June 26, 2020
BK Alive
Weekly News and Information for BK Families
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A Message from Rich and Mike
Dear BK Parents and Students,

We pray that you are all staying safe and healthy. It was a wonderful graduation weekend and we are so thankful that we were able to celebrate the Class of 2020 with their families and friends, both in person and via our live broadcast, with fabulous weather and just before Ada County moved back into Stage 3.  

In this Just in Time/BK Alive, we will recap graduation weekend, share some exciting news about our 2020 - 2021 Instructional Plan, give a SIC summer sports update, provide an 2020/21 enrollment update, share our programs to welcome new students (Challenger) and families (BKPA Parent Ambassador), discuss summer academic workshops and the Senior Grad Party. Whew! Lots going on for what normally is a quiet time here at Bishop Kelly!

We hope you all get some time to enjoy this beautiful Idaho summer and we look forward to seeing you in August, if not before!


God Bless!
Rich Raimondi
President
Mike Caldwell
Principal
2020 Graduation Weekend
What an incredible graduation we were able to celebrate last weekend! Congratulations to each of our graduates in the Class of 2020, and to their parents and families. THANK YOU for sending this incredible group to Bishop Kelly. They have been role models and leaders during their time here at BK, especially during their strange and often heartbreaking last semester. We feel very grateful and blessed to have been able to honor the Class of 2020 on Saturday evening.

Check out the Class of 2020 in the local News:



You can watch recordings of Graduation and Baccalaureate Mass on our YouTube Channel:



Congratulations BK Class of 2020! Your BK Family loves you and wishes you the best as you start on your next adventure!
Diploma Pick Up
Graduates - your diplomas can be picked up in the front office Monday - Friday from 9AM - 1PM.
2020 - 2021 Instructional Plan
On Monday, June 22nd, the Bishop Kelly Board of Governance enthusiastically approved both our 2020- 2021 Instructional Plan that we shared at the Virtual Town Hall on June 17th, and the extra expenses (not to exceed $485,000) to implement the plan. We believe - and you seem to believe also from your feedback in the follow up survey after the Town Hall - that we have a very innovative and exciting instructional plan for the 2020- 2021 school year. While the main elements of the plan have been determined, there are still many details that will be outlined in an upcoming handbook to clarify new processes, procedures, and expectations. 

With your input, we developed a plan to meet the four goals we set:
  1. Make the learning experience exceptional for all BK students and faculty & staff
  2. Build a plan that provides flexibility, adaptability and options for our students, faculty/staff and our school
  3. Keep our students, faculty/staff and community safe and healthy
  4. Engage our parents and community as partners to the overall learning experience of our students


We have created a safe learning model, working with Central District Health and our faculty, administration and staff, that has the following six key strategies:
  1. Have ALL students and staff on campus on a daily basis. 
  2. Establish appropriate, safe distancing protocols in classrooms, in halls and in gathering spaces
  3. Rethink and maximize all physical space on campus to help us meet our goals.
  4. Provide more flexibility and autonomy in the school day for students to spend time on areas of need.
  5. Provide additional time during the week for faculty for prep, planning, training and collaboration.
  6. As needed, we will utilize technology to help support our goals.

No other school we are aware of is doing this. We are now moving forward with the hiring of a substantial number of additional faculty (+ 6 FT, +4 PT) for 2020-2021 to execute the plan. These new teachers, along with some internal staffing shifts and the rethinking and maximizing utilization of all physical space on campus, will allow us to bring average class sizes down from an average of 21-22 to an average class size of 16 in all “classrooms” and provide social distancing. 

We are also developing an FAQ document that will address many of the questions you raised in the Town Hall and in the survey responses. While the full “handbook” will not be completed until the end of July/early August, this initial FAQ document will address what we know at this time about electives for juniors and seniors, bus service, lunch service, flex days, cleaning and safety protocols, online options, helping students when they are out sick or need to stay at home, protocols when we have a COVID-19 case, plans for fall sports, and how the A/B schedule will work.

If you have not had a chance to listen to the recording of the Town Hall and wish to have a more complete understanding of our 2020-21 Instructional Plan, please click here:


Finally, we will keep the follow up survey open so you have a place to provide feedback. Here is the link:


Southern Idaho Conference Athletics Plan for Summer 2020
The Southern Idaho Conference Superintendents voted on June 25th to keep all 4A and 5A schools in Stage 4 of Governor Little's Idaho Rebounds Plan, up to the start of the fall athletics season, which begins Monday, August 10th.

The plan also states that the "SIC and Idaho High School Activities Association will work diligently throughout the summer to create a conference plan for what fall athletic contests and practices will look like."

Please click here to read the SIC plan, which impacts all summer camps, facility use, summer sports programs, etc.
Enrollment for the 2020 - 2021 School Year
As mentioned above, our new 2020-21 instructional plan requires us to increase our expenses significantly as we are hiring additional faculty, asking several current teachers to increase or change their workload and investing in needed IT, equipment and furniture. The key to being able to afford this plan is to keep our enrollment around the 865 total enrollment number. We believe strongly that this new plan gives us the best opportunity to do just that. 
 
Currently, we have 861 students enrolled, which is down 5 from last week. We have lost some 8 students for a variety of reasons (moves, academic, and social) and added 3 new students. Here is the current breakdown by class:
  • Freshmen - 238
  • Sophomores - 223
  • Juniors - 231
  • Seniors - 169

  • Total - 861 
 
Please help us get back to our optimal enrollment number of 865. We are excited and thankful to you for your help to date as we have several families in the process of applying whom you referred to us. However, we will continue to lose some currently registered students over the summer for a variety of reasons. Please encourage anyone you know who you feel would benefit from a BK education, is a good fit in our BK Way culture, and may be frustrated with their current situation, to check out the exciting things happening at Bishop Kelly. Ask them to contact Kelly Shockey, BK Director of Admissions at kshockey@bk.org or (208)375-6010. 
 
You are our greatest ambassadors! Please help us to urgently spread the word that BK has limited room in the Freshman, Sophomore, and Junior classes and that we have generous financial aid to help families in need. When we all work together, this community achieves great things! Thank you!


"Welcome to BK" Challenger and Parent Ambassador Programs
Challenger Program

Bishop Kelly has established a Challenger Program that has had a lot of success in welcoming incoming freshmen and new students. The main focus of this program is to create a welcoming, supportive and inclusive environment at BK for all students, especially for our incoming Freshmen Students. As part of this program, we’ve recruited 10 wonderful faculty members and each of them recruited 6 Junior/ Senior Leaders for a total of 60 Juniors and Seniors that are Challenger Leaders. 

Each of our Junior/ Senior “Family Leaders” are paired up and assigned 7-8 incoming Freshmen to form a Freshmen Family. Each Family is part of a larger group called a “Tribe” which is made up of three families. During the school year, we will have monthly competitions where the tribes will compete with other tribes for points and those points will accumulate into an annual competition for a grand prize. 

Over the course of the summer, the main thing we are asking from family leaders is to make phone calls to the freshmen in their families to introduce themselves and to welcome incoming freshmen to Bishop Kelly. Our family leaders will also organize some sort of social event during the summer to help each freshmen connect with others in their class. If your son or daughter has received a text or phone call from a Bishop Kelly students, this is likely the reason. In some cases, when a freshmen student does not have a cell phone, the Family Leaders will contact the parents instead. If you have questions about Challenger Families, you can call the Bishop Kelly front office at 208-375-6010 or you can email Chrissy Beckner @ cbeckner@bk.org or Rosemarie Berhan at rberhan@bk.org . 

Parent Ambassador Program

New Families will also be getting a call from a current BK Parent over the next few weeks. Our goal is to welcome all new families, and give each family a contact person who can help answer questions. All BK Families will start receiving "Back to School" type information soon, and Parent Ambassadors will reach out shortly thereafter to help new families navigate their BK To-Do list. Stay tuned...
Summer Academic Workshops - Session 3!
Registration is closed for the Session 2 Workshops, which began on Monday. However, we still have some space in our Session 3 workshops, which take place August 4-6. We are opening these workshops up to the broader community, so if you know a student in grades 9-12 who could benefit please share this information with them.

We will adhere to strict health and safety guidelines for these workshops. Masks are strongly encouraged, but not required.

  • Academic Survival Skills
  • College Application Accelerator*
  • Math Foundations LaunchPad

Financial Aid is available for families who need assistance.

Rising Seniors - The College Application Accelerator Workshop is now FREE!

The counselors made some changes to this course. It is now a one day, three hour course, and there is NO COST to attend.

*This workshop is limited to Seniors who are already enrolled at Bishop Kelly.

The College Application Accelerator will take place from 9:00 AM to Noon:

Wednesday, August 5th - Seniors with last names A-G
Thursday, August 6th - Seniors with last names H-O
Friday, August 7th , Seniors with last names P-Z

Please register so that we know how many students to expect.


Last Reminder: Senior Parents - Grad Party

  • Where: Wahooz Adventure Park
  • When: Tuesday, July 7th 11pm-3am
  • Who: 2020 BK graduating seniors only (need 50 students)
  • Only our BK Grads and Chaperones will be at Wahooz for this party. We are not sharing the space with any other schools!

The Wahooz Indoor Adventure Park and the Outside Attractions and Areas will be open for the students.
 
Sign Up/Payment for students : The cost per student for the 4 hours is $49.99.  In order for your student to attend, we need your payment by June 27th.  You cannot pay at the door at Wahooz. We need 50 students to pay before June 27th in order to continue. 

NOTE: with the switch back to Stage 3, we are now ONLY allowed to have 50 students, so we will need to cap at 50. At. this point, we. have 40 students signed up, so there is still room for 10 more and it will be first come first serve. 

IF WE DON'T GET 50 STUDENTS BY TOMORROW WE HAVE TO CANCEL.

Please Venmo Judi Sullivan at @Jsull84, or send a check to:

Judi Sullivan
1502 North 24th Street
Boise, ID 83702

Please include the name of your student(s) so we can track RSVP's. Your payment is your sign up, but please help us keep an accurate head count by ALSO emailing Judi at   mtsullivans@icloud.com  to add your student to the RSVP list.

Two Ways for Parents to Help   

Chaperones:  We need volunteers to work 2-hour shifts during the night. We need to provide one parent chaperone per 10 students. We have more than enough chaperones for the first shift but could use 2-3 more for the second shift. if you are able to switch to the later shift or sign up for the later shift, that would be great. 
IF WE DON'T HAVE ENOUGH CHAPERONES, WE HAVE TO CANCEL.


Please check out these   Chaperone Instructions .
 
Prizes:     Kim Fidler has volunteered to organize prizes for the kids. We will give the students a raffle ticket when they arrive and raffle off prizes throughout the evening, depending on how many we get. Please contact Kim (text/call) at 208-284-2757. if you have items or $$ you would be willing to donate. 
 
Thank you! We are excited for our kids and want them to celebrate! Questions? Please let me know. Thanks!
 
Judi Sullivan 
Email:     mtsullivans@icloud.com
Cell: 208-995-6264
Job Openings at Bishop Kelly
Part Time Spanish Faculty
Part Time Math Faculty
Full Time Theology Faculty
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