Cougar Connect

Principal Message March 20, 2023

Dear Kennedy Families,

Exciting week last week! Thank you families for your flexibility with the power-outages and school cancellation. We know that anytime school is canceled the burden falls on the families so we apologize and thank you.

Quick Kennedy Power-outage review:

If a power outage occurs before school begins the district could make the decision to cancel the school day.
If a power outage occurs during school we likely will finish the school day. (Staff are prepared for offline instruction)
If a power outage occurs during school and phones are offline admin can always be reached via email and can community with the community using blackboard from our cell-phones.

We are expecting some wind and rain on Tuesday and Wednesday this week so we will keep you updated on any issues.

I wanted to take a moment to express my gratitude for all the work families, staff and students put in for our musical Matilda. It was a huge success with over 1100 tickets sold! As shared during the performances over 300 Kennedy students contributed to the musical in some way representing over 40% of our students! Thank you also for the coordinated effort of families that brought floodlights and generators to MIT in order for students to practice during the power outage! Great job everyone.

Below is the Cougar Connect for the week of March 20th to March 24th

Modified Schedule March 20-24 (Link)

Accommodate parent teacher conferences

Academic supports:

After School HW club and math support are canceled this week to accommodate parent teacher conferences.

Author Michelle Icard Q & A Session

Thank you to the families that joined us for Ms. Icard's question and answer session last week. If you missed it please use the link to watch the recording (Link)

Check out her website (Link)

Student Store Assistance

Our student store is very popular with our students and teacher but it is very hard to maintain. If you are a parent or guardian who can assist during the day one week a month to help pack and inventory our student store please complete this link and we will contact you. As of February, we have had almost 6,000 purchases made in the student store. (Link)

Powerschool Parent Portal

Real-time grades are in PowerSchool and can be accessed at any time. Families that need support accessing students' grades should contact our Family Center or email Ms. Calderon.

Family Center # 650 482-2110

Ms. Calderon ecalderongarcia@rcsdk8.net

School Board Presentation

Kennedy administration presented their SPSA update to the board on 3/8/2023. Check out the link for more information (Link)

Nikolaos Fanourgiakis

Principal

Kennedy Middle School

nfanourgiakis@rcsdk8.net

Conference Week March 20th-24th

Parent Teacher conferences are this week!

Conferences this week will begin at 1:50 pm. Students needing a conference were communicated with by the their teachers the week of March 13th.

For this round of conferences teachers will be scheduling conferences with students that are struggling and with families that request a conference.

If a student and family doesn't receive an invite and still wants to conference please contact the staff member you want to conference with.

i-Ready Round #3

Kennedy School will begin iReady administration this week. Its is the final round of iReady assessments for the 2022-23 school year. As a reminder iReady is a district diagnostic assessment given to all students to determine what grade level content they have learned and what they still need to learn.

Below is the schedule iReady assessment dates for March:

March 20-24 Math assessment
Make-up March 27-31

Attendance

Attendance is very important, no matter what time of year, as every instructional minute counts. If students are sick, please keep them home. However, when possible, please schedule vacations and appointments when school is not in session. We were able to access data on the number of students leaving school after they arrived and it showed that the majority of students that leave early are because of appointments. (Link)

Parents and guardians should be notifying our office staff when students are absent. Truancy and attendance letters will be sent home to students who have excessive absences. Doctor’s notes are required for three or more consecutive absences.

Parents and guardians of students with 20 or more absences will be notified to set up a meeting to discuss barriers to getting students to school on time. These meetings are meant to discuss how we can work together as a team to ensure that students are at school on time every day.

8th Grade Families

Update 3/20:

Woodside - Sequoia Counselors are meeting with our students Friday March 24th

8th Grade Panorama photo is available for purchase. Students received this doc on Friday 3/10. (Link)
Sequoia Unified AVID Presentations: Sequoia High School has provided some information from students and families interested in AVID. See links.

Skate Night April 21st 6:00 pm - 8:30 pm Kennedy Gym

8th Grade Family message 2/27/2023

English, Spanish

Screenagers: Next Chapter

Film focuses on teens dealing with high stress, anxiety and depression which millions of youth experience. If you would like to watch this film use this link to watch between now and April 1st.

(Link)

Parent Information Sessions

Kennedy is happy to be hosting a few information sessions in the next few weeks. Below are some upcoming dates:

Thursday, March 23rd 6:00 pm in person in the Kennedy Library Family Information night: Reading Focus

Families are invited to meet and discuss how to support reading performance at home. If you are interested and joining us this link to sign-up (Link)

Thursday March 30th, 6:00 pm Movie: Screenagers Under the Influence: Addressing Vaping, Drugs and Alcohol in the Digital Age.

Movie is being released March 3rd nationally and we are excited to be sharing it with our community March 30th via zoom. During the showing we will also have a speaker who helped develop the film available for questions. (Link)

Screenagers Movie Website: (Link)

Yosemite Information Meeting 2023-24 School Year

If you are interested in going on this trip next school year. Please complete this short form so our trip director can reach out to you. The trip dates have just ben confirmed for October 29th to November 3rd 2023. (We requested another week but were not guaranteed a spot)

Remember this message is for our current 7th grade student and this trip will be during their 8th grade year. (Link)

Michelle Talvin

kennedyyosemitetrip@gmail.com

Winter Sports (Redwood City Parks and Recreation)

Below is the schedule of practices and games through March and April. If there are any changes we will announce it during morning announcements and coaches will inform families.

Kennedy Soccer Practice Schedule

Game schedules will be added soon

Soccer Coach Contacts below: