Congratulations to Janel Sebeny for being selected as Unit 5’s Junior High Teacher Nominee for the statewide Those Who Excel Award. The Those Who Excel Awards Program annually recognizes and honors people and groups who have made outstanding contributions to public and nonpublic elementary and secondary education.

Greetings!

Have you explored the new Spark Creativity site? Not only will you find a variety of engaging lessons, but you will also see ready to go activities you could use as holding patterns when students are done with their work. Here is an example of Gratitude Poetry Tiles. Can't remember your Spark Creativity login? Email me at sebenyj@unit5.org.

Have a wonderful and well deserved break!

Janel

Congratulations to both the 7th and 8th grade girls basketball teams for being named the #1 seed in their respective regionals. The 7th grade girls play their first game at 5:00 on Tuesday, November 22, at Morton Junior High School. The 8th grade girls play their first game at 4:45 on Tuesday, November 29, in Neuman Gym.

We are still looking for tutors for the Gap Attack program. This program has two strands to it...

• General Strand: Students and tutors are matched and the tutoring schedule will be determined based on mutual availability.

• Session Strand: Students and tutors are scheduled for specific sessions in conjunction with KJHS home sporting events. These sessions will include tutoring and/or mentoring with a high school or college student. There is no need for the tutor to stay for the sporting event unless they want to. Here is the tentative schedule for that program: 1/9, 1/17, 1/24, 2/1, 2/8, & 2/21.

Time commitment for tutors is 1-2 hours/week. Please let Anita Holland know if you are interested in either or both strands.

The KJHS jazz band will be performing in the south lobby from 8:35 - 8:45 am on Tuesday, November 22.

Student Council is putting on a dance from 3:45 - 5:30 in the KJHS cafeteria. The theme is "Winter Glow" and tickets will go on sale following Thanksgiving break. Attendance is limited to 250 students and the dance committee is looking for 3 more chaperones (outside of administration for that event) to give a total of 10 chaperones. Students with a 2nd quarter ISS or OSS will not be allowed to attend the event.

The office is not open until 7:45 am and we use the time from 7:30-7:45 am to problem solve around sub shortages and other issues for the day. The number of students asking to be buzzed in is before 7:45 am is increasing and become an additional stressor for office staff. Over the next week, we will be looking at ways to address this issue. Any solutions you can share would be helpful. Thanks!

Check out the November edition of the Family Kingsley Connection!

Freshman Orientation is being held at both Normal Community High School and Normal Community West High School on November 30th for eighth grade families. Details can be found in the links below. If a student is not sure what high school they are districted for, please refer them to the guidelines in the linked flyers or stop by the KJHS guidance office.

• Normal Community High School Freshman Orientation

• Normal Community West High School Freshman Orientation

An updated Cycle 3 Team Recommendation Sheet & Data Day Guide will be coming in the 11/18 staff notes. I know the suspense is building!

You should have received an email on 10/24/22 indicating that the McLean County Unit 5 Open Enrollment event is from 10/24/22 through 11/23/22. Open Enrollment is an annual event that allows you to make changes to existing benefits or elect benefits for the first time. This year McLean County Unit District No. 5 is requiring a mandatory open enrollment. Every employee must log in and choose benefits or choose to decline benefits this year. This is due to the changes we have made to the health plans, and also to give you a chance to add beneficiaries for your life insurance. Your beneficiary information may not have transferred over from the previous enrollment system.

New for 2023, we have enhanced the PPO Gold, PPO Silver, and HSA Silver Plans, which allows us to eliminate the PPO Platinum Plan. We are also happy to announce the addition of a new vision plan. The new vision plan will replace the current vison reimbursement coverage in the health plans.

If this is your first-time enrolling, you can register by accessing this Registration link. During the registration process, you may be required to enter personal identifying data as well as the following company identifier: Unit 5

If you are already registered, start making changes to your insurance elections today through this Login link.

If you have any questions, please contact Megan Peterson at petersm@unit5.org.

The aMath/aReading initial testing window is 11/14 - 11/18, with team makeup sessions running 11/21 - 11/22. Guidance will have an all school makeup session on 11/29 and our Cycle 3 Data Day is December 9th.

Here's the good news... there is not writing assessment this round and if a student has had a comprehensive exam, F&P, or is currently in an intervention, there is no need for any further diagnostics assessment. This should take some pressure off of staff who do the diagnostics. Elisa will be asking teams to have their discussion recommendations in the Cycle 3 recommendation form (which will be sent out soon) by Monday, December 5th and she will have preliminary "students to discuss" lists out to teachers on 12/7/22. Thank you all in advance for your work in this process. It is greatly appreciated!

For those looking for a little extra November fun, here is the staff dress up/activity days calendar.

This is the current list of Registered Student Organizations (RSO) here at KJHS. Please review it for accuracy. If you sponsor an RSO, please look at your RSO's page on the KJHS web site. If it needs to be updated, please let Erik Rich know. If your RSO doesn't have a link on the KJHS extracurricular site, please let Erik Rich know.

Altering Absence Start/End Times

We have discovered that when start and end times are altered manually on an absence in Frontline, the data does not pull into Tyler correctly for payroll purposes.

Please only use the half day AM/PM or full day options in Frontline and do not change the time of the absence. If you would like to notify the substitute of their arrival time/schedule, please add that information in the “Notes to Substitute” section of the absence.