. Semesters is you take the year, divide it in half, you have the first semester, second semester. You divide it in half again. You have a first market period, second mark period, third and fourth. Trimesters are a little bit different. We divide the year into three. Why do we do that? Couple reasons. You get more feedback. and students receive report cards three times per year. Uh there's shorter grading periods. Uh with 12week grading cycles, students have a little bit more time to manage
018time, focus on learning and also, you know, improve their performance. Another one is uh there's greater flexibility with electives. I think that's really key. There were times where our school in the past has only had two electives. Okay? And usually sometimes one of those is taken away if somebody is in band the entire year. Now they're going to have the opportunity to have many more electives throughout the school. Lastly, another key thing for trimesters is they kind of line up a little bit better with sports. I realize we're not going to have sports here per se. We're going to have inter murals hopefully in the future. But if you take a look at the fall, the first semester kind of ends right when the fall season ends. Second semester will end right when the winter
019season ends. So those kind of match up a little bit better uh for athletics as well. Um our core classes are listed here. This is the meat potatoes of our school. Math, science, social studies, and language arts. Nothing's changing there. Um, and these are our electives. As part of our effort to give students a well-rounded education, um, we're excited to offer what's called wheel scheduling for electives. With the shift to trimesters, each trimester is divided into four six week elective rotations. So instead of getting two electives or one elective per semester, now they're going to get each trimester, they're going to get a six week rotation of two, another six week rotation of two. Second seme or trimester, same thing. So they get far more elective experiences than we've had here. It comes out to
020about 12. What does come to 12? Um, this approach exposes students to a wide variety of subjects, helps them discover new interests. So, for fifth grade, if your students coming in next year as a fifth grader, they will have computers, science, STEM, physical education, art, and music. Also, they choose band. If you're a sixth grader, you will have careers, writing, maker space, physical education, art, and life skills. And again, they will rotate through. Fortunately, also, we were able to schedule in a way where they're each they're going to get those twice throughout the year. They're going to have a part one and then a part two. So, let's say for life skills, which is really cool class, cooking and things like that, you know, they can learn the basics of cooking, uh, safety precautions, things
021like that. When they return back the next one, the they can start cooking some more advanced type things. And that's going to hold true for all those celebrities as well. Um, you know, I I told you earlier that I I I came from Elgen and uh loved Elan, great people there, uh, great community. Um, but I was very much surprised at how many opportunities and offerings that Anchor had compared to other. For instance, if you take a look at our high school, they have a built-in CTE program there. I can't even list all the different um classes they have in CTE there, but it's it's quite immense. And to compare that is when I was at Elad, what happened is they had classes like that, but the kids had to get on the bus and
022drive all the way to Mary'sville for the St. county reset out there or the ISD it's called to take those classes. So you're missing much of instruction by just traveling out there. All that is housed in a high school and so we are lots of possibilities and we have kind of the foundation is leading up into seventh and eighth grade they'll have more and then the high school will have tons. So a lot of opportunities here in Lincoln Bay. Um, athletics. So, this this is a big piece. I I I love athletics and coaching. Um, so that's a piece that, you know, I miss a little bit, but I'm looking forward to um, you know, maybe offering some interviews in the future hopefully the year after next year once we settle things down. Um, and
023those will feed into our programs. I think that'd be very helpful. Get our kids playing some sports and have the opportunity to play sports earlier. Uh for sixth graders, they will still participate when they want to in the following sports that they always have done. So at Ank North, sixth graders can always has have always participated in cross country, wrestling, dance, cheer, and swimming. So those will all be still available. Now, some of those sports may practice here. Some of those sports may practice at South. But what's good about this is they have developed a plan in which our kids can now get on a bus or have a bus here that would shuttle them to south at the practices there. And additionally, which I didn't know just until recently, which I think is great,
