This is our amazing, dedicated staff who impact the lives of all of the students who attend OCS. We are very grateful for every employee within our district!

We are thrilled to launch our new website when we get back from holiday break in January. Our new easy to use website will launch with a new app that you can easily track everything you want to very easily. We will be giving our school board an update on the app and website design in November.

Our bus fleet just got an amazing upgrade. We are in the middle of purchasing a new bus for the district. Our current fleet is made of 2012, 2015, 2016, and a 2018 school bus. This will allow us to utilize this bus for all long trips on a daily basis. We anticipate this being delivered in mid-November.

We have been very busy bringing in new BOOoooks this fall in preparation for Halloween. Upper classman, check out the corner display featuring 3 new dystopian series, Zombiesaurs by Steve Zuckerman, new editions Frankenstein, and Dracula, Classics in graphic novels, and historical fiction war novels.

Elementary and middle grades have the spookies featured as well! Look for the Graveyard Book, Twisted, Skeleton Creek, Stinetinglers, Mr. Shivers, Five Nights at Freddy's, and more! Don't forget Ghost Hunting in Michigan!

Check it out!

The elementary had their first Buddy Reading Friday on October 13th. The fourth graders were so excited to read with the first graders!

We are looking to partner with our amazing community. We are launching several new community partnerships.

We are excited to announce our new K-3 Mystery Reader program. Every Friday starting in November we will invite family and community members to read to our students. If you would like to volunteer for this program, please call the Student Services Office at 231-889-5521.

• Who?- Parents, Older Siblings, Grand Parents, Relatives, and other Special People

• Why?- Students love having their family, friends, and relatives visit our classroom to share in on our focus on reading. Pick a short story to read aloud to one of our K-3 classes.

• What?- Our readers can bring a book from home or read a teacher chosen book from our class library.

Our 4th and 5th grade classrooms will be looking for community partners to talk about career exploration. Starting in November, we will be inviting community members in to talk about careers. If you would like to volunteer for this program, please call the Student Services Office at 231-889-5521.

We are excited to launch sport specific Under Armour gear for the winter sports season. Please use the link below.

If you have any questions, feel free to reach out to our student services office at 231-889-5521

October was "jam-packed" in our School Nutrition Program! Here are some of the notable things we have promoted:

October 9-13 was "National School Lunch Week" #NSLW23! We took this opportunity to promote the importance of how delicious and healthy our school meals are. This whole month we introduced new menu items for breakfast, LUNCH, and after school supper. We want to welcome all Portager students to take advantage of all of the great food offerings we create in our kitchen! We are always striving to do more from scratch and to introduce new ideas and recipes that most students have never experienced before. We are continuing to elevate the meal options here at the Portager Cafe to really set us apart from other districts by offering the freshest, healthiest, and best quality food for our students and staff. Another added bonus for our meals (breakfast,lunch, and supper) is that they are at no cost to you, parents!

The other thing I would like to highlight is that October is Farm to School Month! If you follow our facebook page you have seen all of the locally sourced ingredients we have brought in this month! Onekama School has always prioritized supporting local farmers and during the month of October we bring in as much local produce as we can. Some of the local food we have featured this month include: melons, peaches, plums, frozen blueberries, heirloom tomatoes, cauliflower, lettuce, and of course APPLES! October 12 was Michigan Apple Crunch Day, which is a day that thousands of Michigan schools participate in to celebrate how delicious and nutritious Michigan apples are! This is another way to get students excited about local farmers and how lucky we are to have MI apples available up to 11 months of the year. We have been able to incorporate local fruits and vegetables for breakfast, lunch and suppers, from heirloom tomatoes in a caprese salad to making fresh lemonade with MI frozen blueberries! It turned blue! The kids were really excited!

Lastly, we are closing in on Halloween and if you have seen any pictures of our decorated kitchen, you would understand that our Nutrition staff LOVES Halloween! We have another fun meal planned this year and I think everyone is excited to show off their costumes!

7th graders competed a project in Academic success last week! They had to create their own city then construct a map to represent it, including map features that we learned about in class! They did a great job!

The fifth grade took a field trip to the Platte River State Fish Hatchery and Weir as part of the salmon in the classroom experience that they will be doing this school year. Weirs and hatcheries play an important role in helping to keep Michigan's lakes, rivers and streams, one of the greatest freshwater fisheries in the world. Our school was invited to visit the weir during the annual fish, or egg, take operations to see firsthand how the DNR actively manages these world class waters. Students experienced the sights, sounds and smells of the amazing process in which thousands of fish swim up river into the weir.

These students participated in the "Kids Read Now Summer Reading Program". They were recognized for reading/reporting 7 or more books over the summer. OCS had 40 students recognized for this achievement!! Additional students participated but did not finish. Overall our K-2 students read 332 books out of 560 sent home! Great job to all that worked hard at improving themselves over the summer!

Conference will be held on Thursday, November 9 from 4:00-6:00 pm and Friday, November 10, from 1:00-3:00 pm. Friday, November 10 will be a half-day of school. Parents of elementary students please call student services to set up a conference time slot at 231-889-5521.

I will be talking about careers, colleges, GPA, FAFSA, and options for students in our district. How we plan to individualize career planning with students and families. This will include a 20 minute conversation / overview and then allow for Q & A for another 30 minutes.

If you have any questions, don't hesitate to reach out to me at dmesyar@manistee.org

We are excited to announce that our drama club partnership with Bear Lake is back in production for a spring play. We are working on the details and will be rolling this out to the community very soon!

The district approved the purchase of a flag pole for the softball / baseball area. This will be installed this fall. The landscaping around the base will be finished in the spring. It is very important to our district that we have the opportunity to honor our country at each home event throughout our facilities.

We had an amazing week with Homecoming activities across the district. Dress up days, games, pep-assembly, powderpuff football, parade, football game, and dance made for such an amazing week for our students, staff, and community.

Thank you for your support of our school system. We continue to strive to be the best in all areas.

7:00am-3:30pm

Feel free to call us at 231-889-4251

Onekama Background photo- compliments of Todd and Brad Reed Photography