July 28, 2014
Good afternoon to
returning and new parents of LMS students.
I hope you and your families have had a great summer.
I have been collecting
items to share with you over the past month.
Some information will be general in nature, while other items will be
grade level-specific. I will try to
arrange the information below so that it will be as easy as possible to
navigate.
For you parents/students
who are new to our building this year, I attempt to send an update out at the
conclusion of each week. My messages are
meant to summarize how the week has gone, highlight specific items of interest,
and look ahead in terms of upcoming calendar events and schedules. It is my intent to keep these updates as
brief as possible, while still sharing information I think you will need.
If you have any questions,
or if you determine that I have left out a critical piece of information,
please let me know. Should you and I
determine that something has been omitted, I will send out supplemental messages
as needed.
CONGRATULATIONS
and THANKS
I would like to publicly
thank, and recognize, the contributions of our office and custodial staff
members who have worked during the summer to close out the preceding school
year and prepare for 2014-2015:
Nancy Edwards, Principal
Secretary
Peggy Breidenback,
Registrar
Carol Stephens,
Scheduling/Counseling Secretary
Milan Rakic, Lead
Custodian
JB Tate, Custodian
Steve Bell, Custodian
I also could not function
without the support of our administrative team:
Dr. Tiffany
Taylor-Johnson, Associate Principal (Grade 7)
Scott Lackey, Assistant
Principal (Grade 6)
Sarah Schwartz,
Administrative Intern (Grade 8)
As I have said on numerous
occasions in the past, I am blessed to be associated with, and surrounded by,
outstanding colleagues.
CALENDAR ITEMS
Packet Pickup (see below for
additional information)
Monday, August 4
7 am to 12 noon
Tuesday, August 5
12 noon to 5 pm
District-wide Opening Staff
Meeting
Thursday, August 7; 8 am to
11 am (offices will be closed)
LMS Opening Staff Meeting
Friday, August 8; 7:30 am to
11 am (offices will be closed until around 9 am)
Community Night
Friday, August 8; 4 pm to
7 pm (see below for more information)
New 7th and 8th
Grade Student Orientation
Tuesday, August 12; 8:30
am to 10 am
(All 6th Grade
Students will have orientation on the first day of school.)
School Begins
Wednesday, August 13
Parent Coffee (all
grades)
Friday, August 15; 8:30
am to 9:30 am; LMS Cafeteria
Meet The Teachers Night
Wednesday, August 20;
6:30 pm to 8:30 pm (more information below)
After School Activities
begin
Tuesday, August 26 (more
information to follow)
School Picture Day
Wednesday, August 27
(more information to follow)
6th Grade Camp
Parent meeting
Wednesday, August 27; 7
pm to 8 pm
CORRECTION/ADDITION(S)
NEW ITEMS
8TH GRADE SPECIFIC
INFORMATION
Packet Pickup/8th
Grade Tdap Immunization
If you
have a student who is entering 8th Grade this fall, a Tdap
vaccination is required. It is a tetanus
booster shot with pertussis (for whooping cough). Most children have had this vaccine somewhere
around their 11th or 12th birthday. The nurse will need an updated vaccination
record to verify that your student has had this immunization prior to the
release of your child’s registration packet.
According to State law, your child may not begin the school year until
we have received the appropriate documentation.
If you need to check to see if your child has a current record on file,
you may contact the LMS Office at 314-993-3900.
If we do not have a record on file, you may have your child’s doctor fax
a current record to LMS at 314-997-8736 or it can be dropped off at our Office
prior to packet pick on August 4 and 5.
GENERAL INFORMATION
Packet Pickup
As indicated
above, student packets (including schedules) will be available at LMS for pick
up on August 4 (7 am to 12 noon) and August 5 (12 noon to 5 pm). Student packets cannot be given to
students without a parent/guardian present.
Packets will also be available through our Office beginning Wednesday,
August 6 through Tuesday, August 12. You
may also retrieve your student’s packet on Community Night.
