Thursday, September 14, 2023
You are cordially invited to Back-to-School Night, an orientation for parents and guardians. You will follow an abbreviated daily schedule, hear from your child’s teachers, become familiar with the scope and sequence of standards-based curricula, and see fabulous classrooms. Students should not come to this event.
It is essential that you bring your child’s schedule with you so that you know where to go. Please take a few minutes to write the schedule within the chart below. Your visit in each class will be ten minutes and there will be a few minutes in between each period (passing period). Our first Period will begin promptly at 6:30 PM.
Due to our gymnasium still being under construction, Mr. Carroll will be meeting with PE classes in the Multipurpose room. Ms. Jenkins (PE) will not be here, but families can also go to the multipurpose room and hear from Mr. Carroll. Ms. Smith’s dance classes and her PE class will meet in the dance studio.
We are looking forward to a great evening. See you there!
Following back to school night on Thursday, Friday will be a minimum day.
| Period | Time | Subject | Teacher | Room |
| 1 | 6:30 – 6:40 | |||
| 2 | 6:45 – 6:55 | |||
| 3 | 7:00 – 7:10 | |||
| 4 | 7:15 – 7:25 | |||
| 5 | 7:30 – 7:40 | |||
| 6 | 7:45 – 7:55 |
The first week of school is in the books. It has been wonderful to see our returning students and meet our new 7th graders. We had our first grade level assembly last week. The students did great and exemplified the Phoenix Expectations for events. Here is the slide deck for your information.
We wanted to extend a huge thank you to the PTSA members who provided a wonderful brunch for KMS staff on Thursday!
- Please remember to have students bring their tablet fully charged to school every day.
Staffing:
We are currently conducting interviews for our open science position and hope to make an announcement soon. We still have an open Resource position.
Scheduling:
We are balancing schedules, conducting schedule change requests, and ensuring that all students are enrolled in the correct classes . Please be patient as we work diligently to address all scheduling concerns. We have a lot of requested changes and are limited in what we can accomplish.
Week at a Glance
Monday: Regular School day, Cross country meeting after school C 212
Tuesday: Flipped Day
Wednesday: Regular Minimum Day
Thursday: Flipped Day
Friday: Regular Day
Upcoming
8/31 – Grade Level Assemblies #2
9/4 – Labor day Holiday
9/14 – Back to School Night
- Staffing:
- We are currently conducting interviews for our open science position and hope to make an announcement soon. We still have an open Resource position.
- Daily Announcements/Information
- At KMS we are working to develop students who advocate for themselves as they get ready for high school and beyond. Our daily announcements are used to provide information to all students and hopefully they bring the information home. Of course we also recognize our teens may “forget” to bring the information home in a timely manner. Here is a link to our daily announcements in case you want to keep up as a parent/guardian.
- PTSA
- The Korematsu PTSA is a wonderful group of parents and guardians focused on creating a positive learning community. I encourage everyone to become a member to support our school.
- Become a member here!
- Sign up to receive emails from PTSA by sending an email to: korematsu-ptsa-news+subscribe@googlegroups.com.
- The Korematsu PTSA is a wonderful group of parents and guardians focused on creating a positive learning community. I encourage everyone to become a member to support our school.
- Gym Construction
- The KMS gym is undergoing extensive repairs. The entire gym floor was removed and new flooring is being installed. We anticipate the gym will not be available for another 6 – 8 weeks. Luckily we will not be seeing rains anytime soon and students can continue with PE on the basketball courts and the grass area at Castro Park.
- Lunchtime
- This school year all students will be eating lunch in the cafeteria. After eating (and throwing away their trash!) they can go out to the yard, to a teachers classroom, or the library if those spaces are open and available. Students may not wander the halls at lunch. Please remind your student they need to stay in a supervised area at all times. This is for their safety.
- Cell Phones
- KMS does not allow cell phones to be used on campus. School is a place for learning and cell phones continue to be a distraction from learning. Please remind your student that cell phones are for emergency purposes. We need your support to keep the focus on learning please do not call or text your student while they are on campus. Please call the main office. We can pull your student from class to call you back. https://www.washingtonpost.com/education/2023/05/09/school-cellphone-ban-yondr/
- Social Media
- Please review your students social media accounts and pages. Instagram pages are often used to spread misinformation, harassment and bullying of students at KMS and other schools. In all my years of flagging these accounts to Instagram I have yet to see a single page taken down. Students are creating pages using multiple accounts and shared passwords. Sometimes several students are in “control” of a page. Often the language and images/videos of these pages are innocent and fun, but there are also instances where the page and posts are intentional harassment of classmates. As we have seen, this harassment can be extremely harmful. Please speak with your student about their use of instagram and social media. Here is instagram’s own parent guide that you may find useful. Here is a review from Common Sense Media for Instagram.
