Polaris K-12 School Website

To download a PDF of the April 2007 Wolf Treks newsletter click on the link below.

April 2007 Wolf Treks

Meeting called to order at 6:36 p.m. by co-chair Diana Ede. Quorum established.

Principal’s Report: Denise. Anchorage Operatic Seminar spent a day at Polaris. Individual elementary classes were held in the morning. In the afternoon, there was an all school assembly to watch an operatic performance of Little Red Riding Hood. The performance was well-received by the students.

We were awarded the Best Buy $15,000 grant for which Corey Aist had applied.

The seminar class for parents discussed at the last Parent Forum meeting will happen in the fall. The text for the class is Schools That Learn by Peter Senge.

The next Parent Forum meeting is April 10, 2007.

Mandated testing is coming up April 3-5. Parent Forum provides water and snacks.

Elementary Report: Carol Bartholomew. During the last early release day meeting, Dr. Adam Grove gave a presentation on stress in adults and children and how to cope with stress.
Intensive catalogs will go home before spring break. Our principal Denise who represents Alaska at the National Association of Secondary School Principals received an award for her work. In addition, she now represents the entire Northwest on the national committee.

Secondary Report: Siri Khalsa. At the last secondary meeting, the staff went over the list of all scholarship opportunities and recommended students for various opportunities. A parent is needed to disseminate information about scholarships. Cathy Wright will post the information on the Parent Forum website. There will be a summary of local and state opportunities and a link to the extensive high school site.

6th Grade Transition: Heidi Postishek. Hand out of Polaris K-12 Middle School Program was distributed. 6th grade camp is becoming mandatory. After this spring, 6th grade camp will be offered in the fall and will include pre-registration for classes, showing new 6th graders their lockers, etc. Impact on 8th graders will be minimal. There will be more middle school classes. Staff is looking at how advisories will work with the larger age spread. The impact of changing to a 6-8 middle school on retention is expected to be good. It will be more difficult to get into Polaris at 7th grade. There is a difference in funding for middle schools. How will math work? Students will be placed in a math class based on performance on standardized test, elementary teacher’s assessment and any other available data. Students will be placed in Math A, B or Pre-Algebra. Students will take 4 core classes plus 2 electives. Secondary starts at 8:30 (elementary at 8:15) and ends at 3:00. There are no half-day Wednesdays for secondary students.

Ad Board Report: Sally Betz. Ad Board is working on updating the bylaws. One point from the bylaws relates to Parent Forum. The Ad Board bylaws specify that 3 of the Parent Forum representatives are parents of K-6 students and 3 are parents of 7-12 students. Is it necessary to maintain this elementary-secondary split or should it be simply 6 representatives from Parent Forum? Sally requested feedback from PF on this issue. Kim Pigg suggested it say 6 representatives from Parent Forum with a recommended but not mandatory split between elementary and secondary. Parent Forum can decide in its own bylaws how to split the representation on Ad Board. Deb Blouin made a motion to amend the Ad Board bylaws to specify just the number of parent representatives and have Parent Forum amend their bylaws to reflect the split between elementary and secondary. Motion was seconded by Patrick Solano-Walkinshaw. A vote was taken and the motion passed.
Op group meets Mondays at 1:50. Parents are welcome to attend. Op group minutes are distributed to advisories. Parent Forum will request a copy of their minutes. Op Group gave out the Polarian Awards. Kim Pigg received the first Parent Award, Green Star got the group award and Hannah Strobe received the student award.

Financial Report: Kim Pigg. Financial report was handed out. Parent Forum has unallocated funds of $4740.07 to disburse.

Requests for funding.