Contact Information
It is important for the
middle school to have the correct contact information, address, and phone
numbers for your child in case of an emergency. Address
changes must be done by contacting our registrar and providing appropriate
documentation. Please take a few minutes to make sure your
child’s contact information is correct by logging on to the Parent
Portal. If you have not signed up to access the Parent Portal,
please stop by the middle school with a picture ID and see our registrar, Ms.
Breidenbach. You can also update your information by contacting our
registrar, Ms. Breidenbach at 983-5511.
Lunch Pricing
Our district uses
Chartwells School Dining Services for our school meals program. Information regarding our meal program, as
well as a menu for the month of August, will be available on packet pick up
days. Also included in this information
will be forms for our Free/Reduced meal program for qualifying families.
Meals prices
for the coming year are as follows for LMS students:
Breakfast -
$1.55, ($0.30 for Reduced price)
Lunch - $2.65,
($0.40 for Reduced price)
Milk - $0.55
Chartwells
uses Ladue’s meal accounting system to record student payments and purchases
throughout the school year. A few
reminders:
·
Establish
your student’s meal account before the school year begins.
·
Checks
should be made payable to the Ladue Schools Foodservice, with the student’s
name and amount enclosed in an envelope.
·
Pre-payments
can also be made through myschoolbucks.com.
Please note that it takes 24 to 48 hours for these payments to show on
the student account.
·
Pre-payment
deposits are recommended weekly or monthly to avoid negative student account
balances.
Balances from
the previous school year are carried forward to the new school year, and from
school to school. For balance
information, you may call the LMS Office or check myschoolbucks.com.
Community Night
Community
Night, held on the Friday evening before the beginning of school, is an
opportunity for students and parents to gather information, put items in their
lockers (see below) and locate their classrooms. Information from the LMS Parent Association,
Youth Baseball program, and our yearly fundraiser program will also be
available. BBQ provided by the LMS Dads
Club will be in the Cafeteria, beginning at/around 5 pm. Ladue Wear (PE clothing, etc.) will also be
available for purchase.
Since parking
on our campus is very limited, we ask that parents and students arrive that
evening in shifts, based upon grade level:
·
6th
Grade, 4 pm to 5 pm
·
7th
Grade, 5 pm to 6 pm
·
8th
Grade, 6 pm to 7 pm
Office staff
will be present in our Library for information and distribution/receipt of
paperwork and forms. Please be aware
that teachers will not be present that evening.
Community Night/Student Lockers
Each LMS
student is assigned a locker in their team/grade level areas, for secure
storage of their supplies and personal items during the school day. The location of your child’s locker will be
included in materials available on Packet Pickup days. LMS does not provide locks for student
lockers. As such, it is highly
recommended that students and parents delivering materials to lockers during
Community Night purchase/secure a locker prior to that evening. Personnel will be on hand that night to
record students’ lock combinations into our records (in the event that the
student forgets their combination or if we need to access the locker without
breaking the lock). Please be aware that
a specific locker has been assigned to each student by now – changing locker
locations on Community Night is not possible.
Changes in locker locations once the school year begins will need to be
approved by your child’s grade-level counselor or administrator. I have included two “Locker Zone” maps to the Blackboard Connect parent email to help
in locating your child’s locker on the evening of August 8.
Phone Routing System
We will be
implementing a phone routing system here soon.
Although it is great to be answered by a real person, this comes as a
result of the numerous calls we receive on our main line during a normal school
day. We have worked to keep the number
of options down to a minimum, to better meet your needs and respect your
time. Once implemented, calls to the
993-3900 number will offer the following options:
·
Clinic
·
Attendance
·
Assistant
Principals’ Office
·
Counselors
·
Registrar
·
All
Others
If the
extension your are attempting to reach is busy, my understanding is that your
call will be re-routed to our main Reception desk. Should this line be busy, it will go directly
to our Receptionist’s voicemail.
