August 23, 2016

Hello Beloved MCS Families!

I am hopeful that you have had a wonderful summer full of experiences that bond families and friendships together. While time to recharge the batteries is essential, please know that we have missed all of you and the building is ready to come alive again with the kind of life and vibrancy only you can bring. Through continual Professional Development opportunities, impromptu meetings and constant email discussion our staff has stayed in contact over the summer. Even though we will not be fully back together until this coming Monday, I can say with certainty that our staff is ready and excited for the new year. With only two short weeks left until your return, I wanted to reach out to you with some important updates about the 2016-2017 school year. 

 
2016-2017 MCS Theme
The Administrative Team has prayed through and been in significant discussion over the theme this year. All ideas and verses that came forward seemed to have this connectedness to what God truly desires within our hearts. Last year was about unification and we feel God's call to the deep inner workings of the individual in response to Gods love. So, the 2016-2017 MCS Theme will be: Made to Glorify and our theme verse will be Psalm 115:1 "Not to us, Lord, not to us but to your name be the glory, because of your love and faithfulness." The purpose of our lives is to glorify God and I look forward to seeing how God is going to grow our community through this year's theme. 

Chapel Change
Over the summer, God has been growing me in various areas, however, none more so than in the practice of giving Him the first fruit. God has been prodding me on the fact that if giving Him our first is of importance than why does MCS (and most other schools) wait until the end of the week to corporately worship Him in chapel? We should be beginning the week in corporate worship and teaching and then continuing to engage in conversation about it through the week. Our Administrative Team has prayed over this and reviewed the schedule. We are in alignment that this is the right direction for MCS. Beginning with the 2016-2017 school year MCS will begin the week with chapel on Mondays. I am confident God will bless our time together on Mondays in abundance. As always, we invite our parents to join our chapels anytime.

Calendar Changes

Please note the following changes we made to the school calendar over the summer: Students will now attend school on November 1st and 14th. We will run a half day schedule on November 16th and 17th for Parent Conferences. November 18th will become a non-student day and is reserved for Professional Development. These adjustments were made to better align Professional Development to Benchmark Assessments and provide appropriate conferencing time with parents. To view the finalized 2016-2017 school calendar,  click here.

Arrival and Dismissal Time Change
Throughout the spring, The Administrative Team went through an extensive process to reconstruct the instructional schedule to maximize instructional time and resources during the instructional day. Our process yielded issues that needed to be rectified within both the Middle School and Elementary schedules. The new schedule will provide more Homeroom time for Middle School to begin their day in God's Word and will provide Elementary with a clean Specialist Schedule (Art, Music, PE, Tech Lab, Media, Spanish) where students go to one per day and it is at the same time each day. This opens the classroom schedules to having appropriate and consistent blocks of time for literacy and math. Our Elementary Teachers are very excited about this schedule. There are two impact points for parents and students within this new schedule.  The first is that we will begin school 5 minutes earlier and end school 5 minutes later. The schedule for Monday, Tuesday, Thursday, and Friday will be: Middle School 7:55-2:55, Elementary (4th-5th) 8:10-2:55, Elementary (K-3rd) 8:10-2:35 and Elementary (TK) 8:10-12:30. (Late Start Wednesday will begin on September 14th with school beginning at 8:55 for Middle School and 9:10 for Elementary.)   The second impact point is that our Elementary students will receive each of the Special Area classes listed above one time every six days, meaning PE class will be in the rotation only one time instead of two as in the past. We will still have our normal morning snack/recess and lunch/recess every day. Within the new schedule we look forward to offering more individual instrument development for our 4th and 5th grade students to further accelerate our Fine Arts offerings. We look forward to providing our Elementary parents with a yearlong calendar indicating the Special Area class held on each day for your child(ren).

Artificial Turf Update
With 70% of our funding secured for our turf project we were not able to install this summer. We did make an investment in reseeding to have a safe field for the fall. We continue to move forward on this project through the fall release of MCS Athletic Program sponsorships, discussion with the Municipal Water District regarding their reinstallation of the Synthetic Turf Rebate Program this fall and donations from our community.

MCS Launching a New Website

During the first week of school we will be launching a brand new school website that aims to be a one stop shop for current parents to access the various programs we utilize for student information and be a marketing presence to tell the stories that are behind what makes Mariners Christian School the premier educational experience for TK-8th grade Christian families in Orange County.  We thank GoldenComm for their development work on our new site and their commitment to bringing strong internship opportunities within the technology industry to our students.

Elementary Class Placement
Class placement will be sent on Wednesday, August 31st, via email by Mrs. Biancalani. Follow up welcome emails will be sent by the classroom teachers on Thursday, September 1st. The class parent will also be identified at that time. If you are interested in being a class parent and have not indicated interest, please do so on this PTF Volunteer form by this Friday. http://marinerscs.org/parentvolunteer.

Middle School Schedules

Parents may log on to RenWeb beginning Friday, September 2nd, to access their child's assigned schedule and home room teacher.

Elementary and Middle School Goals

Our teachers look forward to sharing with you their professional pursuits over the summer. It was quite a summer for professional growth. For more details on specific goals for Middle School and Elementary please take the time to read these letters from Mrs. Harrison (click here) and Mrs. Biancalani (click here).

Meet the Teacher Day

We look forward to seeing all of our families on Meet the Teacher Day, Tuesday, September 6th.   Click here for details.

First Fruit on the First Day
One of my fondest memories of last year was the first day of school. It was humbling to see all of you parents out on the blacktop ready to see your child(ren) off into the building and joining us in prayer over them. This year, I want to call upon our community to spend a few more minutes together in prayer to our King and the plans He has for MCS this year. On Wednesday, September 7th, our gates will open at 7:30 as normal. We will then all join together as a Middle and Elementary School and pray over our students corporately at 8:00. For this day only, all of our students will go in together at 8:10 (with the exception of 8th grade who will get their picture taken).  From 8:15 to 8:45 we will have stations set up around the school with topics to go before the Lord in prayer on. We are hopeful you will be able to stop at one station or even a few. We will be sending out the prayer station topics and locations in advance.  Please mark your calendar to join us!!

God has big plans for our MCS community as we glorify Him in all things during the 2016-2017 school year.  Enjoy the remaining days of summer and we look forward to seeing you on Meet the Teacher Day!

Troy Moore

Head of School

Mariners Christian School