024they will shuttle the kids back to north if that's too far of a drive for you live like across the street. I get it cuz I I've lived across the street. So, I think that's going to be a nice benefit to try and ease that transition. As I said earlier, Ross will hopefully off with some inter mural sports in the future. Um, our lockers, everybody here in our school will have a locker. All students will have a locker with a combination. Uh, students are expected to store their belongings in their lockers, including coats and book bags. Uh, they don't we don't allow book bags and coats to go to class. Um, they store those in the locker. And this could be a change, big change for elementary. Um, I can't tell you how many times
025I've been doing this in a while. Walk in the hallways, you know, and kids struggle in combination. Our staff is amazing at this. They are out there. They know what to expect. Kids get nervous. They are there. They put their arm around them. They help them hit the combination. They'll even practice it with them. We'll go over it and over that first week, right? We are not marking anybody target. Okay. Um I will not allow that. So the first week nothing, the second week probably nothing. Once we start getting the third week and things like that, you know, we expect the students to be able to do it. But there's a lot of lenency in there. And I expect to be have a little bit more lency when we have fifth graders now. So don't
026worry about that. We will work through that. I promise you. Um, in the lockers they can store book bags, coats, also their lunches, things like that. They go before school they go to the locker. Uh, during passing they go to the locker and then after school obviously pick up their belongings. Uh, lunch, everybody's favorite middle school, right? Except people have to supervise it. Um, lunch we will have, traditionally we have 30 minute lunch and we're going to continue that. Um, students will be able to select where they see sit in the lunchroom. You probably walk down the main hallway here through our common. So, that's where our lunchroom is. Um, and when you get to choose your your seat and where you sit and things like that, that's one kind of go back to that
027little more independence, right? You get to pick where they they see they sit. Um, the lunch selection is also a bit more than what they maybe had in elementary. Our lunch staff here is great and does a wonderful job. I think they're going to like the food. Obviously, I do. Um, over the past couple years, uh, lunch has been free. Uh, I don't have I don't know if that decision has been made yet at the state level. Uh, our food service will communicate that throughout the summer and let you know where that stands. Recess. Now, this is new for me. So, I got to get my hands wrapped around that recess. I am excited about it. Uh because we are going to have the best playground around. I mean, I never had anything like this
028growing up. It is going to be something. I mean, I got tired. We had to push each other off stand. This is going to be state-of-the-art playground. So, our kids are lucky to have uh there's going to be a walking track if they just want to chill out and walk around, talk to their friends. There's going to be swing sets. There's going to be a whiffle ball field. There is a pickle ball court. There is a basketball court. There is a structure where they get some shade overheated from all that activity. Uh, and there's also something called a Gaga ball pit. So, I'm still I'm still trying to wrap my head around that. I don't know exactly what that is. I might need to look it up on YouTube and figure it out. But, from
029what I heard, it's a lot fun. So, our kids are going to have a nice playground uh to kind of let off some steam and and have some fun. uh buses. So, our pickup times uh for busing and things like that will be announced by our transportation department uh early in the summer. I don't have that information for you. They will announce that to you. Uh the buses drop off at the front of our school, the old front of our school, uh which is what the Ashley Street is. That Ashley side over there, there's like a bus loop there. Kids get dropped off there and they enter doors over there. From there before school, they'll walk toward commons and they'll sit in the commons until the bell rings, which we give them about 10 15
030minutes to get to their their lockers, get their belongings for their first class. Um, if you are at the end of the day, students are picked up there as well. And um this is another thing you don't have to worry about. Uh we'll have a big list, 800 kids. We're going to have 800 kids here next year. Big list. And it's going to have every student's name on there and what bus number they take. And I'll have staff on there with radios, walkie-talkies. We're getting some kids are wideeyed, worried about missing the bus and all that. We got people out there, okay? And we'll help them know where their buses are and get on those buses. Um, parent drop off. If you are someone that wants to drop off your son or daughter, uh, you
031will drop off in front of the school where you entered today. Okay. Uh, there are two drop off lines. There's one that's right along the side of the building. There's another one down the middle. There's actually three lanes out there. Now, back a few years ago with CO hit, right? more parents started driving their kids to school instead of taking a bus while the kids cram on a bus, right? And so what I noticed is I looked out there one day and the line dropping off was outside of our school down Ashley all the way down by Ashley Elementary and you know parents are getting steamed. They got to get to work. They got to do. So at that point I decided I'm going to go out there and just kind of help traffic get