School Times
Our
school day begins with 1st period at 8:15 am. Our school day ends with the conclusion of 8th
period at 3:05 pm. Students arriving by car in the morning can access our Lobby
by 7:30 am (prior to that time, we do not have staff on duty for
supervision). Students arriving on
campus between 7:30 am and 7:50 am will be supervised in the Lobby. After 7:50 am, students will be directed to
the following areas, by grade level, before dismissal to the lockers:
·
6th Grade – Cafeteria
·
7th Grade – Gymnasium, Boys side
·
8th Grade – Gymnasium, Girls side
Staff
will be assigned to each area for supervision.
More information regarding traffic practices is below.
Traffic/AM and PM
Since most of
you are returning parents, I have save this for last. Nothing much in terms of procedure has
changed over the last two years.
If you are a
parent new to our building, or if it has been several years since you have had
a student at LMS, you might wish to review the following. Please bear with me, since this is easier to
explain in person than to type out. I have attached maps to the Blackboard Connect parent email to help make this clearer.
Morning
Traffic
We will have
personnel outside to monitor and direct traffic each morning by 7:40 am at the
latest. I usually am located at the
Clayton Road entrance, while a second staff member will be located at the back
entrance to our Circle Drive.
·
Prior
to the arrival of buses at around 7:50 am, all students transported by car can
proceed to the back entrance to the Circle Drive, enter the Circle Drive, and
enter our building through our Main Entrance.
After dropping off students, cars can then exit the Circle Drive onto
Conway Road.
·
Once
buses begin to arrive, cars entering campus will be re-routed to our back
Blacktop. Cars should proceed down the
Maintenance Drive, turn left, and approach our building through the
Blacktop. Students can exit cars at the
rear door to the Gymnasium and enter there, under the supervision of a staff
member. Depending on time, students will
then be directed to their grade level areas listed above or to their lockers to
prepare for 1st period.
·
After
dropping off students, cars will then exit our campus onto Clayton Road (if
buses are still in the Circle Drive). We
ask that each exiting car PLEASE turn left onto Clayton Road to expedite
traffic flow. Cars waiting to turn left
onto Clayton impede traffic exiting our campus a great deal.
·
Once
all buses have arrived and dropped riders off, cars can then return to drop off
and exit through the Circle Drive (the staff member and I remain outside on
traffic duty until 8:05 am).
·
In
order to avoid the bulk of our traffic issues each morning, it is suggested
that students arrive by car between 7:30 and 7:50 am.
·
We
ask that you not drop off your child in the bank parking lot (causing traffic
stoppages as students must cross Conway Road) and definitely not have students
exit cars while on Conway Road.
Afternoon
Traffic
Buses begin
lining up in our Circle Drive around 2:50 pm.
This blocks the Circle Drive from car access and exiting onto Conway
Road. At the 3:05 pm dismissal, bus
riders are released from the building first, while car riders are held in the
Lobby until buses exit the campus at around 3:15 pm (we get faster after the
first few weeks).
·
Cars
entering our campus are directed to proceed through the Blacktop at the rear of
the building.
·
Cars
then line up in the Maintenance Drive and wait for the release of buses.
·
Once
buses have cleared the Circle Drive, cars can then proceed to the front of the
building to pick up students.
·
If
you will be consistently picking up your student by car in the afternoon, I
would suggest that you not arrive until between 3:15 pm and 3:30 pm.
·
If
you have a need to pick up your student prior to the 3:05 pm dismissal, please
park in our parking lot (rather than the Circle Drive) anytime after 2:45 to
2:50 pm to avoid being blocked by arriving buses.
UPDATED ITEMS
REPEAT ITEMS
LMSPA eBlasts
If you are
not currently receiving LMSPA email news blasts but would like to, please click
on the following link to subscribe:
Board Briefs
Information
regarding Ladue Board of Education meetings and work sessions can be found on boardbriefs.blogspot.com
I look forward to working
with you, your children and our staff to make this an outstanding school
year. I will send out a supplemental
message to parents of 6th graders who may be new to our building
within the next few days.
Best wishes on the remaining
days of summer break.
As always, thank you.
Greg
