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)

March 10 - NO SCHOOL FOR TEACHER IN-SERVICE. STUDENTS WILL HAVE A "VIRTUAL DAY". Work is being sent home with all students for their core classes.

March 11 - 14 - Beta Spirit Week. See details below for Spirit Days.

March 11- 14 - Colt Kicker Tryouts

March 11 - Track @ Barbe High School, Field 4pm and Running 5pm.

March 13 - End of the 3rd nine weeks.

March 13 - Golf @ Frasch Park, 4pm.

March 17 - Golf @ Mallard GC, 4pm.

March 18 - Track @ Vinton High School, Field 4pm and Running 5pm.

March 18-19 - Foreign Language, DELF Testing.

March 19 - 21 - Cheer Tryouts

March 25 - Golf @ The National GC, 4pm.

March 25 - Track @ Westlake High School, Field 4pm and Running 5pm.

March 31 - Golf @ Graywood GC, 4pm.

March 31 - Track @ LaGrange High School, Field 4pm and Running 5pm.

The good times are definitely rolling for the S.J. Welsh Junior Beta Club! The National Beta Organization has announced that the S.J. Welsh Middle School Junior Beta Club is a 2024-2025 National Beta John W. Harris Leadership Award recipient. Named after Beta’s founder, the John W. Harris Leadership Award recognizes outstanding clubs based on how they embody the four pillars of achievement, character, leadership, and service. Only five Elementary Beta, five Junior Beta, and five Senior Beta clubs in the entire nation have been selected for this award. Congratulations to our S.J. Welsh Junior Beta Club for this amazing achievement!

Louisiana Junior Beta has officially found its next great leader...Reicker Dugas, the 2025-2026 State President!! This also marks SJ's third consecutive State Officer, a testament to the incredible leadership and spirit within our school. Reicker becomes the school's fourth officer in five years, with two Louisiana Leadership Representatives an one National Leadership Ambassador. Next stop for Reicker is Orlando, Florida, where he will take his campaign to the national stage4 in pursuit of the National Junior Beta President title.

Evan held the position of State Secretary for the Louisiana State Beta Club. He did an amazing job planning, coordinating and leading the convention this year in Lafayette. This year's convention had more than 13,000 attendees. We are so proud of Evan and recognize the hard work and dedication this took. We applaud you for completing this monumental task and representing your club and school so well. We can't wait to see what your future at BHS holds.

I received an email from a peer, from another school (who wished to remain anonymous), that wanted to give a shoutout to one of our teachers...Mrs. Boullion!! We would like to congratulate Mrs. Boullion for having such a profound impact on others. Here is what the peer wrote and I wanted to share it with all of community:

“I would like to take a moment to recognize Mme. Boullion, an outstanding French teacher who has been a pillar in our parish for many years. Mrs. Boullion exemplifies dedication through her tireless commitment to both her students and colleagues. In addition to her full-time teaching responsibilities, she consistently mentors (new) foreign teachers after hours, provides invaluable support to the World Languages Department, and always steps up when help is needed—whether during school hours, after school hours or on weekends. Her efforts in preparing students for the DELF test, a significant milestone in certifying French language proficiency, demonstrate her passion for fostering linguistic excellence. Mrs. Boullion’s hard work, mentorship, and selflessness often go unrecognized, yet she remains a vital asset to our educational community.”

An email was recently sent to staff and students concerning the energy drinks and open container drinks that are being brought on campus. The email was sent saying that students are NOT allowed to bring "energy drinks" or open containers of drinks on campus. . IF they are found with one it will be taken and will not be given back. The open containers of drinks are the things like Starbucks, PJs coffee, McDonalds, Sonic, etc. Those are not allowed on campus. If they walk on to campus with them then they will have to turn it over or throw it away.

We are seeing an increase of issues with students who are visiting the nurse's station and our front office not feeling well, because they are having symptoms that are related to having an energy drink for breakfast or at lunch. The negative effects of these types of drinks on children in the age range of 1-17 is usually covered during part of our health units. If you are interested in learning about why they shouldn't be allowed, just research the negative effects that it has on our youth. Here are some of the symptoms we have seen due to these drinks: dizziness, sudden crashes in energy after the caffeine wears off, headaches, nausea, seizures and passing out. We don't want this for any our students here on campus, so parents please talk to your kids about the effects and please help us by not allowing these drinks on campus.

We would like to congratulate our Colt Kickers for winning 1st place at the state competition in High Kicks. They also placed 4th place with their Jazz Routine. These young ladies and coaches put in many hours of hard work and we want to congratulate them on a job well done!

In an effort to communicate to you guys as early as possible, we have set our testing dates for the spring. We know that families like to plan ahead for holiday trips around spring break, so we have planned accordingly. Please make an effort to schedule all medical appointments and trips around our LEAP testing. It is a very important test and being here on the days that are assigned are very valuable to your student and to the school. Thank you for your efforts!!

LEAP Test Site trial run and Laptop updates - April 8

LEAP Testing - April 9-15

The district has constructed a new entrance when you walk through our front doors. This entrance was created as an upgrade to secure our campus more to keep our students and staff even safer. If you are a parent that comes to our campus you will enter the front office as normal then walk through our new entrance double doors to the front office. The hallways are now off limits to all parents and we now have entrances to the hallways that will prevent anyone from traveling into our hallways from the front double doors.

IF YOU ARE checking IN a student...Your procedure will remain as normal.

IF YOU ARE checking OUT a student...You will walk into the front office to give the students name, sign them out and then walk out the front office into the new waiting area to wait for your student.

IF YOU ARE coming in for a conference with anyone on campus then you will come to the front office, check in for your conference or make a conference, and then you will walk out of the front office and wait in the new waiting area until our staff is ready to meet with you.

We ask that you remain flexible as we work out any kinks to our new procedures.

Congratulations to Miley Dressler for winning S.J. Welsh and C.P.S.B. Student of the Year award. This makes back to back years that the district's student of the year comes from S.J. Welsh Middle School. Good luck at the State level Miley, we know that you will be a great representative of S.J. Welsh Middle School and Calcasieu Parish.

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!

We would like to congratulate Mrs. Shirley Garrick for being selected as the S.J. Welsh Support Staff Member of the Year. Mrs. Garrick is one of our Paras who works very hard to support all of our student's needs.

We would like to congratulate our two fabulous librarians, Mrs. Angela Turton and Ms. Rhonda Ory, for being selected as the District's Librarians of the Year! This dynamic duo has been running the library at S.J. Welsh for the last 20 years together.

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.

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! 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.

Our outstanding citizens 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 outstanding teachers 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 nine weeks. 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