1. Power School will be open on Tuesday, August 23rd. After this date, please download the app to your phone and set up notifications.

2. Keep waking up early, as school starts on August 29th and students must be on time for school. See bell schedule below.

3. Put money on your student's meal account as no cash will be taken onsite. Link below. Will take 24 hours to appear on the account.

4. Complete the online application for free/reduced meals at school if you think you may qualify (must be done every year). See link below.

5. If your student wants to play a sport:

a. Go online to Final Forms to register for a sport (link below all sports are free).

b. Get a sports physical completed to upload into final forms (see link below for paperwork).

6. If your student requires medication to be at school, please have your doctor complete the forms (below) and bring the completed forms AND medication in the original bottle to school (please do NOT send with students).

7. If your student did not attend the grade level orientation please do a make up date (dates and procedures below).

8. Keep practicing the process of the locker combination (video below) as lockers assigned at school.

9. Working on what to wear to school: adhering to the dress code (no hats, stomachs and shoulders covered, no hoodies covering your head unless religious or medical exemptions).

10. Please get used to being separated from your cell phone and air pods as these items must remain in lockers powered down if they are brought to school.

Fall 2022 Dates for Middle School

First Day of school: August 29th

Thursday, September 8th will be OPEN HOUSE. 6:30-8:30 Parents will travel (follow) your

student's schedule.

Monday, Sept 12th Picture make ups (students who did not attend orientation)

NEW start and end times: 8:20 am to 3:12pm (students will be allowed in the building at 7:45 am.

Dismissal is 3:12 pm. All students should be picked up by 3:30 pm.

District dates to make note of:

Sept 15: Dr Bazzi meet and greet

Sept 16: Family Fun Night

Sept 22: WBMS Ribbon Cutting

Sept 29: Dr Bazzi meet and greet

These dates are for students who miss their orientation date to pick up a schedule, get their string backpack and have a chance to walk around the building. Yearbook/ID photos will be taken on the make up day during the school year. There is no formal presentation on make up days.

This process should take no more than 20 minutes, and parents can wait in the parking lot or accompany their students inside the building.

Monday and Tuesday: Aug 22 and 23: 9:00 am-11:30 am and 12:30 pm-4:00 pm

Additionally, if a student missed orientation: Monday, Sept 12th Picture make ups (for ID and yearbook photos)

https://ybpay.lifetouch.com/order/lookupjob?jobNumber=12959223

Yearbooks are not automatically included in school picture orders like elementary school.

Our yearbook is a hard cover book.

CREATE. ENGINEER. INSPIRE. Calling all 6th-8th Graders for FIRST TECH CHALLENGE

We are planning to kick off the 2022-23 season the second week of September with practices held at West Bloomfield High School. The tentative meeting schedule is Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday afternoons from 4-6 p.m. (coach on site at 3:30 p.m. for early arrivals). FTC season is approximately 12 weeks in duration.

Check out the video trailer for the new season: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m-qwsMmkFwg

JOIN US FOR THE PARENT INFO ZOOM MEETING
Andrea Frank is inviting you to a scheduled Zoom meeting.

WBSD Robotics Parent Info ZOOM Meeting
Tuesday, Aug 16, 2022
7 p.m. Eastern Time (US and Canada)

Join Zoom Meeting
https://wbsd-org.zoom.us/j/89634214798

Meeting ID: 896 3421 4798

Saturday, WB's Husky Super Dabbers participated in a girls-only robotics event – Girls R GRAYT – at Kettering University. Our team was made up of two existing team members, along with four brand new to robotics students. With only 4 hours of practice, we entered the event just wanting to meet new people and have some fun.

Our team finished the qualifying with a record of 4-3, ranking them 5th. During alliance selection for the playoffs, they became the captain of the third alliance, and picked the perfect partner for their capabilities. They lost their first match against the 2nd alliance, but then came storming back to win the next two matches to advance to the finals. They faced the first alliance in the finals, and beat them 2-0, as well as earning the highest match score of the day!

Our all-girls WBMS participants:

Jeannelyn Newsome

Fiona Haines

Sabrina Mathew

Becca Barber

Raneem Hasan

Samiyah Steele

details regarding the season:

• We will have a Parent Information Zoom Meeting on Tuesday, September 20th at 7pm. We are hoping that many of you can be on the Zoom with us (link coming soon)
• Division 4 (6th & 7th Grade) will be on Thursdays at WBMS, starting on November 3. Tournament tentatively scheduled for May 13th at Stoney Creek HS in Rochester.
  
• We will have optional Saturday practices (one per month), starting in December.

