July 9, 1996
Volume 1.6
Summit Middle School will hold an all-school outdoor party on Saturday, July 20, at the home of Chuck and Judy Demarest on the banks of South Boulder Creek in the Eldorado Springs area. This party will be a relaxed opportunity to talk with the principal and the board members, to get to know the faculty and other Summit students and families, and to have a good time.
Summit students (enrolled and wait-listed) and their families are welcome. Games and activities are planned for students of middle-school age. The Demarest property borders a creek and contains a pond, so students might get wet. Dress accordingly. Parents will be responsible for their children at all times, particularly little ones.
To enable students to meet others in their grade, and to prevent an utter mob scene, the party hours are staggered as follows:
Sixth grade families: 1 - 2:30 PM
Eighth grade families: 3 - 4:30 PM
Seventh grade families: 5 - 6:30 PM
If the designated time doesn't work for your family, you can come whenever you wish. Those with children in more than one grade are welcome to stay for more than one session.
To get to the party, go south of Boulder on Broadway (Highway 93). At the traffic light about 1 mile south of Boulder, turn right (west) onto the road toward Eldorado Springs. Go 0.6 miles and turn right onto Senda Rocosa. Then take a prompt left turn onto the first dirt road. Once you turn, it is the second house on the right. (Look for balloons.) To keep the neighbors happy, please follow the directions of our parking coordinators.
Ice cream and soft drinks will be served. Families who wish to have a picnic are invited to bring their own prepared food and a blanket. If you want to buy King Soopers or Safeway grocery coupons, bring your checkbook. A few volunteers are needed to help with logistics. To volunteer or to get further information, please call Chuck or Judy Demarest at 494-2611.
In putting together Summit, we are building a community as well as a school. Hope to see you there!
To help in organizing carpools, Summit will participate in the SchoolPool program of the Denver Regional Council of Governments. Later this summer, SchoolPool will provide Summit with a computer-generated map for each Summit family, with nearby Summit families indicated. The maps will be distributed to parents by already-identified Summit volunteers.
BVSD is presently considering whether charter school students will be permitted to ride school buses for free, assuming there is room available and the student is willing to go to an established bus stop. Summit believes that such use would help mitigate traffic problems and would cost the district nothing. If you wish to express your opinion, call the BVSD Transportation Manager, Mr. Pat Sandham, 447-5120. You may wish to request an "Available Space Ridership Petition."
Parents may wish to consider purchasing RTD bus passes for their children as a transportation option. The cost for students is $15.75 per month. Routes 202 and 206 serve Fairview High School, adjacent to Summit and Southern Hills. Route 202 runs from north Broadway. Route 206 runs from Crossroads Mall, to Arapahoe, Eisenhower, Manhattan, Table Mesa Drive, and Broadway.
If we have enough students interested in riding RTD, we may be able to get a group rate on one-year "Eco Passes." If you are interested, call Summit parent Valerie Firth, 469-7529.
If you have questions or suggestions, contact the Summit transportation coordinator, Linda Greenberg, at 442-6498.
Based on student and parent input, the curriculum committee has decided which electives to offer for the fall semester. Registration forms were mailed to parents (if they were not picked up at the Summit general meeting on June 30).
We plan to have a display cabinet with photographs of faculty, staff and students. Please send in a passport-style photo at your convenience, perhaps enclosed with your elective registration form. Last year's school photo would be fine. On the back, write the student's name and grade level (6th, 7th or 8th). Our address is Summit Middle School, P.O. Box 3125, Boulder, CO 80307.
If there is enough interest, Summit will field a team for the Fall Middle School League of the Boulder Valley Girls' Softball Association (BVGSA). Students' commitment would be for one or two practices per week for two months this fall. There will be eight intermural games. Contact Mr. Dale Osterle, 444-7032.
As we advised parents at the beginning of the year, we are now admitting students from our waiting lists. We expect to admit some wait-listed students even after school begins in the fall. Thus, we are still accepting applications for enrollment. For purposes of determining priority, in-district and out-of-district students who have signed up after February 15 are treated the same. Because we want to balance our class sizes, we may have a few immediate openings for eighth graders.
If you are on the waiting list and wish an update on your status, please call our Registrar, Tricia Olson, 530-7107.
Proposed and adopted textbooks for 1996-97 are on display at the BVSD Education Center, 6500 East Arapahoe Road, Boulder, during normal business hours.
All Summit students are invited to a lock-in at the East Boulder Rec Center on Saturday, August 17th. We'll begin at 8:00 PM and go all night with swimming, basketball, movies, ghost stories, and all kinds of fun. The principal and many of the teachers will be there all night! More details will come out in the next newsletter. Mark that date!
Our hard-working teachers will need a break, once in a while. Help us furnish our teachers' lounge. We need a refrigerator and some living-room furniture. Your tax-deductible donations would be appreciated. Call Joan Harig, 466-1464.
