May 29, 2020
BK Alive
Weekly News and Information from Bishop Kelly
BK Alive is emailed periodically on Fridays during the summer months with information for BK Parents. Please read this important information, as it is our primary method of communication with our families.

Welcome to all our new families who have students that will be joining BK next fall!

If you would like to put an announcement in BK Alive, please email communications@bk.org by noon on Thursday for the next day's newsletter.
Can't See the Whole Newsletter?
BK ALIVE CONTAINS A LOT OF INFORMATION, AND THE LENGTH OF THE NEWSLETTER CAUSES IT TO BE TRUNCATED. TO READ BK ALIVE IN ITS ENTIRETY, VISIT THE BK ALIVE ARCHIVE HERE

OR

LOOK FOR THE BLUE LINK AT THE BOTTOM OF THE EMAIL THAT SAYS "VIEW ENTIRE MESSAGE" TO EXPAND THE EMAIL.
Just In Time Information - May 29th, 2020
Dear BK Parents and Students,

As we close out the 2019-20 school year and get ready to celebrate the Class of 2020 at their June 20th graduation, we hope you are all staying safe and healthy. We wanted to thank each of you once again for all the assistance and feedback you have provided in helping us successfully accomplish the five objectives we set out in mid-March when this all began:
  • Prioritize the health and well being of our faculty, staff, students, and greater community.
  • Continue to provide a great education for all students via virtual learning
  • Maintain the strong sense of community we have here at Bishop Kelly
  • Find ways to acknowledge, appreciate, and celebrate members of our community
  • Deliver effective and timely communication to our entire community

In this JIT/BK Alive, you will find information about Baccalaureate Mass and Class of 2020 Graduation, registration for summer academic workshops, an update on our 2020-21 school year instructional plan (and a request for your help) and our 2020-21 enrollment. We conclude with a beautiful spiritual reflection from Fr. Vance.
Baccalaureate Mass and Class of 2020 Graduation
We hope you have enjoyed all the things that the school, our seniors, and their parents have done to honor and celebrate this remarkable Class of 2020. Here are the links in case you missed them:


We are now focused on our Class of 2020 Graduation on June 20th . Things are looking up for our chances to have a live, traditional graduation on that date here at BK on Nick Ysursa Field at 8:00 pm . Governor Little announced yesterday that Idaho has moved into Phase 3 of his “Rebound Idaho” plan for opening up the state. If the state does enter Stage 4 in the "Rebound Idaho" plan on June 13, as the Governor has laid out, where “gatherings of more than 50 people, with appropriate physical distancing and precautionary measures”, are allowed, we will be able to have graduates and their immediate families gathered here to celebrate. We will also be broadcasting the ceremony live to those not able to attend. We will know on June 13th if we can move forward or need to go with more of a hybrid (there’s that word again) graduation. More details will follow in the coming weeks.

Baccalaureate Mass will be the night before - June 19th - at 7:00 pm , also on Nick Ysursa Field. Attendance will be the same as whatever scenario the graduation ceremony will be the following evening and we will also broadcast it live. Our Chaplain, Fr. Greg Vance, will be the celebrant.
Summer Academic Workshops
We have had many requests from students and families for opportunities over the summer months for academic boot camps. This is especially important given the uneven educational experiences that our incoming students have had, along with many of our normal summer activities being cancelled or postponed.

To fill that need we are offering the following Academic Workshops for Bishop Kelly Students:

  • Academic Survival Skills
  • Artistic Creations Camp (Drawing & Ceramics)
  • Coding and Robotics Camp
  • College Application Accelerator
  • Math Foundations LaunchPad
  • Writing LaunchPad

These boot camps will be taught on the BK campus by BK faculty members during the weeks of June 15-18, June 22-25 and August 4-6. We will adhere to strict health and safety guidelines similar to what we have been doing with our partial school opening these past two weeks for students needing assistance.

Financial Aid is available for families who need assistance.


Help Us Develop our 2020 - 2021 School Instructional Plan
We are beginning to zero in on key elements of our instructional plan for the Fall 2020 semester. We believe that the hybrid plan we are developing will significantly raise the bar from what we were able to do with virtual learning these past two months.  

As a reminder, the goals we have for the 2020-21 school year are the following:
  • Make the learning experience exceptional for all BK students and faculty & staff
  • Build a plan that provides flexibility, adaptability and options for our students, faculty/staff and our school
  • Keep our students, faculty/staff and community safe and healthy
  • Engage our parents and community as partners to the overall learning experience of our students

But we need your help in providing feedback on your student's experience the past two months with virtual learning and what elements of a 2020-21 plan would work best for you. Thus, we have put together this brief survey and would ask that you complete it by next Friday, June 5:
We will be bringing our 2020-21 instructional plan for approval to the BK Board of Governance on June 22nd, 2020, and will share it with our students, parents and faculty and staff later that week. Stay tuned.
Enrollment for the 2020 - 2021 School Year
We are pleased with our enrollment numbers for the 2020-21 school year as they stand today. Currently we have 862 students enrolled, a 5.9% increase from the 814 students we ended the 2019-20 school year with. Here is the breakdown by class:

Freshmen 236
Sophomores 225
Juniors 232
Seniors 170

Total 862
 
We are not, however, at the enrollment number we planned in January when we set our preliminary budget, published our tuition and fees, and determined faculty and staff salaries. Normally Spring Semester at Bishop Kelly means a lot of prospective new students and their families visiting campus for Shadow Days and school tours. That has not happened since March 13th, and we are just beginning to provide safe and socially distanced school tours. We also know that some students and families will not end up coming to BK when the fall semester begins, especially given the challenging economic times we are in.  
 
So, please help us. We are working hard to go virtual with our enrollment recruiting efforts, but we need the help of our entire community to tell our story. Please connect with Bishop Kelly on social media , and like and share our posts about the great things our students, faculty, staff, and coaches are doing here at BK. Tell your friends about your BK student's experience with Virtual School this past semester, and encourage anyone you know who is frustrated with their current situation to check out Bishop Kelly. Please consider yourself our greatest ambassadors and help us spread the word that BK has room in the Freshman, Sophomore, and Junior classes, and we have generous financial aid to help families in need. When we all work together, this community achieves great things!

Thank you!
Spiritual Reflection, by Father Vance
This coming Sunday, May 31, is the great feast of Pentecost. With the celebration of this “birthday of the Church,” we officially end the season of Easter that we have celebrated for the last 50 days. Pentecost, of course, is the day the “tongues of flame” came and rested on the heads of the disciples of Jesus, and among other things, allowed them to speak the one truth of the Resurrected Christ to the many nations and languages of the world. It marks the beginning of the mission of the Church to the whole world, and we here at BK are direct beneficiaries of that mission. But as well as beneficiaries, we are also heirs of the mission to preach Christ crucified and raised for our salvation to all those around us. As we move into summer, and as we cautiously open up our state and its businesses and churches, this central mission remains. How will YOU “preach” the reality of God’s love and grace to your family, your friends, your work associates and even to strangers this summer? We always “preach” first and foremost by our actions and our decisions, knowing that others might see and understand the reason why we act the way we do. Even though summer may look very different for many of us this year, the challenge to be “church” in our families and other relationships is probably more important right now than it usually is. Of course we pray for science to overcome this terrible virus now afflicting us, but we need to remember to pray for an increase of faith, that can meet and vanquish the fear we feel, the suspicion we have in being close to each other, and the crippling despair that only doubles the tragedy of this virus. So, on the feast of Pentecost, the “birthday of the Church,” may the Holy Spirit, promised to us by none other than our Lord Jesus Christ, descend upon us as it did on the disciples so long ago, that we may be bold and fearless in our living of a fulfilled Christian life, and that we might create the church within us and around us, with both friends and strangers, this summer.
Finally, thank you for entrusting your daughters and sons to us for their education and development. We look forward to seeing our rising sophomores, juniors and seniors in August and to celebrating with the Class of 2020 and their parents here at BK on Nick Ysursa Field on June 19th for Baccalaureate Mass and on June 20th for graduation!