Dear Team WB,

We hope you are enjoying this last little bit of summer! WBSD has been busy preparing for the upcoming school year. The District will be collecting some of the Back to School paperwork differently this year.

NEW THIS YEAR

ALL parents/families MUST complete the Back to School Form by August 26, 2022, at 3 p.m. The form can be found here.

The form can also be found on our Back to School Central page on our website at: https://www.wbsd.org/parents/back-to-school-central

We will continue to update Back to School Central over the next few weeks. Therefore, please refer back to this link for additional important announcements.

If you have any questions or problems with the form, please reach out to Johanna Mracna at johanna.mracna@wbsd.org.

Thank you for helping us streamline our processes!

We can’t wait to see our students back in our schools and we are looking forward to a great year of learning, growing, and connecting!

West Bloomfield Middle School PTO Board:

President: Katie Palazzolo: katiepalazzolo@icloud.com

Vice-President: Kristi Law: kristi.law@wbsd.org

Treasurer: Kelly Robrahn: robrahnfam@gmail.com

Secretary: Renai Mayle: renaijzz@yahoo.com

PTO Fundraising Goals:

Our main fundraiser for the school year will be a weekly bagel sale. We will be selling bagels for $2 before school every Friday starting in October. We will be looking for parent volunteers to help with the sales. If sales go well, this will be our ONLY fundraiser of the year!

What we support:

· Community Outreach Programs (Greater West Bloomfield Community Coalition, Family Fun Night, etc.)

· Fun Day (end of the year celebration for the students)

· House Party

· Staff Appreciation Week

PTO Meetings: in person at the middle school

· Wednesday, October 12 at 7pm

· Wednesday, January 11 at 7pm

· Wednesday, March 8 at 7pm

· Wednesday, May 3rd (Elections and Staff Appreciation Planning) at 7pm

Please join our “West Bloomfield Middle School PTO” Facebook page!

Please check out the letter below regarding meals at school.

There will be no more free for all meals at school (that grant expired)

Things to note:

breakfast costs $1.50

lunch costs $2.95

Please complete the application for free/reduced lunch to see if you qualify-link below

There will be NO CASH taken at registers--all meal funds must be on the student's meal account. See attached letter for directions.

Students with a ZERO account balance will be given a meal; however, it may not be the regular lunch of that day however, it will follow federal guidelines.

In the fall, we will have lunch time for the students and staff. We are planning on offering 2 lunch times, assigned by the 5th hour class.

This past school year we had a grant and offered FREE breakfast and lunch to all students. For the upcoming school year, we will NOT continue with our free breakfast for all grant, so it is important that if you may be eligible for free or reduced lunch to complete that paperwork. This paperwork is available beginning July 1 at the link below.

This application must be completed EVERY year to be considered.

We also encourage parents to deposit money into their student's account so students do not have to carry cash to school. You can do that at the Food Services tab on the website-the link is also below. Funds are carried over from school year to school year.

If your student must have access to, carry or take ANY prescribed OR over the counter medication while at school, a form attached below, completed and signed by a doctor, must be on file in the main office.

This includes, but is not limited to Tylenol, Tums, prescriptions, and Advil. Under no circumstances can a student be in possession of medication without the proper forms on file. Students possessing medication without the forms on file or distributing medication to other students will be subject to discipline following the district's Code of Conduct.

We are very excited to announce that the West Bloomfield School District Athletic Department has partnered with FinalForms, an online forms and data management service. FinalForms allows you to complete and sign athletic participation forms for your student(s). The most exciting news is that FinalForms saves data from season to season and year to year, meaning that you will never need to enter the same information twice! FinalForms also pre-populates information wherever possible, for each of your student(s), saving you time.

You may review your data at any time to verify that it is current. You will be required to sign your forms annually and after any update.

Click on the Parent Playbook West Bloomfield Parent Playbook.pdf to get started in FinalForms. If you require support during the process, scroll to the bottom of the pdf and click “Use Support.”

We are asking that ALL parents of athletes use FinalForms.

Please register at: www.westbloomfield-mi.finalforms.com

Follow the prompts to create your account, register your student(s), and sign your forms. Thank you for your assistance in helping us streamline our paperwork processes at WBSD.

Immunizations are an important part of keeping our children healthy. Schools and State and Local health departments must monitor immunization levels to ensure that all communities are protected from potentially life-threatening diseases and, if necessary, respond promptly to an emerging public health threat. It is important that disease threats be minimized through the monitoring of students being immunized.

Sharing immunization and personally identifiable information including the students name, Date of Birth, gender, and address with local and state health departments will help to keep your child safe from vaccine preventable diseases. The Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act (FERPA), 20 U.S.C. § 1232g, requires written parental consent before personally identifiable information from your child's education records is disclosed to the health department. If your child is 18 or over, he or she is an "eligible student" and must provide consent for disclosures of information from his or her education records.

