Dear AMS Cougar Family,
This week we had a terrific Meet the Teacher event. Thank you to everyone who was able to attend. If your family couldn't make it, don't worry. We will have tables set up in the Cougar Den (lobby past the front door) for students to get assistance in finding their Advisory class on Monday. Once they get to Advisory they will receive the folder of information that we distributed at Meet the Teacher.
There are many important documents in the folder that need to be returned to the school and others that you will keep for information. I want to mention several of them. First, there is a piece of cardstock with your student's name and grade level on it. Any time that someone is picking up the student in carline, please place the placard in the front window. We realize that some families may need additional placards. If your family needs an additional placard, please email Kelsea.English@acsgmail.net, and we will send an additional one home. You can also review this video for details on how car dropoff and pickup will work. Students will be able to come into the building at 8:00 AM, although we will have supervision outside starting at 7:45 AM. Please have students picked up by 4:00 PM.
Another paper that is in the folder has an ACS school calendar on one side and a list of AMS family events on the other. I realized yesterday that I made a mistake. I scheduled our Open House during Rosh Hashanah, which is an important holy day for Jewish members of our Cougar Family. I apologize and will send out an updated calendar soon.
Finally, the two forms that are probably of most interest to your student are the Responsible Technology Use form and the Parent Laptop Agreement. To be assigned their Chromebook, a student will need to return both forms signed. We anticipate distributing laptops to students who have returned their forms after Labor Day, although if we get most of the forms in sooner, we may be able to distribute them sooner. I am happy to announce that families do not have to contribute a technology fee this year. Just get those forms turned in. Send all of the forms back to school this upcoming week in the folder. Students should turn them in to their Advisory teachers, who will get them all turned in to the right folks on campus.
If your student is going to be a bus rider, please consider downloading the Here Comes the Bus app, which is available for Android and Apple products. This free app will show you the real-time location of your child's bus on a map, give scheduled and actual arrival times at home and school for bus routes, and provide email notifications when the bus is close by.
All students entering 7th grade in North Carolina are required to have both a Tdap and a Meningococcal booster before the first day of school. Other vaccinations must also be up to date. Please send in evidence of these vaccines to the School Nurse. If they have not yet received these vaccinations, please talk to your health care provider or contact the Buncombe County Health and Human Services immunization clinic at 828-250-5096 to schedule an appointment.
If you are new to the state, your student must have documentation of a completed NC health assessment and updated vaccine documentation turned into the school within thirty days. Students who are not in compliance will be excluded from school, and I do not want for that to happen. Our Blue Ridge Health Services' on-campus Cougar Care Center may be able to support this process if your student is enrolled.
There are several accessibility features to these newsletters that are available if you click on the link that takes you to the smore website. You can enlarge the font, view it in high contrast, or translate it into one of ninety languages. I hope that this is helpful to you.
It is hard to believe that we are only two days away from the beginning of the 2022-2023 school year. I can't wait to have the students back on campus! Have a great weekend!
Sincerely,
Jo Peterson Gibbs Landreth
Asheville Middle School Principal
