Cougar families,

We hope each one of you have a happy holiday season and enjoy time with family and friends. Our staff will be rested up and ready to greet our students on January 7, 2020 for a great start to the new year!

Semester Exam Schedule

• December 18: 2nd and 8th
• December 19: 3rd and 7th
• December 20: 1st, 5th and 6th

Students who are absent will be required to take their exams when we return from winter break. Per district policy, semester exams will not be given early.

December 20 is an early release day and students will be released at 12:35. Students will have the opportunity to place an order to purchase a sack lunch to go for that day if they wish. Buses will run at the earlier time on this early release day.

Thank you for your support,

Sonya Pitcock

Dec. 20: Early Release Day

Dec. 23-Jan. 6: Winter Break

Jan. 7: Student return to classes

Jan. 8: 7th grade basketball v. Wylie Burnett; girls home/boys away

Jan. 9: 8th grade basketball v. Wylie Burnett; girls away/boys home

Jan. 10: PTA Membership meeting, 10 am Curtis Staff Lounge

Jan. 13: 7th grade basketball v. Rockwall Utley; girls away/boys home

Jan. 16: 8th grade basketball v. Rockwall Utley; girls home/boys away

Jan. 20: Student/Staff holiday

• Friday, January 10
• 10 am
• Curtis teacher's lounge

We will also be voting to approve revised standing rules. To see the revisions that are being presented to the membership, please click here.

Curtis Families,

Thank you again for your continued support of the Curtis PTA. We have come so far in reaching our loftiest goal yet—708 members! Seven hundred eight will be the point at which our membership numbers will represent exactly one-half of our student body, which stands at 1416. Making this number will put us among an elite group in Texas. We will qualify for the Texas PTA President’s Challenge Award—a very difficult thing to do at the secondary school level. Please help us to make this goal. All that is needed is 157 members, or approximately 79 more families to purchase two or more memberships.

Remember, you are not just giving away money to reach some random goal. You are helping us to provide many more programs yet to come for the spring semester. This is just the least expensive way to help out! If your household already has a one- or two-parent membership, there are numerous other ways to contribute. You can sign up:

• an older sibling (we are already searching for alumni to sign up so we can meet the qualification for the May membership drive and receive the alumni award!)
• grandparents
• your Curtis Middle School student so he/she can enjoy the great student membership benefits
• or, donate a membership in the name of a friend!

STUDENT INCENTIVE UPDATE: As the Spring semester approaches, you may be wondering if your student will still get two tardy passes, two front of the lunch line passes, two late homework passes, etc. The answer is YES. The incentive booklet will still contain two of everything, plus the free Val-o-gram coupon and the free slice of pizza at the dance coupon. So it’s not too late to order, even with the end of the semester upon us!

• Congratulations to Officer Anthony Garcia. Officer Garcia works so closely with our school and our students he is like a celebrity! He knows students by name and talks with them daily in the halls, at lunch and before and after school to get to know them. Officer Garcia communicates and partner with parents if they need help or have questions and supports all our feeder elementary campuses as well. This allows our younger students to get to know him before they even get to Curtis! We are blessed to have such a compassionate and dedicated officer to serve our school and community.
  

• Congratulations to Sheri Kuester. Sheri is an amazing leader on our campus and serves in a variety of roles, including teacher, department head, mentor, Student Council sponsor, PALs leader and more! Sheri is looked up to and respected by all of us at Curtis for her hard work and dedication to students and to our school. Sheri believes in serving others and does so with a generous heart. We are blessed to have her at Curtis to serve our students and community!

• Congratulations to Jill Hirsch. Jill has been very creative and successful in finding ways to increase our PTA Memberships, and she is always available and willing to volunteer. She has spent countless hours volunteering at concessions and is always there to help organize and teach others how to run concessions.

• Congratulations to Amy McCullough. Amy has worked several concessions stand shifts even though she doesn’t have a child playing the sport. She always helps with a smile.

If you notice a teacher, staff member or parent volunteer going above and beyond what is expected and making a difference for our children at Curtis, please nominate them for our next Citizenship Awards by emailing their name and a brief description of their impact by clicking here.

• Basketball Concession Stand
• Copy Room

You will need to sign in to your account, select My Account in order to see the Volunteer opportunities.

Doing any online shopping this holiday season? Use Amazon's Smile and support Curtis PTA!

AmazonSmile will donate 0.5% of your purchase to Curtis PTA when shopping Amazon.

1. Go here: https://smile.amazon.com/gp/chpf/about/

2. Select your charity: PTA Texas Congress 201 Curtis Middle School

3. Bookmark smile.amazon.com

4. Start using smile.amazon.com whenever you want to shop at Amazon!
   

   
   

Be sure to shop through AmazonSmile the next time you shop online. You’re still shopping with Amazon — you’re just doing good while buying what you need!

Please encourage grandparents, neighbors, and friends to support Curtis PTA by shopping through AmazonSmile too.

With feedback from campus counselors and nurses, AISD Council PTA has compiled a list of items that are needed at many of our AISD campuses.

Please consider donating and supporting students throughout AISD. These donations will be distributed to the campuses in the district that are in need.

Save a trip to the store and donate by ordering the district approved items via the Amazon wish lists below:

• Click here for Hygiene Products
• Click here for Snacks

Thank you for helping students in Allen!

You can still order Curtis spirit wear! The t-shirt styles have limited quantities. Sizes and quantities available are updated online.

Orders will be delivered to your student's homeroom teacher approximately 4 weeks after purchase. Please be sure you enter your student's homeroom teacher for easy delivery.

To order, visit CurtisCougarPTA.org, login or set up an account to place your order.

Questions? Please email Jennifer

This needs to be done annually and resets on July 1 of each year. Here is the link to get started:

https://www.allenisd.org/Page/214