032through. So that was 4 years ago and I'm now still doing it. But uh it's worth it to me uh because um you know I want to get the traffic moving, make sure everybody's safe and everything like that. And uh it's it's worked out good. I do enjoy it to wave everybody in the morning. Um sometimes when it's raining, my staff takes some silly videos of me dancing out there. So it it's a fun time. I enjoy it. Um, safety is my number one job here. Uh, your child safety that is that's what wakes me up at night. Okay. It's always on my mind always. And we're going to have 800 kids here next year. We're probably going to have around 60 staff members here. Everybody under my watch. Right. So, that is a a
033pretty big thing to do. It's always on my mind. And I want you to know it's my number one job. It's also why I do stand out in front of that school every single morning to make sure your summer can walk basically 10 yards across the street. I want you to understand how important that is to me. You're safe. They're safer. Okay. Um, and you know, it's I can be pretty busy throughout the year and I kind of figured it out. I'm out there every day for 30 minutes. That turns out to be about 100 hours a year doing traffic, right? And uh, but I want you to know it's it's super important to me and I'll be out there protecting kids. Speaking of that, we do uh, emergency drills throughout the year. You're you're
034probably pretty accustomed to these in elementary. Um we do five fire drills, three are before December. We do two tornado drills, one in the fall, one in March. We do lockdown drills. One has to be done before December. And we also have now started over the past few years uh at drills which is a little bit more extensive and uh we found to be very effective in research for emergencies of that nature. I usually communicate that stuff home prior to it happening. Not so much fire drills, tornado drills, but the Alice drills. I will communicate that with you before they come out. So you can talk to your son. So this is something uh I do want to talk to you about social media. Um it it there's a lot of good that comes out
035of it, but I can tell you being in principle, it's made my job much more difficult. Um over the years, we've seen it increase. Okay. So, one of the things that I recommend as a parent to you as a parent is all these different apps. Know what they are, right? Understand what they are. Know when your kids are on them. Know what your kids are doing on them. Familiarize yourself with them. The other thing that is important is to know the law because there are now some strict laws in place rightfully so against threats against the school or students that can result in pretty serious consequences. Also pictures, inappropriate pictures that can be a problem. Uh, so please, please, please talk to your kids about these. Make sure they're using those things in the right
036way. I can tell you some of the most difficult conversations I've had in the past few years have been in regards to inappropriate conduct on social media. So, please spend some time talk to your kids about that. It got to a point where I also have um created your help page and worked up some helpful websites and put it out on the page. Now we'll send that out early on in the school year actually before the school year. It offers websites that you can go on to figure out how some of these apps work, some of the ways people get around them, things like that. So, I hate to talk about it, but I I do want to warn you about it. Just know what they're doing. um respect very big into respect um I
037think it's it's very important uh as a parent myself um I try and teach my kids to be respectful uh not only to teachers not only to other students but also respect for themselves right how you respect yourself is doing the best that possibly can all the time. And so that's another thing that we really preach here. Work to be great. Respect everybody that you come in contact with, including yourself. As I talked to you earlier, um, a little bit about our expectations here. You know, we have high academic and behavior expectations at North. We do. Um, and we do not lower that bar. We will do everything in our power to help students get above that bar, but we're not going to lower that bar because when you do, you lower standards and you
038lower expectations. And when you lower expectation, your school will no longer be great. It's going to be average. We don't want that. We want North to be great. We offer a lot of things in regards to positive behavior. Um I think it's very important you try to reward good behavior first and foremost that kind of sets the tone for school and creates a positive school culture and that is being proactive right instead of reactive. Instead of waiting waiting for poor behavior and reacting to it, we embrace and recognize good behavior and we make that standard for our school and our students to follow. Some of the ways that we recognize good behavior is we have reward tickets called Saber Salute. And anytime a staff member sees a student doing something that goes above and beyond
