January 11, 2008
Happy New Year to all of our families!
The KCPTA rolling food drive is continuing! The selection for January is KID’S LUNCH BOX ITEMS. Suggestions include: peanut butter, Fluff, packages of crackers, pudding, fruit snacks, apple sauce, etc. The drop off box is in the lobby. Many thanks for supporting this worthy cause!
Please remember that all students being picked up need to be signed out in the gym at the end of the day. No students should be taken from the classrooms for any reason. I know this can be inconvenient for parents, but it is for the safety and protection of our students and we need your understanding and cooperation.
The pick-up process in the gym is as follows: the students line up with Mrs. Cashman to have their names checked off and then they wait with Mrs. Bennett along the front wall of the gym to the left of the entrance doors. Once parents have signed the pick-up book on the stage, they may pick up their child to go home. We ask that you exit the gym as soon as your student is picked up as the Rec Program will be waiting to use that space. Thanks.
Mark your calendars for the second annual Education Foundation of the Kennebunks Spelling Bee! Come and see the KCPTA Beehives and the KCS Klaustrofobics! Dance with the KCS lobster mascot! Cheer for the teams! The date is Wednesday, February 13th…the time is 7:00 PM…the place is Sea Road School gym! Admission is free! Don’t miss it!
FUNKY FRIDAYS HAVE RETURNED! The first Funky Friday of 2008 was held this past week and many, many stuffed animals were in attendance! The mammals led the pack with the most animals, and Isabel Harms caterpillar was the only insect represented in that category! Mrs. Barrett, our Queen of Funky Fridays, has been reviewing themes for the rest of the upcoming weeks and has posted a list for you!
Many thanks to Matt Kidwell, who came up with a safe coat hook that could be placed outside our gym in an effort to keep coats off the floor, especially at the end of the day. He made and installed 48 of them! They look terrific!
For the past twenty months the staff at Kennebunkport Consolidated School has been working on our accreditation self-study in preparation for a visit from a team of educators representing the New England Association of Schools and Colleges Commission on Public Elementary and Middle Schools. We initially went through the process of accreditation in 1998, and this is our decennial visit. We have re-written our mission and expectations, and evaluated our school in light of the seven Commission standards: Mission and Expectations, Curriculum, Instruction, Assessment, Leadership and Organization, School Resources for Learning and Community Resources for Learning. On Friday, January 18th, Regina Birdsell, the chair, and Helen Rist, the co-chair, of our Visiting Team will be spending the day with us to set the stage for the team’s arrival on Sunday, April 13th. You will be hearing more about this as the time grows closer, but I do want to thank the members of the staff for all their hard work on the self-study…they have been amazing!
On Friday, January 25th, I will be leaving for Hannover, Germany, to conduct the preliminary accreditation visit for the International School Hannover Region. This is a tremendous opportunity and a great privilege. ISHR is a Kindergarten through Grade 12 International Baccalaureate school, participating in all three IB programs. While there will be little time for sightseeing on this trip, it promises to be a wonderful experience, and, as with all accreditation visits, we gain so much more than we give.
Plan Ahead:
January 14th: 7:00 Board of School Directors meeting
January 15th: 10:15 Jeff Quirk from CMP in grade 4 classrooms
January 18th: 8:30 FMM…preliminary accreditation visit…9:30 Grades 4 and 5 to SRS for a presentation on Martin Luther King