The 8th grade is very excited to invite you and the students of KJHS to attend the annual Career Fair on Friday, February 7th during 8th hour.  Our students have been working very hard to produce attractive trifolds and informative presentations.  If you are a classroom teacher, please consider signing up to bring your class to the presentations.  If you are not with students 8th hour, then we hope that you will stop by and listen to some presentations and visit with our 8th graders.  

Please browse the schedule to see what might work for you and/or your class.  Thank you so much for supporting the 8th grade!

8th grade band students will be gone on Friday, February 14th so they can perform at the IGSMA Organizational Contest at Prairie Central Junior High in Forrest, IL. Students will go to Advisory, and be back for 8th hour that day. Here is the list of students involved on that day. And if you are curious- here is the itinerary! Thanks for supporting them in their contest! 

January is "Participation" month for PBIS PRIDE. Please select students from your team that demonstrate an eagerness to participate in their learning, with groups, and in sports/clubs and submit their names for PBIS Student of the Month award by January 31st. 

Here is the Spring 25 K Cart Schedule: 

7 Feb - South

14 Feb - North

21 Feb - South

28 Feb - North

7 Mar - South

21 Mar - North

4 April - South

11 April - North

25 April - South

9 May - North

We have room in our after school tutoring program "GAP Attack" to accommodate more students. If you have a student who could use tutoring or a student whose family has requested tutoring, please complete the GAP Attack Referral Form. 

Jaime Wheelwright is joining Team Kingsley as the health teacher for the 25-26 school year. Jaime is currently teaching PE at Fairview Elementary School. Welcome to Team Kingsley Jaime! 

Here is the tentative IAR testing schedule. We will have further details/specific assignments as we get closer to the actual testing dates. There will be IAR testing training during our early release PD time on March 4th. 

As we proceed throughout this second semester, we are continuing our work on "maintaining our composure and rational detachment throughout the school year in order to handle escalations in student behavior in a healthy manner".   To date, we have utilized sessions with Abby Lyons and the district-wide de-escalation training to help support these efforts. 

We would like to add a third supplemental resource to this work. Bruce Perry has a series of short videos that help to explain the relationship between the brain and behavior as well as strategies we as educators can use to our advantage when working with students who are dysregulated. Here is the first of those videos: The Neurosequential Model. Much of this video may be review but we highly recommend watching this video. It will be seven minutes well spent and a good reminder of what is happening in the brain and what needs to happen for learning to occur. In fact, we think this is so important, we will offer gift cards to the first two people who email Elisa with the 3 steps in the Sequence of Engagement  outlined in the video. 

The PBIS Q3 reward event will be during 7th & 8th hours on Thursday, March 20th, and will feature an all school assembly with floor hockey games with the Bloomington Bison as well as a pie in the face event. More details coming soon! 

From Jennifer O'Brien... 

As part of the monthly District Wellness initiatives for staff, the Unit 5 Nurses are promoting Heart Health in the month of February !! There will be several fun activities including a Play Your Heart Out Challenge, health screenings at all Unit 5 Schools, and weekly heart healthy videos by Dr. Weikle and your very own Unit 5 Nurses.

We will be hosting OSF Healthcare at KJHS on Friday, February 7th from 8:00-9:00 to provide cholesterol and blood glucose screenings. Health screenings are a great way to check to see if you are at an increased risk for heart disease and stroke. Please see the  flyer for more details. You MUST sign up for this screening, so if you're interested, please email or stop by and see me.  Anyone can stop by my office that day to get your blood pressure checked as well.  

The KJHS PTO has $1000 to spend on teacher requests. If you have a request for funds for your classroom, please complete the PTO Teacher Funding Request Form. This is due by March 7th for the March 10th meeting, which is the last meeting where funding requests will be considered. 

We got a good deal on several boxes of disposable gloves (student size). If you are doing activities where students need such gloves, please feel free to pick up a box or two of gloves from the main office. 

From Dayna Brown...

