Kentfield School District

Dear Bacich Community,

We had a great first Monday of the school year today! The students are learning the routines and teachers have spent a lot of quality time getting to know your child and helping them connect with other students in their class.

Thank you for sending your child prepared for school each day. Please also remember a water bottle. It has been hot and we have noticed that many kids are coming to school without one. Thank you to the KSPTA, all of the purchased materials are now distributed into classrooms and all students have the materials they need for success.

We are looking forward to Intake Conferences next week. These conferences provide parents with the opportunity to share information about your child with their classroom teacher. There will be three minimum days, Sept 8 - 10 to accommodate these conferences. Your classroom teacher will be sending out an invitation to sign up for a conference through Parent Square. The conferences are held in person, but if you would like yours over zoom, that is also possible. This is a great opportunity to talk with your child’s teacher about the things that make your child special.

Finally, thank you for your patience with dismissal. It is getting better each day as all of us learn our part in the process. One area has room for improvement. Room 34, Kate Mansour’s class, gets out each day at 2:38, except for Wednesdays they are out at 12:15. There is a bus for some of the students as well as pick up for parents at the gate by the baseball field. Please be on the lookout for cones that will direct you to go around this area to proceed to the carline so that they can load the students safely. Also, we need room for the bus and cars to pull out. Again, we will have it marked by cones, but I wanted to give you all the heads up on what we are trying to accomplish with the cones.

Have a great week!

Greetings Kent Community,

Thank you for the many ways that our community of teachers, students, parents, and staff rallied together to create an uplifting and fun start to the 2021-2022 school year! A full school of Falcons returned to Kent for the first time in two years, and productive energy reverberated through classrooms as we jumpstarted daily routines with each other.

Kent Middle School Bell Schedule

This week we start our new Kent Middle School Daily Bell Schedule. Last spring, we applied learnings from previous years’ schedules to create a new schedule that highlights a number of critical priorities.

• All periods are uniform in length across the week (the first period of each day is longer to accommodate our daily broadcast). By eliminating longer block periods that resulted in less productive work sessions for many students and teachers, we extended period length across the week, maximizing instructional time for increased student learning.
• Our schedule is a rotating 7-period schedule, with 6 periods happening each day, resulting in all periods happening at different times across the week. This ensures that students experience each subject at different times of day across the week, balancing the school experience for students who may be in their optimal learning mind frame for learning while fresh in the mornings.
• Study session provides focused time for work completion four days a week (more information below).
• We encourage all students and staff to be patient with ourselves while we learn our new bell schedule; it may take a few weeks to get into a routine, but we are confident that our new schedule will improve the learning experience at our school.

Study Session

Study Session is a protected time for focussed work completion and student support built into our schedule four days per week. Replacing the "Opportunities" period in previous years’ schedules, Study Session extends the period after lunch by about 20 minutes on Mondays, Tuesdays, Thursdays, and Fridays for students to complete independent work tasks, and to receive support from their teacher. Eventually, we will coordinate for students to gain access to teachers other than their Study Session teacher for necessary academic supports.

Kent Daily Bulletin

Are you interested to stay up-to-date on current happenings at our school? Consider regularly checking the Kent Daily Bulletin to see the boiled-down script from our daily broadcast. This will typically include information about clubs, after school athletics, special events, and many other daily happenings at Kent!

Let’s have a productive week of learning and activity at Kent this week!