You may withdraw your consent to share this information in writing at any time.

I authorize the West Bloomfield School District to release my child's immunization record to the Michigan Department of Health and Human Services and Local Health Department. I understand this information will be used to improve the quality and timeliness of immunization services and to help schools comply with Michigan Law. This includes any immunization information and limited personally identifiable information from the school.

If your If child is a student (3 to 26 years of age) in the West Bloomfield Schools, s/he can also participate in the 2022-2023 Blessings in a Backpack program. This program sends six non-perishable meals home each Friday of the school year. Its goal is to make sure that no child goes hungry on the weekend. Run by volunteers, there is NO cost to you.

To enroll in this program, please fill out the form below and return it to your school office or email it to katherinesheiko@hotmail.com. This registers your child/ren in the Blessings program and alerts us to any allergies they might have. The first backpack of food will be distributed to your child at his/her local school the first week of October.

The locker dimensions are:

18.5 inches height

11.5 inside width

11 depth

We are providing STRING backpack for every student to use this year--and these fit in the locker. PLEASE do not purchase the big binders as they will not fit. Photos below. Students will be allowed to carry the string back pack that we provide from class to class.

We recommend all students learn to use a spin lock. Every student will be assigned a locker with a pre-determined combination. If your rising middle school student is not familiar with this, please purchase a spin lock (sometimes the dollar stores will have them) and practice. We also use lockers for Physical Education class. The video below is taken from ANOTHER school--but the tutorial is great!

Lockers in the new building will be smaller than ones at our current school.

Resident Families

Bus transportation for West Bloomfield School District is provided by Durham School Services. Information including bus route, bus stop location, and pickup/drop-off times was mailed (through USPS) during the week of August 15. If you do not receive your bus information prior to August 25, please contact transportation at (248) 865-3680.

School of Choice Families

West Bloomfield School District offers shuttle locations for our School of Choice families. If you are interested in having your child(ren) ride one of our shuttle buses, please complete this form. You must make a copy of it and email it or print it and turn it in. All shuttle buses are assigned on a first-come/first serve basis. Therefore, please submit your form ASAP.

Amy Hughes, Principal

Jermaine Evans, Assistant Principal

Blaine McDowell, Dean of Student Services

Lisa Graff, Assistant Principal

On August 23rd at 7pm we will offer Athlete Night (parents only).

All 7th and 8th graders are eligible to participate in all sports.

6th graders may participate in some middle school sports determined by state guidelines.

6th grade students may participate in: cross country, swimming, wrestling, and track.

On Athlete Night, we provide an opportunity to meet some coaches, and get information about middle school sports including practice information, paperwork, etc.

The sports we offer include: Football, Swimming, Cross Country, Track and Field, Basketball, Volleyball, Wrestling and Cheer (sideline and competitive seasons).

Important things for sports:

1. Students must have a physical on file dates AFTER April 15, 2022 to be eligible to try out and/or participate. I would encourage you to get that paperwork completed now.See link below for the paperwork.

2. Registration forms are found on the district athletic site however we are moving to a NEW system provides by Final Forms--stay tuned for details.

3. The district has removed the pay to participate requirements therefore we will have caps on all sports for safety reasons.

Additional information can be found on the District Athletic Site below:

The school day is scheduled to be from 8:20 am to 3:12 pm.

Students can be dropped off at the building at 7:45 am.

Students must be picked up or in Tween Time by 3:30 pm

We strongly encourage all students who have access to a district provided bus to take it. All district residents who live at least one mile from school have eligible for transportation and will be sent an email communication with the route number and times approximately 2 weeks before school begins.

We also have a few shuttles for out of district families. The exception to transportation forms become available on the website August 1 and is linked below. These shuttle requests are first come first serve.

At the new building, we will have a bus loop AND a car drop off loop.

When we learn about programs outside of school that our middle school students may enjoy, we feature them in our weekly newsletter. Here is one that just came to us:

Inspirit AI is a precollege, live online project-based AI program that helps K12 students across disciplines develop essential college readiness skills like data science and Python coding. In small groups, students learn AI fundamentals from top university graduates and undertake applied project work for social good in domains ranging from journalism to healthcare to mobility and more. Interactive college preparation workshops showcase how AI is remapping traditional academic & professional domains, and instructor spotlights offer students a perspective on AI in careers. Applications for fall are due August 30. Please find the middle school program application here . Feel free to contact our program director, Jared, at jared.greene@post.harvard.edu with any questions. We look forward to guiding you on your AI journey!