S.J. Welsh Middle School

1500 W. McNeese St.

Lake Charles , La. 70605

Principal: Brad Durio

Administrative Team: Renee LeJeune, Danette Manuel, Casey Vincent, Robert "Trey" Jones, Saige Stelly

PBIS Coordinator: Angie Farquhar

Counselors: Angela Celestine (8), Lindsey Rochester (7), Victoria McMillin (6)

November 4 - Basketball Tryouts begin...see flyers below for details on the differences for boy's and girl's teams.

November 4 - 8 - Book Fair

November 5 - No School - Election Day

November 6 - PBIS Field trip to Lake Area Adventure for 6th grade only. Make sure that the on-line waivers for Lake Area Adventure is completed.

November 9 - Honor Band

November 11 - No School - Veteran's Day

November 25 - 29 - No School - Thanksgiving Break

Congratulations to Miley Dressler for winning our Student of the Year award. Good luck at the district level Miley, we know that you will be a great representative of S.J. Welsh Middle School.

We would like to congratulate Mrs. Pam Barbry for winning our Teacher of the Year award. Mrs. Barbry teaches 7th grade ELA and we are so happy to have her as one of our teachers!

Click on this link to shop online!

https://bookfairs.scholastic.com/bf/sjwelshmiddleschool

For our second Literacy Challenge of the 2024-25 year, we're focusing on vocabulary in ALL classes! From November 4 to December 13, use a vocabulary word from lessons/units correctly in a sentence in your classes. Ask your teacher whether you will need to say the sentence out loud or write it out; either way, the sentence needs to show you understand what the word means. Each time you do, ask your teacher to sign off on the Challenge Card you get from your ELA teacher. When you have all six blocks signed, turn in your card to Ms. Meiburg in Room 508 to be entered into drawings for prizes!

We want to sent a special thank you to the following sponsors. They contributed gift cards and other goodies for our parents and students who attended our Literacy night. Thank you for supporting our SJ Welsh families and helping to promote literacy in our community.

Altitude Trampoline Park

Painting with a Twist

Putt-Putt

Mr. Gatti's

Luna's

Raising Cane's

Crust Pizza, Co.

Library Riot

Shayne Laughlin State Farm

Girls Information and Dates

Boys Information and Dates

It's starting to get a little chilly and sometimes even cold recently. Hopefully there are some much colder days are ahead of us. With that being said this is just a reminder to you and your students about what is considered acceptable outerwear on campus.

As part of our ongoing commitment to student and staff safety, we will be implementing new security measures. Starting this week, weapons detectors will be in place on our campus this school year. Students and visitors will pass through these weapons detectors upon entry to our school site. Our students and staff went through an orientation last week to familiarize our campus with the processes. We appreciate your patience and understanding and we are certain the implementation of these will make our school safer and more secure for students, faculty, and staff.

We want to thank everyone for such a good start to our year. S.J. Welsh is a big place with lots of moving parts that all have to be moving harmoniously to make this place work. We know there are hiccups that need to be ironed out but we are working diligently to make that happen every day! We are still under lots of construction in some areas on campus so it makes it difficult to be operating at 100%, but our staff is doing all they can to make sure that we are delivering the high quality education that your child deserves. Below I will highlight a couple of areas of importance to the start of our year.

Social Media/Communication

This newsletter is a weekly newsletter that usually goes out at the beginning of every week. It is generated to get school information out to the parents and students. It will contain information like a calendar of upcoming events, specific information about campus activities, quick messaging to parents and other stakeholders, and also contains our monthly campus celebrations. The same information goes out via Facebook and our school website. Facebook is a very valuable site to us. This is where you can check for daily changes or messaging. If you haven't "liked" us or "following" our Facebook page you need to do so (the link is at the bottom of the page). We have lots of valuable information that goes out on this platform and remains there for quite some time, so you always can look things up that may have been posted weeks ago. Most of the answers to your questions can be answered by checking our website or Facebook page along with this newsletter. Students also have an "Activities" tab on their launchpad that they can access to get the same information. So, as you can tell we have multiple ways to access campus information to answer most questions that you or you student may have about what's going on on our campus.

Dress Code/Code of Conduct

There have been lots of changes to the district's Code of Conduct and some important ones in our dress code. The code of conduct has gone out to students and parents. There is a copy of our dress code in the flyer at the bottom of this page.

Student Work Information

All student grades can be accessed in student progress center. You should be able to log in to see grades and student progress. We put a quick link at the bottom of this page for access. If you have specific concerns about your student's grades and work you can always email the teacher for more information.