039what the normal day should have, whether it's picking up trash, being kind of someone else that maybe dropped their books, helping them, we give a sailor salute ticket to them and they bring those and reward them that way and the positive effect that it has on kids. It's really cool to connect with them that way. And then finally, at the end of the year, uh we have what's called reward strips. So, if you've had good behavior all year and you've had good grades all year, um you qualify to go on a rewards trip. In the past, uh we've gone to Cedar Point. That's going to still happen, but it's going to happen in eighth grade, right? Um this year at the end of the year next year our work trips will be our fifth graders
040will go to the Walter and Mary Burke Park downtown New Baltimore down on the beach there. Super cool. This is Ben office manager who runs that. Does a great job. You have many activities including Tootsie the Clown, face painting, balloons, um lots of activities. Kids really love We got a DJ out there. We got food, we got snacks. It would remind you of field elementary. We do that. And also for sixth graders, they will go to David Busters and do traditional takeers. We've always had a little success with that. We love that as well. So those are the things we do to kind of promote good behavior and hopefully get our students on the right path of of choosing to be good and not the other path. Some special events. Now when all this was
041beginning, right, there were some concerns, right? Our fifth graders have always done this. Well, they still has a chance to do that. Um and some of those things I had never heard of. they are never done. But as I researched and I heard parents and I heard other people talk about it, there's some pretty cool things that they did. So we want to continue that. And uh one of those things is Starinks. And so we've already got that scheduled. Um and so all of our fifth grade students next year will still have the opportunity to go start this. We've already scheduled it. that starts in October and runs through the middle of December, one day every morning. Uh, another thing now, something that is super important, if there's one thing other than how I feel
042about safety that you got to take away when you leave here is that I love Christmas. I've had students and I I see a student over here that can probably attest to that that I had 20 years ago. What I used to do in the hallways, save Christmas carols. I still do that. And so I love Christmas. So when they came to me and said, "Hey, are you want our kids to still have that Santa shop?" And I'm like, "Okay, Twist Mark, I guess, right?" So no, we're going to have Santa Shop. We're going to schedule that. It's going to be December 1st through December 5th. So what we're trying to do is kind of do a hybrid of, you know, things we still did in elementary and transform that to a middle school concept,
043still making sure that some of those things are in place. We're going to have a fifth grade and sixth grade dance or mixer. We'll have those. We've always had those. Um we plan on doing that again this year. We haven't set the date or the the time yet for that, but that will be announced. We'll also have our traditional walk-athon. Um, we've already set that date for be September 26th. And we are planning to keep the biggest night in Anchor Bay alive and well, and that is dodgeball tournament. The dodgeball tournament. I'm telling you, I've had business owners, and I'm not kidding. I've had business owners come to me and say, "Hey, can you set the date for the dodgeball tournament next year yet? And I kind of pulled by saying, "Not yet. It's it's
044it's uh August." And they say, "Well, send it to me as soon as you can because we got to have more staff because people come here, fill this whole bleachers up there, standing room only. It is a huge event and people have a blast. Kids have a blast with it." And then they go out to eat downtown. So that's why they want to know when the dodgeball tournament is. So, we're going to keep that tradition alive and well, uh, here at North. Um, so, end of the year, uh, we'll have reward trips like I told you earlier, uh, students that have maintained good academic behavior and, um, grades will reward the end of year school trip. Um, also at the end of the year we have our traditional academic awards and we always have that
045right here and it's pretty much set up just like this except the students will be sitting here on the floor. Parents will be up there. We'll separate by grade. In the past we had a sixth grade, seventh through 8th grade. Now we'll have a fifth grade and then a sixth grade. So we're planning on keeping that tradition alive and well as well. Uh, communication. I am a big believer in communication and promoting our school and recognizing staff and students that are doing great things. Um I send out a principal corner newsletter uh pretty much every month throughout the year. Uh in it I will list upcoming events, describe some testing results, programs that we're offering, uh highlight staff and student accomplishments. Um, I also include another publication that I don't do, but they allow me