Please know you and your families continue to be in our prayers. We hope and pray you have a relaxing, safe and peaceful summer!

God bless,
Rich Raimondi
President
Mike Caldwell
Principal


We Need Current Parents to sign up to be Parent Ambassadors!

If you are a parent of a current BK Student, we need your help! The BKPA is looking for Parent Ambassadors to help welcome and onboard our new BK parents. Each Parent Ambassador will be assigned a handful of new BK Families to check in with over the summer. Your job would be to welcome these new parents, and help them find answers to the questions they will inevitably have about things like dress code, bus schedules, lunch accounts, and so much more. Ambassadors will be trained by BK Staff.

Please let us know if you would be interested in being a Parent Ambassador by filling out THIS GOOGLE FORM.

Thank you!
BKPA Officers and Chairs for 2020 - 2021

Volunteering with the BKPA is a FUN way to be involved in your student's high school experience. And you will make your own friends along the way too! If you would like to get involved with the BKPA please let us know by filling out THIS SHORT FORM. We will contact you over the summer.
Senior Parents - Grad Party

A group of senior parents are looking at possibly booking Wahooz fun zone for a graduation party for our seniors. Would have to be after July 1st and cost would be around $40/student. Would be 11pm-3 or 4am. Other local schools have already booked. We would need 1 parent chaperon per 10 students. 

Please text 208-995-6264 with comments or to express interest in or against this idea. It would require minimum planning other than scheduling chaperon volunteers. 
Checking Your Student's Grades
Family Link will be live from May 26 - 29th to check end of semester grades.

In preparation for the transition to our new School Information System, Family Link will be unavailable after June 1, 2020. Stay tuned in early August about accessing our new parent portal through Infinite Campus. Thank you for your patience and understanding through this transition.

How to check your Student's grades online:

  • Go to  www.bk.org  and scroll to the very bottom of the page. Select the "Schoolmaster" icon which will take you to the Family Link Portal.

  • Login with your Parent access: Username:  firstname.lastname (this is the name of the parent used at registration)

  • Returning Parent Password:  A unique password that you set up previously. If you can't remember, use the password recovery option.

  • New Parent Password: bkknight5 You will be asked to set up a unique password after your first login.

  • All grades are available under "Mark History"

  • Second Semester report cards are in the mail!
Yearbooks are Here!
Yearbooks were distributed on May 20th and 21st during the designated drop-off days and times. There are still several yearbooks at BK waiting to be picked up. Please come by the school during our Summer Office Hours from 9:00 Am - 1:00 PM to pick up your yearbook. (We are closed this Monday for Memorial Day.) We encourage wearing a mask and using the hand sanitiser inside the main entrance.

Not sure if you've already ordered a yearbook? Check this list. The list is current as of Wednesday, May 13th, so any orders placed after that point are not listed.
Lost and Found
The end of school year lost and found is overflowing!

In addition to the items in the photos below, we also still have several bags of stuff from the locker cleanout. If you were unable to come by BK on the pickup/drop off days, please check with us to see if your student has items that need to be picked up. (Including yearbooks!)

Bishop Kelly's main office will be open from 9:00 AM - 1:00 PM Monday - Friday this summer. Please stop by to claim your items. We encourage wearing a mask and using the hand sanitiser inside the main entrance.
Clothing
Homeless Duck and other Misc. Items
Shoes
Job Openings at Bishop Kelly
Substitute Kitchen Assistant
Activities Bus Driver

Important Links
Contact BK
  • Front Office: 375-6010
  • Fax: 375-3626
  • Business Office Manager: 947-1209
  • BK Development Office: 947-1325
  • BK Foundation Office: 323-4789

To add, remove, or change your email address, or to remove your name from our regular mailing lists, please contact Chrissy at  cbeckner@bk.org .
Bishop Kelly High School | (208) 375-6010 | www.bk.org