Dear Beagle Middle School Families,
Here are some updates that we wanted to share at this time:
Since this will be our last newsletter for the 2024 year, we wanted to begin this week’s correspondence with wishing all of our families a happy holiday season and New Year! We also wanted to take this opportunity to thank our families for their continued and outstanding support of our school, our district, and our community! Again, happy holidays and a happy New Year.
Unified Champion School: Recently, Beagle Middle became a Special Olympics Unified Champion School thanks to two of our students, Kenny Hubbard and Dean Edick, along with our Special Education Department Head, Mrs. April Welton. While our middle school has always participated in Special Olympics over the years, we were never an official Unified Champion School until the idea came from the aforementioned students this summer. In fact, Kenny Hubbard, recipient of the Everson Guild Award last year, suggested using his “Pay it Forward” funds from the Everson Guild Award to help Beagle become an official Unified Champion School. Through collaboration with April Welton and other staff members, the student and teacher team spearheading this initiative made the vision a reality a few weeks ago. Being a Unified Champion School provides additional layers of support, training, and curriculum opportunities that promote social inclusivity for all learners to help build functional and independence skills that will last a lifetime. For more information about Unified Champion Schools, please click here: https://www.specialolympics.org/what-we-do/youth-and-schools/unified-champion-schools
School Spirit Next Week: This week, our teachers engaged in holiday school spirit in an “Underground” fashion, which really kept the students on their toes and laughing a great deal. Wednesday was the highlight as it was “Dress like a student day.” We thank our Staff Culture committee for putting this together for the benefit of our students. Next week, our holiday school spirit will be as follows: Monday–Grinch Day, wear green; Tuesday–Ugly Sweater Day, wear an ugly sweater or fun shirt; Wednesday–Light the Candles, wear blue, silver, and/or sparkles; Thursday–Holiday hats, wear a fun holiday hat or headband; and Friday–Pajama day.
Winter NWEA Testing: Winter NWEA testing will take place after the holiday break on January 15th (ELA) and January 22nd (Math). We will provide more information about winter testing after break.
Parking Lot: As we discussed in a previous email earlier this week, we kindly ask parents to avoid parking in the drop–off lane early. If you arrive early before we open, please park in an actual parking spot as we need to keep South Street clear and traffic from Saginaw Highway flowing. Parking in the parking lot–either the main lot or the lot near the baseball field–helps to keep the drop–off loop moving along without causing a back-up onto South Street. The outside lane of the drop-off loop can also be used to go around vehicles that are dropping off; we just kindly ask that students are not dropped off while in this lane as it’s a passing lane only. Pulling all the way forward past the building helps significantly with traffic flow as 10-12 vehicles can pull up past the building while an additional 10-12 pull up from behind, which allows for approximately 20 or so students to get out of the car at the same time. This measure helps flow significantly. We will continue to do our part on our end to work with our parking lot staff to ensure they are crossing students in large groups from the parking lot in lieu of a few to help keep the line moving; our School Resource Officer will also be helping at the entrance off of South Street with traffic flow in the mornings. In closing, we also wanted to remind families that parking along South Street or in the subdivision to the North of the school to receive students at the end of the day is not safe; we kindly ask that families use the South parking lot instead of having students cross South Street heading North as our buses come down South Street at the end of the day.
PTO Meeting: We thank our families that attended the previous PTO meeting; your support is appreciated. We wanted to take this opportunity to remind our families that attendance at PTO meetings does not require an every month commitment; family support and input is appreciated whether it’s attending one or several PTO meetings. Our next Hayes/Beagle PTO meeting will be on Tuesday, December 10th at 6:30 pm here in the Beagle Media center. Families may also attend this meeting virtually as there is currently a hybrid offering. Please use the following link for more information: https://www.glcomets.net/ourschools/beagle-middle-school/pto/
Upcoming Events, District News, & Community Information: To review what the school district shares in newsletters about events, news, and information, please visit http://GLcomets.net/Upcoming.
Students’ of the Week: Please click on the following link to view this week’s Students’ of the Week: https://www.glcomets.net/ourschools/beagle-middle-school/studentoftheweek/. Please note that the list may not be updated until the following Monday as students are celebrated on Friday mornings.
Upcoming Important Dates:
12/23/24–-1/6/25–Holiday Recess. Monday, January 6th is District-Wide PD for all staff; students do not report.
1/7/25–Classes Resume
These are all of the updates that we have at this time. Again, we thank you for your continued support. Please reach out with any questions or concerns.
Take care,
Dave and Kelly