• Lori Sheperd for the Graduation Committee. Graduation Committee met February 5, about 20 parents came. They have received some donations from companies for food, but still need decorations, flowers, etc. The graduation committee is requesting $300-500. Their next meeting is March 12 at 6 pm. Q-Doba is catering food for 250 people. There will be a pre-graduation reception, then the grads can go celebrate afterwards. Last year Parent Forum allocated $500 for graduation of which $454 were actually expensed. Kim Pigg made a motion to allocate $500 and Parent Forum will pay actual expenses. Motion was seconded by Jim Hasbrouck. A vote was taken, the motion passed. Lori will leave records/model, preferably and e-doc on the computer, for next year’s graduation committee. It was suggested that this become a regular line item in Parent Forum’s budget.
• Kitte’ Miller for School Bonds Yes. On Election Day, April 3, 2007, two school bonds (Propositions 4 and 5) are up for approval. One is $20 million bond for maintenance of existing schools, the other bond is for rebuilding Clark Middle School. Schools Bonds Yes uses money it raises to go to media and marketing, including radio and t.v. ads to try to get these bonds approved. Last time there wer school bonds on the ballot, Parent Forum donated $200 the the School Bonds Yes committee. Kitte’ Miller made a motion to donate $200 to School Bonds Yes. The motion was seconded by Molly Boots. A vote was taken, the motion passed.

Kim will add senior graduation to next year’s budget. Any other budget recommendations should go to Kim. There are about $4000 left. Perhaps more of that could go to the theatre which still needs lights.

Vision Committee: Vision Committee met the week of Feb. 19. There were students present. The committee will meet once more before the end of the school year.

Volunteer: Kitte’ Miller and Cathy Wright. Volunteers are needed during the standardized testing period April 3-5 both as hall monitors and to purchase snacks and water.

Old Business

Community Service Proposal – Deb Blouin. A parent proposal was handed out. Deb requests feedback especially from teachers.
Siri stated the he personally liked the proposal. It’ll be interesting to hear feedback from teachers and students. How does one motivate students to be interested in doing community service? Deb answered that you take what students are already doing, quantify it and evaluate it. Carol Bartholomew asked what the elementary component of the proposal is. We want to make sure that community service is not just secondary but K-12. Deb suggested pairing advisories and family groups. Community service could be treated like a passion project. Use the same format for elementary and secondary but scale back the scope to a level more appropriate to elementary. There could be a community service bulletin board for all to see and use. The inent of the proposal is to unify community service and make it consistent across all advisories.

It was noted that the largest impact will be on parents and, therefore, parents need to be on board. Parents have to participate, bring their own community service experience to the process.

Proposal must go to all constituencies, all must give feedback and all must approve before it goes to Ad Board which has the final approval. Elementary needs to be included, not necessarily in this proposal but through conversation and consideration. Including an elementary student in a secondary student’s proposal could be part of it.

Denise made four specific suggestions for this proposal:

1. That it be called a 6-12 Community Service proposal.
2. That Deb look at the last two proposals that passed, the lunch policy and the 5/6 contract proposal. The current version is an adult document intended to be read by adults. It needs to be changed to be a proposal intended for students.
3. Address the fact that the K-12 Parent Forum has chosen to put forward a secondary proposal.
4. Figure out how a child whose parent does not participate will not be penalized.

The parents’ role and responsibility needs to be spelled out. Perhaps there needs to be a parent representative or aid for each advisory. A suggestion was made the parent aid be centered around a specific project. Projects do not need to be outside school. Community service is not a new concept to the students/school. However, the structure imposed on them is new.

The proposal will be posted on the web site.

New Business

Business School Partnerships – Kathryn Smith The foundation responsible for School-Business partnerships has gone through a renewal and has a new executive director. In order to invigorate the program, every secondary school now has a coordinator. Kathryn Smith is the coordinator for Polaris. Kathryn had a slide show presentation which will hopefully be put onto the Parent Forum web site.

The website for the School Business Partnership or SBP is www.asdk12.org/depts/sbp/ The goals and history of the program are outlined in their handbook. The goals include giving students a realistic picture of the business world and to develop a mutual support understanding among businesses, schools and communities.

Polaris’ business partners include Schlumberger, National Wildlife Federation, Kaladi Brothers, Anchorage Waterways Council, UAA Environmental and National Resources Institute (ENRI) and the Association of General Contractors (AGC). Schlumberger has taken students to North Slope to tour the oil fields. National Wildlife Federation helped start the Habitat. Kaladi Brothers helps DECA. The Anchorage Waterway Council has given Polaris a $3000 science grant and students are involved in monitoring water quality. ENRI is monitoring bugs in the creek. AGC helped with Davia’s Build Up intensive.

