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October/November 2017 

The Administrative Team for the Heights Middle School (HMS) Campus would like to thank all of our families for your patience as we have worked to transition two middle schools into the same location as our home sites prepare for renovations. This summer we undertook the monumental tasks of moving Heights High School into their new space while simultaneously moving two schools into the temporary home of Heights Middle School. Our staff has worked hard to assist students with the initial transition and modified plans as needed. As we start the second quarter we feel confident that students and staff have adjusted to their new space. Again, your patience with this transition has been greatly appreciated.

With the move behind us, we are developing a common middle school program that will continue after we return to our home sites in two years. The students have adjusted well to being in the same building as they enjoy common lunches, music programs, dances and afterschool programming such as student council and clubs. Teachers from both middle schools have been using common planning time to design instruction, including IB units, for each grade level and content area that gives all of our students the same learning experiences aligned to State of Ohio content standards. Bringing all of the middle school teachers together has allowed our teacher teams to be more efficient with their instructional planning so they can spend more time developing intervention and enrichment activities that better meet the learning needs of our students.

Although we are operating as one campus, we are still two schools when reporting information the the State of Ohio, the IB Program, and in delivering educational services to individual students and their families. Students are taught by teachers from their home schools. If you need assistance with classroom issues you should contact your child’s teachers, guidance counselor or principal. The teams for each school are listed below:

In order to maintain a competitive schedule within our athletic league and provide opportunities for more students to participate in the sports program, we offer large teams like football as a campus program and smaller teams like basketball by school. Please reach out to the faculty managers if you have questions about how your child can join a team.

As part of our efforts to build a common middle school program, staff members from both schools have created common goals and action steps for our building improvement plans. The District has set the goal of having 90% of our students graduate college and career ready as defined by the State of Ohio. To achieve that goal, all buildings have been asked to design action steps for academic, assessment and climate targets. The middle school program’s academic action steps focus on using the Ohio Improvement Process to design challenging lessons targeting skills student need to master to be college ready, implementing common literacy strategies across all content areas, and utilizing all the tools our new curricular adoptions provide to support student achievement. We recently shared MAP results with families as part of our assessment plan so each family can have a better understanding of their child’s strengths and areas for improvement. We want to work with families to create support plans that will assist students with meeting college and career readiness standards. Our climate action steps focus on explicitly teaching students HMS behavior expectations, recognizing when students meet the expectations, and supporting students who struggle to meet the expectations with intervention programming.

After our busy start to the school year we are excited to transition to a focus on developing a common middle school program. The first quarter ended on October 20th and we will be hosting our first Honor/Merit Roll breakfast on October 30th. The window for registering for Parent Teacher Conferences opened on October 22nd and closes October 29th. Families that need assistance with registering for conference night on November 1st can call the main office and please note that students will be dismissed at 1:25 pm the day of conferences. Fall sports have concluded their seasons and we are now starting tryouts for our winter sports programs. School will not be in session for students on November 7th as many of our buildings are used as polling stations, but teachers will report for professional development sessions. The 8th grade class trip to Washington DC will be November 8th - 10th. Finally, mark your calendar for November 9th if you want your child to retake their school picture.