We will gratefully accept your tax-deductible donations or one-year loans of working synthesizers for some of our music elective classes. We can also use a spinet piano in good mechanical condition. Contact Ron Harmon, 499-2061.
Summit is accepting job applications for an office manager, a half-time secretary, and a counselor. According to the terms of Summit's charter contract, the children of Summit employees are guaranteed enrollment at Summit.
For application information for the office manager and secretary jobs, contact Ginger Caldwell at 444-3039.
For application information for the counselor job, contact Christa Kastner at 303-469-4034 after 1 PM MST, or send e-mail to cdkastner@aol.com.
This summer there will be no required reading assignments. The following list comprises titles from all four Summit English levels. Parents may guide their children in the selection of books for their reading enjoyment.
Black Beauty, Sewell Call of the Wild, London Dracula, Stoker Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, Stevenson Frankenstein, Shelley Gone With the Wind, Mitchell Grapes of Wrath, Steinbeck Gulliver's Travels, Swift Hamlet, Shakespeare The Hobbit, Tolkien The Hound of the Baskervilles, Conan Doyle Huckleberry Finn, Twain The Iliad, Homer Journey to the Center of the Earth, Verne The Jungle Book, Kipling Kidnapped, Stevenson Little House on the Prairie, Wilder Little Women, Alcott The Lord of the Rings Trilogy, Tolkien Macbeth, Shakespeare Moby Dick, Melville Much Ado About Nothing, Shakespeare Oliver Twist, Dickens The Pit and the Pendulum, Poe Robinson Crusoe, DeFoe Romeo and Juliet, Shakespeare Sonnets, Shakespeare The Time Machine, Wells To Kill a Mockingbird, Lee Tom Sawyer, Twain Treasure Island, Stevenson Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea, Verne War of the Worlds, Wells Wuthering Heights, Bronte
Students and parents are invited to submit designs for the Summit logo. The design should be in black-and-white and should be suitable for use on Summit stationery, business cards, and T-shirts. Mail your designs to Summit Middle School, Logo Contest, P.O. Box 3125, Boulder, CO 80307. Thank you to the one student who has submitted a design thus far.
We received the following message from EDS:
EDS would like to thank the parents and children of Summit Middle School for their support and donations during Global Volunteer Day. We had a very successful charity drive, six or seven vans/pick-up-trucks full of used toys, books, and household goods. The Family Learning Center, the Longmont Coalition, and the Boulder Safehouse also send you a big thank you. EDS is looking forward to future activities with Summit.
Summit is an EDS Education Outreach partner.
The Summit Board of Directors has approved the following calendar for the 1996-97 school year:
Aug 5: Teachers report for work (flexible schedule first two weeks) Aug 23: Half-day orientation for students, followed by family picnic
Aug 26: First day of classes; start of first quarter Sep 2: Labor Day (no school) Oct 25: End of first quarter Oct 28: Start of second quarter Oct 30: 3:30-7:30 PM, parent-teacher conferences Nov 1: 8:00-3:00 PM, parent-teacher conferences (no school) Nov 11: Veterans' Day (no school) Nov 28-29: Thanksgiving (no school) Dec 23-31: Winter break (no school) Jan 1-3: Winter break (no school) Jan 17: End of second quarter Jan 20-21: Martin Luther King Day and semester break (no school)
Jan 22: Start of third quarter Jan 23: 3:30-7:30 PM, parent-teacher conferences Jan 24: 8:00-3:00 PM, parent-teacher conferences (no school) Feb 17: Presidents' Day (no school) Mar 24-28: Spring break (no school) Apr 4: End of third quarter Apr 7: Start of fourth quarter May 26: Memorial Day (no school) Jun 6: End of fourth quarter; end of school year Jun 9: Teacher in-service Jun 10: Teacher work day
You can help raise funds for Summit by purchasing grocery certificates from Judy Demarest, 494-2611. These scrip are sold at face value and are used like cash at area grocery stores.
The new URL for the Summit home page is <http://bcn. boulder.co.us/univ_school/summit/>. If you wish to be notified by e-mail whenever the page is updated, send an e-mail to trex@indra.com with the simple message, "Web update list."
The Summit Board of Directors and Organizing Committee will meet on Mondays in July beginning at 6:30 PM in the Board Room at the BVSD Education Center, 6500 East Arapahoe Road, Boulder. The meetings are open to the public.
Chris Howard, Chair, 673-0978
Jim Cederberg, Chair-Elect, 494-5647
Hunter McDaniel, Treasurer, 530-1840
Ginger Caldwell, Secretary, 444-3039
Ron Harmon, 499-2061
Tricia Olson, 530-7107
Chuck Demarest, 494-2611
Steve Haas, Principal, 447-5529