Beyond the Books Educational Foundation is now accepting applications for grants. Beyond the Books provides funding for innovative academic programs in Unit 5 and District 87.

GRANT TYPES AND FUNDING AMOUNTS:

• BEYOND THE BOX: One grant in an amount between $7500 and $10,000 will be awarded in this category for an exceptional proposal. The $7500 - $10,000 award is given by a private foundation to Beyond the Books Educational Foundation and BTBEF selects the winner.

• STANDARD: Grants awarded in this category are limited to requests for $801 to $5000. 

• MINI: Grants awarded in this category are limited to $800 or less.

The Beyond the Books bylaws require that approximately 15% of the total annual allocation be used to fund Mini Grants. Historically, this has resulted in a much higher percentage of Mini Grants being funded than Standard Grants.

To find more information, rubrics, and details CLICK HERE. To apply at CLICK HERE.  

The application deadline is 11:59 pm, March 3. We strongly recommend not waiting until the last minute.

 Want more information? Talk to our very own Jessie Lynch who is serving as the Unit 5 rep on the Beyond the Books committee.

Congratulations to this week's Kingsley Kudos recipient: Jennifer Dierkes! 

Has a fellow Cougar gone out of their way to help you? Have you seen a staff member who goes above and beyond to make Kingsley a better place to work and learn? Reward them by nominating them for a Kingsley Kudos! It's quick, painless, and brings joy to you and the recipient. 

Feb. 6th (1/2 Day)  Soup and Chili Cook Off....sign up coming soon from Jenny Starkey

Week of February 10th:  Fill Their Cup activity in MSR (will last all week) 

February 14th:  PTO Day in MSR 

February 18th Institute Day:  Drawing for goodies during Team Kingsley Meeting.

Week of February 10th:  Super Bowl Square Fundraiser....see Anita for details 

February 28th:  Underground Teacher Spirit Day (Flannel Friday or better yet, Shacket Day) 

We are noticing that our tardy numbers, especially for advisory, are not aligning with what we see in the hallways. Please remember to mark students tardy in Infinite Campus for all classes on your roster. Tardies are to ALWAYS be marked in Infinite Campus as they are a component of attendance. 

KJHS has been selected as a NAEP testing school. On February 11, a selected group of 8th grade students will be completing one of two NAEP tests in the IMC. Many thanks to Breanna Schwarz for coordinating this extra testing event. 

The submission window for lane movement will open February 3, 2025. The window will close February 21, 2025. Please be prepared to submit your official transcripts. They may be uploaded via the submission form or they may be mailed to the Unit 5 district office (1809 W. Hovey Ave. Normal, Illinois 61761 attn: Mikaila Walls). Please do not email any documents unless prompted to. Please let Mikaila know if you have any questions,  

The Grove Elementary Staff will be hosting an upcoming event to honor and celebrate Mrs. Amy Burns Moore and her dedication to education.  The 1st Annual Amy Burns Moore Scholarship Gator Games will be held on March 2, 2025, from 8:00 AM - 12:00 PM at Bloomington Tennis & Turf.  Amy was an avid tennis player and loved all sports.  In honor of Amy’s dedication to furthering her education,  the Grove staff  would like to raise money to provide scholarships to existing Unit 5 staff members who are in the process of continuing their education. They are excited to honor her with an opportunity for members of our community to play pickleball and kickball.  For more information on how your family can be involved, please check out the information flyer. 

1. Winter Benchmark: Please administer, score, and place results on EduClimber by February 14. Remember all of the resources are in our LA Google Classroom. The code is hv3buze. While you are there, check out the LA Dashboard as a one stop shop to all of our resources. 

2. We Will Write: Have you heard of this?! Recently SOPPA approved, this website has short writing prompts. Students are placed into teams and try to write the best response! They vote and we discuss what makes that writing the best. The students are SO engaged and awesome conversation occurs. Check it out!