Some businesses such as Providence have all district partnerships. Others are school specific. Alaska Dinner Factory and Q-Doba are possible business partners for Polaris. SBP publishes a newsletter. We’ll have the logos of our business partners in our newsletter. Polaris was the partnership for the month of January. There are many opportunities here for parent volunteers. Parents can be contact points for partners.

Math Literacy - Kitte’ Miller. The National Association of Secondary School Principals is publishing a book on math literacy. The text which is coming out soon takes a community wide approach to math literacy. Kitte’ wants to see if there is interest in getting a group to meet and talk about math issues. We appear to lose kids somewhere between 3rd and 7th grade.

Polaris K-12 History Project – Richard Emanuel. A hand-out explaining the project was distributed. Discussion was postponed until the next meeting to the late hour.

Meeting adjourned at 8:29 pm.

Welcome back from Spring Break to 4th quarter, testing, and break up!

• The Wolf Treks newsletter arriving in your mailbox soon is loaded with info.
• Students interested in an Africa 2008 trip meet at noon Th Mar 29 in Kathryn’s rm.
• $1 Fro Yo at 3 pm Fri Mar 30 complements of Carol & Gail’s learning partners.
• British Isles Intensive dinner & silent auction 6-9 pm Fri March 30 with Irish food, dancing, and music featuring Seek Bob. $5 students, $8 adults, or $25 for a family of 4 available at the door or from British Isles Intensive students or Mark Lyke.
• All School Breakfast Mon Apr 2 starts at 7:45 am in the MPR. Thank you to the staff for this annual celebration & preparation for a positive testing experience!
• All students in grades 3-10 will be testing TWTh mornings April 3-4-5. Reply to mvh@gci.net, if you can devote a morning to help “shush” in the hallways. Also needed is a volunteer to purchase the water bottles & snacks Parent Forum provides.
• Please vote in the Municipal election April 3rd! Propositions 4 & 5 are especially important to me as Chair of School Bonds Yes! Polarians are fortunate that voters supported bonds for the addition & renovation of our school into a safe & contemporary learning environment. All students in our district deserve this. See www.asdk12.org/Bonds/ & www.anchoragetomorrow.org.
• Parent Forum meets 6:30 pm Tues April 10 in the Library to nominate officers and plan our budget and activities for an exciting 2007-08 year. Please be thinking about how you can contribute your time & talents to benefit our community!
• Current and incoming Polaris families celebrate the ’06-07 year-in-review and transitions for ’07-08 at the All Community Meeting 5-7 pm Wed Apr 11.
• Donate your spare change to Pennies for Patients in James’ office.
• “Ask Anchorage : What Freedom Means?” art contest info in the Art Room .

We are starting to gear up for our Spring Book Fair on April 18-19th during Parent/Teacher conferences. We look forward to working with parent volunteers again to ensure the success we had during the fall book fair. A parent sign-up sheet will be available in the library after spring break. Thanks in advance!

Also, the tentative list for next year’s Battle of Books is out already! If you want to get a jump-start on reading books for next year’s competition (or you just want to read some good books!), come to the library and we will provide you with a list of books. We are placing an order for these books so they will be here when school starts in the fall. Please encourage your child to participate in next year’s Battle of Books program….it is a wonderful reading incentive and provides a medium for children to discuss good books.

Polaris Battle of Books teams did a great job this year!

• 3/4th grade (2 teams) 11th and 25th place
• 5/6th grade (2 teams) 2nd place tied with Girdwood and 8th place
• Middle school teams 4th place
• High school teams 4th place tied with Chugiak High School

Finally, thanks to those of you who donated books, videos, and other items to the library; we received some stuffed animals and also a great set of National Geographic Videos from families at Polaris. We are still in need of books for our free book rack, plants, stuffed animals, and easy chairs/couches for our free reading section. Thanks for your donations; please feel free to stop by the library to browse the shelves, check out books, or visit with the library staff.

