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UPDATE
2024-25 School Year
Dear LMS Families,
We just completed the final week of the 3rd quarter, and next week we will begin the final quarter of the school year. It’s so hard to believe we are already here! This year we welcomed an SES program, hired 12 new staff members, welcomed dozens of new families and said farewell to some as well. We restructured our 6th grade to increase support, reworked our entire master schedule to balance classes, and introduced new expectations that allow our students to focus on learning. There were so many wonderful celebrations of culture and academics, including our Hispanic Heritage Night, Band and Choir performances, Dance performances, Winter Craft Night, and Pi Night, as well as field trips to the zoo and outdoor school, and more to come in the weeks ahead. When we see the list of our accomplishments it looks like a full year, but it really feels like it has gone way too fast.
Our school has experienced a lot of turnover in the past few years, and our students were impacted tremendously as they struggled to build relationships with new adults. I’m so proud to share that, as a team, we prioritized making sure that the adults that love and support our students returned for 2024-25. While facing deep cuts as a district, we at LMS were able to maximize our resources and invest in the people, because that is what a strong community is built upon.
You can view information from the district regarding these reductions by clicking here.
Continuation of Russian DLI Program
Russian Immersion will continue at LMS, and while we are grateful for Ms. Volnycheva coming out of retirement to help us this year, we are looking for a teacher; if you know anyone who is qualified and interested, please send them our way!
Retention of Campus Safety Associates
Many schools are seeing that their Campus Safety Associates (CSAs) are being cut, but we were able to keep both of ours. Our students’ safety is our top priority, and supervision allows us to prevent safety issues from occurring. I’m so proud of our campus safety team, Daunte and Siyat, and grateful that they will continue to do this important work with us.
Our Counseling Team is Growing
While funding was reduced to support a smaller team, we prioritized the support we know our students need and increased our counseling team to 2.5 counselors. That means that we will continue to have Mr. Adrian, Ms. Gwendolyn, and will add Ms. Allen to our team, who was formerly our QMHP. This allows us to have a counselor assigned to each grade level for more whole group interventions to teach our students how to problem-solve, build and maintain healthy friendships, and support their individual needs as well.
Lane Middle School is Growing
As we head into forecasting season, it is my great pleasure to share with you what we have to look forward to. Our current enrollment has been consistently hovering around 375 students and we are projected to grow to 453 students this next school year - nearly 200 of those students will be joining our 6th grade. Those rising 6th graders will forecast this April for options that include the elective wheel (a quarter of each elective offering for students to get a taste of what they are like) or a yearlong elective like choir or band. Our rising 7th and 8th grade students (current 6th and 7th graders) will forecast in May for classes like Art, STEAM, Dance, Band, Choir, and Spanish. Our LMS students will continue to enjoy a full year of PE as well as health and we are looking for ways to increase our health minutes to offer a more robust program to our 7th and 8th grade students.
Academic Interventionists Added to Lane MS
PPS allocated to our school a reading/literacy and math interventionist for the 24-25 school year. While we have had a reading/literacy interventionist, the addition of math intervention is new for us. These positions are critical in support of student academic growth, as is a fully functioning, fully staffed and open library, which we will continue to have at LMS because we all know that if we are prioritizing our students literacy growth we can’t do that work without a library, led by the incredible Sara Raspone - it is truly the heartbeat of our school.
AVID is Moving School-Wide
The AVID elective is moving to school-wide next year, which means that all the amazing pieces of AVID that have previously only been offered to those in the elective classes will be offered to all of our LMS students. We are really excited about developing a 3 year school-wide plan to continue our work with WICOR (the 5 pillars of AVID) - Writing, Inquiry, Collaboration, Organization, and Reading. We will continue our initiatives around organization, like the binder and planner, and expand our work with reading and writing to learn, collaborative study groups, college and career exploration and field trips, and community building. Our current 7th grade AVID students are our academic leaders, so we will lean on them to help direct some of this work and find places within our school for them to lead. At LMS, we believe that every single one of our students is an AVID student, determined to succeed, and we will have the structure and plan in place to help them do just that. They will all have equal access to AVID at their high school of choice, as long as AVID continues to be an option at the high school level.
PPS Shift in World Language HS Credit Offerings in Middle Schools
Even though we were able to preserve much of what we have at LMS, the cuts didn’t leave us without some scars. Our Spanish program is currently reduced to only Spanish 3-4 as the district high school program adjusts to the new model of only offering 1 high school credit to middle school world language learners. The students currently enrolled in Spanish 1-2 will receive both credits if they continue in Spanish next year, but after that, middle school students will only be eligible for one high school credit. I’m committed to increasing our Spanish offerings and will continue to work with Mr. Romero to do so as our real enrollment numbers become more clear and we can adjust some of our current staffing.
Thank You, Ms. Collins!
We are also left with the loss of another position, Restorative Justice Coordinator, that we just couldn’t support with the current staffing budget for LMS. Cathrine Collins has been a tremendous support to our students working through conflict, whether external or internal, and has been an integral member of our team. While it won’t be the same as having a dedicated, knowledgeable individual leading the work, we will endeavor to train our staff so that each and every one of us can support our students in building strong relationships and restoring them when there has been harm done. Thank you, Cathrine, for your service to LMS!
Our commitment, as a team, is to continue advocating for what our students need in order to be successful academically, while holding their social-emotional health as a top priority. Middle school is such a tough time for young people, but it is also a beautiful time, as they begin to grow into the people they want to be. I’m so proud of our team, our students, our community, and our school. There truly is no place I’d rather be than right here with all of you.
Please reach out to me if you have any questions; thank you, always, for your support of the work we do.
Warmly,
Rosemarie El Youssef
LMS Principal