Dear Families of LNC Middle School Students,

On behalf of the Lake Norman Charter Middle School faculty, staff and administrative team, welcome to the 2021-2022 school year. It continues to be my honor to serve as the principal of the middle school. The administrative team looks forward to partnering with you this school year to provide an optimal educational experience for your child. Thank you for supporting our efforts to provide an academic experience that emphasizes high expectations, a rigorous curriculum and purposeful opportunities to cultivate leadership skills that embody our mission to learn, lead and serve.

Social-emotional well-being and increased academic support will be the overarching themes throughout the entire school year. Equally important, we understand that we must continue to be intentional about forging meaningful relationships, which starts with learning about our students and celebrating what makes them similar and what makes them unique. That said, we will continue to build upon our district-wide Global Diversity and Inclusion initiative to foster a culturally responsive educational environment.

This letter provides valuable information for our MS families. Please read it carefully and thoroughly, and do not hesitate to contact me at cgraham@lncharter.org with any questions.

Student Schedules will be emailed to parents by Friday, August 6. While we made every effort to schedule students’ elective preferences, if your child didn’t receive a preferred elective, it likely was not available. The schedules are final unless there was an obvious scheduling error made on our part. Thank you for your understanding.

One of the most significant adjustments made to support students this year is our new bell schedule. Students will have 30 minutes each day to receive support in a variety of ways. We, the middle and high school, will call this block of time Knight Time. We will discuss the details of our student support period at our first Principal’s Coffee Chat of the year.

We are entering our 8th year of our 1:World tech program. The tech know-how that our staff, teachers and students possessed because of that program was invaluable last year as we pivoted between hybrid and remote learning platforms. All MS students will receive their iPads on or near their first day of school provided the tech co-pay has been paid by August 9. That co-pay can be conveniently paid here. We appreciate our parents’ support of our 1:World program!

School begins for our 5th grade students on Wednesday, August 11 (half day from 8:00 to 11:30 AM) and for all of our students on Thursday, August 12 (full day from 8:00 AM to 3:00 PM). Student enrollment is critical to ensuring that students are engaged with their teacher and curriculum to be successful from day one. This student enrollment is also crucial to our school’s funding. As such, failure to check-in without prior communications to either Jennifer Wolfe (jwolfe@lncharter.org) or me for an excused reason could result in the student forfeiting their spot at LNC. Thank you for your understanding and cooperation! Finally, please be reminded that prior to the first day of school all parents are required to complete LNC’s parent acknowledgement form.

Any Pre-Ordered EduKits will be waiting in students’ homerooms on their first day of school. If you didn’t order an EduKit, no problem, you can find supply lists by grade here. We will return to utilizing lockers this school year. Returning students are able to use their LNC-issued combination lock. If students have forgotten the combination to their lock, they can come to the office and we will remind them. New students and returning 6th grade students will need to purchase a school-issued lock. Our 5th and 6th grade students must have the LNC agenda. Additionally, our 5th grade students will need an LNC-issued 5th grade calculator. We will provide a link to purchase all of these items next week.

For maximum MS carpool efficiencies, we will continue to use PikMyKid this school year. We will send a detailed communication regarding carpool next week. If you are interested in making carpool connections with other MS parents, you may use the MS P2P Schoology group (access code: TGH4Z-CF6PB) or the PTO sponsored LNC Family Directory. The LNC Family Directory is also a great resource for meeting and forging friendships with other LNC families in general.

Our LNC PTO sponsors a hot lunch option for our families that begins a few weeks into school. This means you will need to pack a lunch until that program begins. We will communicate more information about the PTO-led lunch program before school begins.

Back to School Night is Thursday, August 19 at 6:00 PM. We welcome you to come meet your child’s teachers and receive valuable information about their curriculum and instruction. This will also give new parents an opportunity to see the inside of our school, your child’s classroom and elective and recreational spaces.

On a service and engagement note, we are looking forward to a return to many activities and programs that support our mission and core values at LNC. First, we will reinitiate our commitment to service by reinstating our Serve10 program and LNC’s Day of Service scheduled for Friday, October 29. Furthermore, we anticipate having many volunteer opportunities within our Parent-Teacher Organization (PTO). This is a very important way our parents can contribute to the school as the PTO provides many benefits and services to our teachers, which in turn, benefits our students. You can expect to hear more about these service endeavors once school is in session.

As for family engagement, please be aware of two upcoming social events, the Royal Golf Outing on November 7 and Boots Bulls & BBQ on April 2, 2022.
A strong relationship between all stakeholders is critical to our students’ success. This includes the connection between you as parents, myself as principal and our assistant principal, Mr. Mavity. To that end, we will continue our monthly Principal’s Coffee Chat this year. The coffee chats will convene on the second Tuesday of every month from 8:15 AM-9:15 AM. To acclimate our parents to the new school year, we hold grade-level specific chats at the beginning of the year. Our first chats will be Tuesday, September 14 for 5th grade parents, Wednesday, September 15 for 6th grade parents and Friday, September 17 for 7th and 8th grade parents. Our chats will be in-person as well and streamed for those unable to attend so they can watch it live or later.

In addition, I encourage our families to connect to the school via our Facebook page, Twitter account and Instagram. We are very active on all three and they offer an opportunity to gain an understanding of our school culture and keep up with the “softer side” of the news at LNC. New this year, is our MS Instagram channel. Our intent is to capture the sights and happenings at the MS as students learn, play, grow and interact during their MS years. We will share that Instagram handle once school is in session.

Some of you are new to our middle school and many of you are returning, but have not been on campus much these past 16 months so I invite you to notice all of the Elevate LNC improvements that have been made since spring 2020. Many of these upgrades benefit our MS students directly and daily, including improved outdoor spaces for recess and athletics and increased safety and security of our MS building as well as expanded MS classroom space, all of which were well needed. We thank those families who have committed to Elevate LNC for these upgrades made possible ONLY through their partnership. We look forward to raising the final funds needed to complete the final element of the Elevate project, Knights Fieldhouse.

Now, let me take a moment to introduce and warmly welcome our newest MS staff members:

Mr. Matthew Seneca - MS/HS Cultural Arts
 
Ms. Lori Gilbert - ELA (6th grade)
 
Also, Mrs. Lee Koch will serve as Mrs. Katherine Tedder’s long-term substitute while she is out being a new mommy. Finally, Mrs. Catherine Bogarad retired at the end of the 2020-2021 school year. We will miss her and wish her the best as she embarks upon this new chapter in her life.

We are hoping to reacclimate to a fully engaging school year while keeping safety at the forefront of every decision we make. Thank you in advance for taking every opportunity to be involved in our efforts to establish and build upon a strong partnership. We need all hands on deck to overcome the challenges of the pandemic. I am excited about the upcoming school year and continuously pray that you remain safe and well.

Yours in education,
Dr. Cherié N. Graham
Principal, Middle School
704-948-8600

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Lake Norman Charter School - 704-948-8600
www.LNCharter.org