- Please review your students social media accounts and pages. Instagram pages are often used to spread misinformation, harassment and bullying of students at KMS and other schools. In all my years of flagging these accounts to Instagram I have yet to see a single page taken down. Students are creating pages using multiple accounts and shared passwords. Sometimes several students are in “control” of a page. Often the language and images/videos of these pages are innocent and fun, but there are also instances where the page and posts are intentional harassment of classmates. As we have seen, this harassment can be extremely harmful. Please speak with your student about their use of instagram and social media. Here is instagram’s own parent guide that you may find useful. Here is a review from Common Sense Media for Instagram.
Phoenix Expectations
Respectful
Responsible
Resilient
Allies
Hello Korematsu Community!
Happy Friday and weekend everyone! The KMS faculty just wrapped up two days of Professional Development and Monday teachers will be setting up their classrooms in anticipation for our Tuesday opening.
We are excited to have students back on campus, but we are aware the first few days can be filled with unknowns. Student schedules often get adjusted as we work to meet the teachers contract on class size and balance classes due to no-shows. We will be working on schedules throughout the weekend and into Monday. Please know that students will receive their final schedule on Tuesday morning. We ask for patience and flexibility as we work to support all students with the classes they need.
Tuesday, August 15th is day one for the 23-24 school year! Students should arrive at school in the morning and enter the main gates near the front office. Students will then find the lists of names posted throughout the campus. Once they locate their name and the advisory room number they should head to the advisory class. The first bell will ring at 8:25 AM. The late bell rings at 8:30 AM. Once in their advisory class, students will receive a hard copy of their schedule and learn about the upcoming week and some of the need to know bits for middle schoolers.
Families, we ask that parents not walk onto campus. Please remember to drop your student in the designated areas and follow our clockwise traffic pattern. Because we are located in a residential community pick-up and drop-off is extremely congested. I encourage you to drop students on Norvell or Lawrence streets and avoid Donal Ave. as much as possible. Last year we saw a lot of unsafe driving and do not want a repeat of these traffic conditions. Always drive in the clockwise pattern and never drop a student off and have them move across traffic to get to campus. Please let them out and then move on to make room for the next car. And please do not park in front of our neighbor’s driveways. 
Please take some time to review our website (https://korematsumiddleschool.org/). There you can find our bell schedule, map, discipline matrix, and other key information. We will continue to add information to the website that we hope will be useful.
We have made headway on our vacancies. We welcomed a new History teacher, English teacher, and MMSN teacher. We do however still have a science opening and will continue to search for a teacher. If you know of someone who may be interested please reach out as soon as possible.
We will work to get all students textbooks over the next two weeks. In this day and age the tablet is critical since all of our textbooks can be accessed through the district issued tablet. Students that arrive without a tablet will be directed to the library for check out.
More to come over the next few days,
Matt
| 8/15/22 First Day of School Schedule | |||
| Advisory (period 1) | 8:30 | 8:50 | 20 |
| Period 1 | 8:55 | 9:30 | 35 |
| Period 2 | 9:35 | 10:10 | 35 |
| Period 3 | 10:15 | 10:50 | 35 |
| A Lunch | 10:55 | 11:35 | 40 |
| A Period 4 | 11:40 | 12:20 | 40 |
| B Period 4 | 10:55 | 11:35 | 40 |
| B Lunch | 11:40 | 12:20 | 40 |
| Period 5 | 12:25 | 1:00 | 35 |
| Period 6 | 1:05 | 1:40 | 35 |
Hello KMS Families,
Like many schools, Korematsu is searching for teachers for the coming year. We had several unexpected teacher resignations after the conclusion of last school year. As the school year is fast approaching we are working to fill these open positions to complete our teaching staff.
We are looking for the following positions:
– Science Teacher https://www.edjoin.org/Home/DistrictJobPosting/1813100
– English Teacher https://www.edjoin.org/Home/DistrictJobPosting/1805007
– Math Teacher https://www.edjoin.org/Home/DistrictJobPosting/1800675
– Special Education Teacher (Mild-Moderate Support Needs) https://www.edjoin.org/Home/DistrictJobPosting/1780013
If you have any friends, family, recent college graduates, or colleagues that might be interested, please feel free to share these job postings with them! Qualified teaching candidates need to have a Bachelor’s degree and we can work with the candidate regarding a credential program. For any questions about the following job postings, please reach out to Mr. Burnham mburnham@wccusd.net or Ms. Krug bkrug@wccusd.net
If you would like your child to be considered for a transfer to a school other than the school of residence, please complete an Open Enrollment Transfer application.
APPLICATIONS RECEIVED AFTER FEB 28, 2023 WILL BE CONSIDERED LATE