Call Outs

We know that you get a lot of these...trust us, we have kids in the system as well, but they will contain valuable information. Please do your best to answer and listen or at least listen to the voicemail all the way through. Most of these call outs are thorough and planned and will contain all the information you need about whatever it is we have going on at the time. If you are not getting these call outs you need to make sure that your phone numbers are correct in student progress center (link is at the bottom of the page).

Student Drop offs

Reminder to all families that all student drop offs in the neighborhoods and businesses near S.J. Welsh are prohibited.

No one is allowed to drop off in the front circle until after 7:40am.

Students WILL NOT be called out of classes for any materials that are dropped off in the front office during the day. It does not matter if it's clothing for practices, instruments, homework, lunches, etc. You can definitely drop it off but if they forgot something then they need to come check during their lunch times to see if it has been dropped off. We will not interrupt classroom instruction for this. If they forget their lunch we have a wonderful cafeteria staff that serves free lunch daily. We know that things are forgotten by the kids and the parents as well. If something is forgotten then teach them to come and check at their lunch time for whatever has to be dropped off. The students will be informed about this next week during our expectations talk.

Construction is in full swing!! We are excited to finally get our campus the much needed repairs from the hurricane. You may see lots of machinery and materials around campus. Work is being done on our rooftops, so please be on the lookout for moving machinery hauling roofing materials when driving around campus. We will update you all on our progress and areas of concern in this section of our newsletter.

The following is a message from Barbe High School:

We wanted to reach out to remind everyone about the policy that will be implemented at Barbe as it pertains to students that attend games at Barbe Buc Stadium.

As always, we welcome all students from our feeder schools to attend games on Friday nights as it has become a great tradition in our community.

However, we ask that middle school students be accompanied by an adult upon entry into the stadium (preferably a parent or guardian). Students who show up without a parent or guardian may be denied entry. Due to the high traffic areas under the bleachers, we ask that all students (including high school students) be in the stands unless they are visiting the concession stand or using the restroom. Students who do not follow these guidelines will be asked to leave the stadium.

Also, we will be going cashless this season at the ticket booth. Concessions will still accept cash as usual. We will have QR codes for ticket purchases so please if anyone asks, please encourage them to buy their tickets before the game. We will no longer be issuing tickets for entry. Please contact Barbe High School if you have questions or concerns.

Our citizens of the month are nominated by the administration and staff as students that strive to be the best human being possible by their hard work, effort, and attitude in the classroom and around campus.

Our teachers of the month are nominated by their peers and administration as the teachers that are working the hardest and creating an atmosphere that helps their students excel in the classroom.

Star Reader is an award that goes to the student in each grade level who reads the most words during AR testing.

A student in every grade level is randomly picked by the principal and that student picks "The One" teacher that has impacted them the most so far this year. The students must write a short statement about why they chose the teacher and the award is presented to them during their class period.

The "Sammy" award is named after the school's namesake, Mr. Samuel John Welsh. This award is given to the teacher on campus that is absolutely the rock star of the month. They provide a fun, creative, and challenging classroom culture.

We would like to give a shout to the Shayne Laughlin State Farm Insurance Agency for being one of our sponsors. They have stepped up to donate gift cards for our teacher of the month awards. THANK YOU SO MUCH TO THE SHAYNE LAUGHLIN STATE FARM INSURANCE AGENCY FOR YOUR SUPPORT!!!

We would like to send a huge THANK YOU to Raising Cane's Chicken Fingers for being one of our sponsors. Raising Cane's has come forward to donate gift cards and gift certificates for our student awards and campus celebrations that will begin this month. THANK YOU RAISING CANE'S CHICKEN FINGERS FOR YOUR SUPPORT!!!

How can you become a sponsor? Email Mr. Durio at brad.durio@cpsb.org

https://osp.osmsinc.com/CalcasieuLA/

All student fees can be found in (SPC) Student Progress Center and then paid through (OSP) Online School Payments. Both SPC and OSP links can be found just above this paragraph. Student Fees should be paid before going to school activities like dances and in school pep rallies. Please check and make sure that all your student's fees have been paid. Thank you!

https://jcampus.cpsb.org/progress/

https://www.facebook.com/login/?next=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.facebook.com%2Fsjwcolts

https://cpsborg-my.sharepoint.com/:b:/g/personal/renee_lejeune_cpsb_org/EV0kc7dUtUxHhnpNy9TRLhAB3n7NLVxnmscVAAJFQ-P1BQ?e=8yIwNm

https://www.cpsb.org/cms/lib/LA01907308/Centricity/Domain/193/2024-2025%20Student%20Code%20of%20Conduct.pdf