March 21, 2006

UPDATE

March 21, 2006

Prepared by

Deanna Duncan, Principal

and

Dr. Richard Beall, Director

Dr. Beall, Principal Duncan, Sandi Vielbaum and CIS Board Chair Rick Halperin, and the leaders of the CIS parents organization will be available to answer parent questions on Wednesday, March 22^nd, from 8:30-10:00am in the multi-purpose room.

Last chance! The Book Fair will be here until March 22^nd. The schedule is listed below.

Wed 3-22-06 Limited hours from 8:30-9:30. Book fair will be packed up for pick up after 9:30.

Parents can now access the hot lunch menu online at our website under “CIS NEWS SOURCES.”

What will high school look like at CIS? Our 9^th grade families (and interested others) are invited to an informational meeting on Thursday, March 23^rd, at 6:30pm in the multi-purpose room. We will describe the course sequence, student internships, and other information.

What a response! The 2005-6 Yearbook Club has sold 180 copies! Only 20 more orders remain. The cost is $28. Order forms are available in the office from Ms. Hayes.

Every NC student must complete the Computer Skills test to qualify for graduation. Our 8^th graders took the test in November. Those who did not pass will have another opportunity the week of March 27^th.

For their generous contributions to the success of this year's Winter Dance, Special Thanks to Brooks Bostic for the use of Best Western Charlotte Uptown, Michael Stephan of Carrabba's at Concord Mills, Lucy Stephan of Valeria Salon in Huntersville, Jitterz Coffee, Dee York, Lynn Abbott-McCloud & Sibyl Wessler for helping to make the day memorable!

CIS Guidance Counselor Sandy Garmon has established a peer mediation program to resolve conflicts between students. The 11 inaugural members are 5^th-8^th graders who have been trained in specific procedures to help others identify solutions to their problems.

Front row: Abby Lamb, Kimberlee Robinson, Rishab Jain, Hans Honer, and Destyne Cresong. Back row: Andrew Wrist, Shannon Murphy, Samira Abdelrahman, Ally Krull, Sarala Mahlin-Korn, and Amritha Amarnath.

Ms. Morton and Mrs. Gordon’s Kindergarten students were about to burst. They entered the office so excited about their campus-wide hunt for the St. Patrick’s Day leprechaun that they were all asking at once for clues! We understand that the search was successful, and a bounty was discovered. Thanks to these creative and dedicated teachers for their extra efforts!

As you know, CIS is celebrating Earth Day this year on Thursday, April 13, 2006. Wow, only one month away. It sure is coming up quickly!! The educational focus of our Earth Day centered activities is to teach students how the world works and how to keep the world working by protecting our environment. One way to protect the earth’s environment is to throw away as few disposable materials as possible. That is why we are having a CIS wide Waste Off, that’s right, each classroom has been challenged ,dare I say dared, to throw away absolutely nothing on Earth Day. This is what we call a Zero Waste Lunch.

In preparation for a zero waste lunch, parents and students should discuss, around the table, perhaps-how they bring a lunch to school, in what containers, if they are disposable or not, and, if not, for what can they be substitute. More specific information about the Zero Waste Lunch will be sent home in subsequent updates.

In order to make the day blossom, please contact your homeroom teacher if you are able to volunteer anytime or resources (a list of resources follows this note). The Earth Day Committee meets weekly in Ms. Jones’ room at 4 P.M. and we would love to have you attend.

Items for Earth Day - Please Wash Out! Butter bowls, empty paper towel tubes empty toilet paper rolls, laundry soap containers, cereal boxes, plastic bottles, duct tape & yarn.

In order to begin shopping for appropriate library collection, cataloging and circulation software, a manual count of all the books we have collected for the CIS library was conducted last week. We are pleased to report that we have nearly 5,000 titles. This means that there are almost 15 books for every student at CIS. Considering that the average school media center in North Carolina has approximately 17 books per student, we are doing a phenomenal job, especially since our collection was built almost entirely from donations and there is no funding for our media center from the school’s operating budget. Thanks so much to all of you who have been supportive. Now we will begin the search for reasonably priced appropriate software to manage our collection.

Parent, John Basilice, has offered to facilitate a focus group process with randomly selected groups of parents and of staff members to obtain information on how to improve CIS. He will conduct the process in the next few weeks and will report to parents with the results.

Many of you noticed the law enforcement vehicles on our campus Friday afternoon. We wanted to assure you that at no time was our community at risk. There was a domestic issue and the law enforcement was called by the parent involved. We are proud of how quickly the law enforcement responded to ensure our community was safe.