046to pay a membership fee. They allow me to put it in my newsletter. It's called Middle School Parents, and it gives helpful insight how middle school age kids think and gives us some advice. Having gone through the middle school years, as a parent, we can all use advice on that. And uh, it's been very helpful. And so, look for that communication as well. Um, in summary, I am super excited uh to get this ship sailed next year and getting to know all your kids and to work with all of you to make this upcoming year great. Again, there's going to be some payoffs, but we are going to push forward as hard as we can to make sure that your kids have a good experience. We have great staff that are going to work with
047them. We have great role models. Um we'd be super impressed with the teachers we have. Um our plan, this is not normally how we do things. This parent orientation today is not how we do things. Normally we have what's called sailor success and that is in August. Usually around the third week of August, it's a two-day um session. Kids come in, they spend five or six hours. They have groups that they set up. They visit other teachers. Each teacher has something to teach the kids. Locker combinations. They take a tour of the building and talk about uh how to make new friends, how to prioritize homework and time management, things like that. They rotate. They get all of this. They also get their pictures taken. Okay. Then at the conclusion of that, I have a
048parent meeting. I had my teachers come up and they present with what's going on this year. We got to change that a little bit because our doors will be shut to get the construction done. And so that posed, you know, that stressed me out a bit because out of any year, I think this is a year that we need to have a good orientation. So that's why I'm starting it this way. The other thing is, uh, we brought every one of your kids in in April. Uh all the current fourth graders and fifth graders came here for a visit and they toured the building. We talked to them so they got a little bit of a feel of what to expect. So how do I fix this problem of not being able to come in
049the summer? Well, we are having because of the trimesters, we get to come in a little bit earlier before Labor Day. So we have a half day and a full day before Labor Day. Those two days will be our sailor success. So we're just taking those two days we get in the middle of August moving through the first two days. Those two days will be strictly strictly about getting to know the expectations, getting to know procedures that we follow here, getting a good understanding of our school. Our teachers will do a great job with that. We'll have a plan. They'll get their pictures taken. Then they'll go back Friday, Saturday, Sunday, Monday for Labor Day weekend, and they'll come ready to go on Tuesday. So that's going to be our plan to to bypass not
050having a sale recess during August. So that is the plan for next year. I hope that this offered a little bit of an idea of what we stand for, what we want for your kids, how we're going to do things. There's going to be a lot of work this summer that I'm going to do sending out communications as things come on because there's things I probably have not thought of yet that I will think of and I will send you that information. So, look out. We'll we'll do email, we'll post on the website. Um, we'll get that information to you. Now, if and I say if I find out that construction, hey, it's going really well, there's a chance that we can get in a little bit earlier for a day or so, let the
051kids walk around. I will send that communication out. We'll open up the doors. You can run in, walk around a little bit, and familiarize yourself with it. I am going to offer tonight um please don't mind the mess because we got teachers that are packing up and moving schools. Um, so there are things in the hallways and stuff. Usually this this ship is clean. You have uh Teddy Wy uh who is just amazing custodian. Our afternoon staff uh thoroughly just as good. They they keep this building span. This is one of the oldest buildings in the district and when you walk it when it's all clean, you wouldn't realize it. They do a great job. Um so we're lucky to have But feel free to walk around a little bit. Um, this hallway here is
052the sixth grade hallway. So, if you have a sixth grader coming here next year, their class is going to be down this hallway. If your student is going to be in fifth grade, it's going to be the hallway all the way at the end. And as you walk down to this side, you'll notice it's all blocked off because that's where construction is. Turn right, you'll see all the classrooms. Now, those classrooms are going to be changed. Okay? And it's amazing how fast these guys work. Guys and g work. They tear down walls and clean it up and build walls. Like I can't even believe how fast they So starting tomorrow, every classroom you see when there's three, they're going to be turned into two. So we're going to have bigger classrooms and we're going to
053have lower class sizes than we've had here in a long, long time. So, those are just some of the things I'm excited about and uh I appreciate you coming here today and listening to my spiel about North and I hope you learned some things about our our expectations and what we stand for. So, again, feel free to walk around the building and I look forward to meeting all of you in the near future. Thank you very much.