September 10, 2002
Volume 14, No. 2
Summit's Back To School Night for parents will be held on Tuesday, September 10, from 6:30 to 8:30 pm. Opening remarks in the multipurpose room will be followed by informational sessions with teachers in the classrooms. The program is tightly scheduled, so please arrive a few minutes early to receive information for the sessions for the remainder of the evening. See you there!
We accomplished so much on the recent Summit workday … but there are still projects that need your help. There will be another fun-filled workday on Saturday, September 28, from 9 am to 3 pm (or earlier if the work is done!). There are a few discrete painting projects still to be tackled, and the main focus of this workday will be walkway and outdoor lunch area improvements. RSVP to Tom Mahowald at 303-543-8903 to find out more and to volunteer to help.
This is a friendly-but very important-reminder to our families that the speed limit on both 46th and on Hanover is normally 25 miles per hour but drops to 20 miles per hour near the school from 7 am to 5 pm, Monday through Friday. Speed is monitored by radar. There are elementary school bus stops on both of these streets for the neighborhood children who are bused to school. Watch carefully for small, distracted children.
Also, please be safe and considerate of others in the school parking lot. Traffic flow through our parking lot is very tight at the beginning and end of the school day, and all Summit parents are asked to be aware of where you are parking and if you might be blocking another driver.
The heavy traffic in the Summit parking lot is problematic for many parents when they are dropping off or picking up students. Here's another excellent option. Tantra Drive on the east side of Summit's school grounds is a very convenient drop-off and pick-up spot for students. The crosswalk there is monitored for safety starting at 7:50 am each school morning and again after school, plus there's a traffic light at Tantra and Table Mesa to make turning onto southbound Tantra easier.
There also are public bus stops on the north and south sides of Table Mesa near the Tantra intersection. It's a short walk from the bus stops, all on paved walkways, along Tantra to Summit.
Finally, Mr. Finell reminds everyone that there is no supervision for Summit students before 7:45 am. If at all possible, students should not be dropped off at the school before that time. The building opens at 7:45 am and students who arrive before then must wait outside until the building is opened.
Thank you and congratulations to Beth McClellan and Penny Hannegan, who have agreed to co-chair Summit's Parent Volunteer Connection (PVC) for the 2002-2003 school year. These dedicated parent volunteers know Summit well and are ready to coordinate the matching of needs for volunteer help with the time and skills many of you have already offered.
If you have not already returned your Parent Volunteer Connection (PVC) survey that was included in your student's first-day information packet, please drop it off at the front office today. Thanks to those of you who have already stepped forward to volunteer your time, skills, and energy for Summit!
Students in grades 5 through 9 are invited to participate in the 21st annual Rocky Mountain Talent Search conducted by the University of Denver. The RMTS is an academic talent search program providing opportunities for assessment, recognition, and special summer programs for academically talented youth.
The program helps to identify talented students and offers them an opportunity to take college entrance exams typically reserved for high school students. Visit DU's Web site at www.du.edu/education/ces/rmts.html, call 303-871-2983, or stop by the Summit office for a brochure if you would like more information. Applications are due no later than November 12.
As part of their commitment to improving student achievement, Summit teachers provide tutoring outside of regular class time. Unless otherwise noted, tutoring is held after school until 4 pm in the classroom where the subject is taught and is available on a drop-in basis. In cases of significant schedule conflicts, other tutoring times may be offered by appointment. The tutoring schedule follows:
More space, a lot more space, has been a recurring request from students, staff, and parents at Summit. Summit operates a wonderful program, always in far less space per pupil than any other middle school in BVSD. When the district finally decided to allow Summit to obtain another portable classroom building for our school site, the Summit board began the work of providing this space.
Summit has agreed pay the cost of the siting and leasing of an additional portable. In addition to obtaining cost estimates from various vendors, we also need to arrange more power for the site, make decisions on location of the portable, and make sure that we understand the financial risk and impact on our budget. Ultimately, the Board authorized a lease for a new portable, with funding to come from the state money for charter school capital construction funding. Look for our new space to be available later this fall.