Elementary early release today.
Parents are invited to stay with your student to watch Gail’s Family Group performing “Theseus & the Minotaur” in the MPR after lunch today.
Lottery applications must be complete in the office by 3 pm today.
Becky’s Family Group performs “Macbeth: The Musical Comedy” at 1:15 & 5:30 pm Th March 15 in the MPR. All performances are free. Theatre Fund donations are welcome!
Third quarter ends Th Mar 15.
In-Service Fri Mar 17 with no school for students.
Spring Break is March 19-23.
Fourth quarter starts Mon Mar 26.
Statewide testing is TWTh Apr 3-5 for all students in 3rd-10th grades. Five parents are needed each morning to help “shush” in the hallways. Reply to cathyalaska@yahoo.com.
The lunchtime game club is looking for ping pong, foosball, air hockey tables, and old video consoles with games, board games (1/2 hour), and the like. We gratefully accept donations, equipment loans, or low cost purchase/sales. We are also offering a very entertaining lunch hour to parents that will help supervise the game club Tuesdays & Thursdays 11:45 – 12:25 in room #210.  Contact Barry Steinkruger at bvea@alaska.net or 441-2526 for information.

Attention all knitters/crocheters and those of you who want to learn how to knit: I am a parent of two children at Polaris, Ciara who is in Carol’s class and Seamus who is in Mike’s class. I am interested in forming a Friday morning knitting group, (crochet is welcome also). I am thinking we could meet after morning drop off on Fridays at Kaladi Bros. and knit together. At some point I would be interested in knitting for charity, there are a lot of local organizations that would love to accept our donations, my other objective is that it is a great way to get to know one another better and to strengthen our already great Polaris community. We would meet from about 8:30 until we feel like leaving, maybe 9:30 or 10:00am….
Please contact me at 279-7933 or cmsbrady@acsalaska.net if you are interested or would like me to teach you how to knit, I will get you a list of supplies or bring some to share until you get your own. I hope to see you on Friday.

Shannon Brady

Tours 8:30-10 am Wed March 7 & 14. Complete lottery applications due in the office by 3 pm Mar 14. No exceptions, even for siblings!

King Career Center Open House 5-7 pm Wed Mar 7 to learn about technical & vocational programs available for high school students.

Free public reception 6-8 pm Wed Mar 7 celebrating “The Creative Process” student art show at Anchorage Museum.

Learn to knit with parent Shannon Brady 9 am Fri Mar 9 at Kaladi on Brayton.

Advanced Band & Orchestra perform 9:30 am at Williwaw Elementary on DeBarr and 11:30 am at the Fifth Ave Mall food court on Fri Mar 9. Parents able to chaperone, contact Staats_Lori@asdk12.org.

Girl Scout cookie sales 3-4 pm Fri Mar 9 & Mon Mar 12. Junior Troop 616 donated $100 to the Polaris Theater fund last year and presented the flags at our September Dedication. (Cookies are for consumption outside of school hours.) Contact Troop Leader Donna at kdma93115@msn.com.

Planning starts for the April 11th All-Community Meeting in Mike McGee’s room at 3:15 pm Mon March 12. Reply if you would like to be a parent representative.

Senior parents invite Jr parents to help plan graduation 6-7 pm Mon Mar 12 in the Library.

No school for students March 16-25. Families able to help with lottery applicant interviews during Spring Break, please contact Hellings_Mike@asdk12.org.

Students Jamie, Raimey, and Aurora perform with the Northern Lights Celtic Dancers Fri Mar 16 and Sat Mar 17 at Alaska Wildberry Theatre. Tickets at Centertix.net.

Parent art room volunteer Jenny Ditto offers a Spring Break wheel-throwing pottery camp for ages 12-17 at her studio. Contact midnightpotter@gmail.com.

Save the Date: British Isles Intensive dinner & silent auction with Irish food, dancing & music 6-9 pm Fri Mar 30.

Our Leukemia & Lymphoma Society’s Pennies for Patients goal this year is $3000 by the end of April, with $1 per mile during the Iditarod in honor of Susan Butcher! Toss your spare change into James’ office or donate at www.active.com/donate/sywa/syAPolari.

Plants & flowers, matching easy chairs +/- a couch, a sturdy lamp, stuffed animals, chess sets, board games, and “free books” are welcome in the Library.

A Best Buy grant of $15,000 was awarded to Polaris, thanks to Corey!

Nominate students, staff & parents for the Polarian Award outside Kathryn’s rm.