Just a reminder to please be utilizing due process whenever issuing consequences to students. This means that there should be conversation with a student, including listening to their account of what happened, prior to the issuance of consequences. This not only helps to ensure that the proper steps are taken, it also enables students' voices to be heard and assists them with connecting their actions to the resulting consequences. Please reach out to Sylvester or Dennis if you woud like any assistance with implementing due process in your classroom. 

We currently have two Schedule B openings for the 25-26 school year:

CARES Case Manager (let Elisa know)

Assistant Softball Coach (complete this form)

Here are this week's instructional technology tips. 

Just a reminder to please turn in CICO sheets to Kim Johnson by Monday after school following a week of data collection. If you are running into issues with collecting CICO data, please let Kim know. 

The 2024 W-2s are available in Tyler Employee Access. Here are instructions to help guide you in viewing and printing your W-2.  Employees who opted for a paper copy of their W-2 will receive their form at their home address on file. If you were covered through a District health plan in 2024, you will receive notification next week regarding your 1095-C form. Please contact us at payroll@unit5.org if you have any questions.

School/STEM Day Game

The Bloomington Bison are having a School/STEM Day Game on March 5th if any teams are interested in a team field trip. 

Unit 5 is piloting a program where you can send texts to families from your computer. In order to set this up, please refer to the resources below... 

Talking Points Log In

Talking Points Tutorial

Talking Points FAQs

The Unit 5 IT Department has been introducing our new Helpdesk Ticketing system, IncidentIQ - https://unit5.incidentiq.com/, to the entire district over these past 2 months.  We will be making the full transition, for technology requests, to IncidentIQ after we come back from break.  If you haven't had a chance yet to log into the new system, we highly encourage you to do so.

How you can help: 

• Be patient with us as the IT Department will be working in two systems at the same time and working on learning this new system.

• Be observant of the new system.  We have made changes to where some buttons are located in the new IncidentIQ system. Please choose an issue button that closely fits your issue.

• Communicate with us.  We will be asking for feedback during this pre-rollout time.  There may be things that we need to change.  There also may be things that we can’t change and we need to know how to communicate those items out with the full district.  We have placed a Feedback button inside of Incident IQ on the Quick Tickets (main page).

Items to be aware of:

• Quick Tickets:  When you log in you will see several buttons that are considered “Quick Tickets”  These tickets should help you to pick some of the most used issue categories.

• Screenshots and videos:  When you are in the ticket you can take a screenshot or video from your screen.  Adding one of these to a ticket will greatly help us to make sure we are giving the ticket to the correct IT Technician. 

• HR and Maintenance tickets will be found in the old Helpdesk system.  We are working with HR and Maintenance to create an environment for their tickets.

• The technology inventory is connected to the system so you can help us as you create tickets by selecting the system that you or a student may be having trouble with.  

Thank you for working with us on our transition to IncidentIQ.  We are confident that this new system will help you communicate issues with the IT Department better.  The IT Department, in return, will be able to resolve district issues better.

If you have questions please submit a helpdesk ticket through https://unit5.incidentiq.com/

Thank you,

Unit 5 Technology Department

One of your benefits as a Unit 5 employee is access to our Employee Assistance Program. We encourage you to check out the program site to see if any of the many resources can meet your current and future needs. 

December's theme is “Winter Wellness”. We challenge you to 21 Days of Exercises to Stay Mentally and Physically Fit This Holiday Season. Attached is a document with suggested activities. Initial each day you participate and scan and email to Dayna Brown at the end of the month to be eligible for prizes. 

Winter break is almost here! Please remember to end the year with compassion. 

This monthly wellness initiative is designed to support your overall well-being, both physically and mentally. The monthly topics are based on the information gathered from last year’s staff wellness survey. 

The Town of Normal allows Unit 5 schools to make park shelter and ball diamond reservations for 2025 prior to opening up reservations to the public. Reservation requests are being accepted February 10th - 28th for Unit 5 schools. For more information, including how to make a reservation, please review the Town of Normal letter.