Budget discussions continue as a key topic for the Board. Several smaller state income sources such as the charter school construction funding, textbooks, and Irwin Award money are in amounts that won't be fully determined until we're almost halfway through our fiscal year, making the income side of the ledger hard to finalize. Summit pays a proportionate share of many district costs, such as Special Education and ESL. Many of these "overhead" costs have been increasing at rates much higher than inflation, and a few big ones such as Special Education have been increasing at around 10% per year. Since we don't control any of these expenditures, we simply have to pay the bills as they are presented. We've already received notice that rates for Special Ed are increasing even more than was projected last spring, even though BVSD already had the highest per-pupil Special Education costs of any suburban Front Range district.
BVSD doesn't close the books on the fiscal year that ended June 30, 2002 until October and we may see additional cost increases attributable to last year come through until then. It makes it especially hard to budget for this year when there is still uncertainty about what we're being charged for last year. Compensation for our teachers and staff accounts for the largest percentage, by far, of any item in Summit's budget.
Fall semester Board meetings will be on September 19, October 3, October 17, October 28, November 14, November 25, and December 12. Meetings are held in our library starting at 6:30 pm and are open to all. A "Parent Concerns" agenda item is always early in the meeting for you to share any comments you have with the board. We welcome your participation.
Interscholastic Sports:
Intramural Sports:
For a complete Summit sports schedule, see Coach A or stop by the Summit office.
Summit teachers are cool-and you can help keep them that way! Have you recently re-conditioned your air conditioning? Do you have a swamp cooler that is cooling its heels in storage? If so, you may be able to help Summit teachers -- and students -- "beat the heat." Teachers have requested swamp coolers, as their classrooms are extremely hot this time of year. So, if you have a swamp cooler in good working order that you can loan or give, please contact the Summit office. Thank you!
The 26th annual University of Colorado at Boulder Wizards Program is an informal introduction to astronomy, chemistry and physics, intended primarily for students in grades 5 through 9. Each show lasts about an hour and includes several lively demonstration experiments.
Free parking is available in lots 169, 308, 396, and 436. Parking is also available for a nominal fee in the Euclid parking structure on the CU campus. The September show is the last Saturday of the month. Other shows are usually the third Saturday of each month, October through June. All shows begin at 9:30 am. If you have a special access need or disability, please notify the CU Physics Office, 303-492-6952, a few days in advance of the show. The best wheelchair access to Duane Physics is through the east doors. Programs include:
To conserve money, time, and energy, we have moved to electronic distribution of Summit News. If you did not receive the first newsletter via e-mail or if you would like the newsletter sent to a different or an additional electronic address, please send a message to t.mahowald[at]summitmiddleschool.org. If you do not have access to email, copies of the newsletter may be obtained in the office.
To see the current or back issues of Summit News, information about Summit, links to other charter schools, and related education information, refer to Summit's web site via http://www.summitmiddleschool.org.
Our next issue of Summit News will be distributed the week of September 23. If you have news, notes, or announcements you would like to share, please forward them via email to pat.hyde[at]attbi.com or drop them by the office by Wednesday, September 18. Thank you.
(Read this to yourself aloud)
If a packet hits a pocket on a socket on a port, and the bus is interrupted at a very last resort, and the access of the memory makes your floppy disk abort, then the socket packet pocket has an error to report.
If your cursor finds a menu item followed by a dash, and the double-clicking icon puts your window in the trash, and your data is corrupted cause the index doesn't hash, then your situation's hopeless and your system's gonna crash!
If the label on the cable on the table at your house says the network is connected to the button on your mouse, but your packets want to tunnel to another protocol, that's repeatedly rejected by the printer down the hall, and your screen is all distorted by the side effects of gauss, so your icons in the window are as wavy as a souse; then you may as well reboot and go out with a bang, 'cuz sure as I'm a poet, the sucker's gonna hang!
"I hear and I forget. I see and I remember. I do and I understand."
-- Confucius