Meet the Teacher Night

Our annual Meet the Teacher Night will be held this Wednesday, August 27th at the middle school.  There will be a meeting for parents in the auditorium beginning around 6:30 where Mr. Santini, the school principal, will talk about some of the initiatives taking place this school year.  We will have copies of your child's schedule available for you to pick up when you arrive.  You will follow their day 1 schedule.  At 7:00 p.m. parents will be released from the auditorium to go through their child's schedule and meet each of their teachers.  Each class period will run for about 8 minutes, with 3 minutes in between for travel time to the next class.  The event will end around 8:30 p.m.  We highly encourage you to attend, and hope to see you here tomorrow night!  

First Day of School - Monday, August 25th

This is a reminder to students and parents that the 2014-15 school year will kick off on Monday, August 25, 2014.  We are excited to see you back at school and hope you have had a great summer!

CPR & First Aid Course - Monday, May 12

There will be a CPR & First Aid Certification course for students in grade 7 and 8 held on Monday, May 12, 2014.  The cost is $10 and it will take place in the middle school gym from 3 - 7 p.m.  Students must sign up in the middle school office on Monday if they want to participate.  The first 30 students will be accepted.  Checks may be made payable to the Ebensburg Area Ambulance Association, who will be providing the training.  If you are interested in having your child take this training, please encourage them to sign up and attend on Monday. 

Teacher Appreciation Week

Tuesday, May 6th is Teacher Appreciation Day, part of a week of appreciation for America's teachers.  If you like the job that one or more of your child's teachers has done in the classroom this year, take a few minutes to write them an email, send or note, or give them a positive word of encouragement.  It means a lot to a good teacher to hear feedback from a satisfied customer.  Thank you!

Spirit Sale Orders

Back by popular demand, spirit wear orders are now being accepted through May 1st.  If you did not receive an order form, stop by the office tomorrow to fill one out.  We now have Central Cambria onesies for those of you with infants and toddlers.  You can begin to build the CC pride early!  Proceeds from the sale go to our student activities fund, which pays for field trips, dances, academic competitions, and many other items beneficial to our students.

Yearbook Pre-Orders

Middle School yearbooks may be pre-ordered by students during lunch this week.  The cost to pre-order a yearbook is $15 and must be paid at the time the pre-order is made.  If you have any questions, please contact Mr. Stephan.

Box Tops for Education - Round 3 Results

The third and final round of our Box Tops For Education collection competition came to a close on this past Friday.  It was the closest competition yet, with our top 3 classes separated by less than 200 box tops.  Mrs. Urbassik's first period class emerged victorious.  Overall, students collected over 6,000 box tops in this last round.  These box tops will turn into a pile of new books that will be added to our library and used to enhance our collection.  This will bring added variety and diversity to the books our students can use with our Accelerated Reader program.  Thank you to all of our students, teachers, and parents who have consistently participated in this contest over the past two years.  

PSSA Testing

While we will not know how our students performed on this year's PSSA tests until later in the summer, I can report that testing week was a tremendous success.  Thank you to our parents for getting your kids to school during testing.  We ran at about 98% attendance during testing, which was our highest attendance rate since the first week of school.  Our students worked hard and put a solid effort into completing their tests.  I am eager to see what the results show when we receive our scores back from the state in July.

Testing week began with a PSSA pep rally on March 24th.  Students joined in singing a PSSA song, and also participated in a Jeopardy-style review game.  A student-made video asked students what they would like as a reward if they performed well on the test.  There were many ideas proposed, from painting Mrs. Ball's classroom pink to having an all-night lock-in.  The following day, testing began.  We tested in the mornings on six consecutive school days, culminating with a pajama day on the Friday after testing.  

Eighth-grade students are currently taking the Writing PSSA this Tuesday and Wednesday, and will take the Science PSSA later this month.  Fortunately for 8th grade students, these will be the last PSSA tests that they will take in their school career.  They will have three Keystone exams before they graduate, starting with Algebra in either 8th or 9th grade.  

Again, thank you to our students, teachers, and parents for helping to make our PSSA testing go smoothly.

Report Cards

If all goes according to plan tomorrow, report cards will be coming home with all CCMS students.  We apologize for the delay.  PSSA testing and illness going around the office set us back a couple of days.  Please ask your child for their report card when they come home tomorrow, and be sure to read the newsletter on the back of the report card.  Additionally, there will be a letter regarding our new School Resource Officer attached to report cards.  

Science Olympiad Competition

This past Wednesday, the CCMS Science Olympiad team competed for the first time in its brief history.  The team, consisting of 15 students in grades 6, 7 and 8, traveled to California University of Pennsylvania in the early hours of Wednesday morning.  Team members competed in a variety of events at the competition, against schools from all over southwestern Pennsylvania.  A majority of the schools were from the Pittsburgh area, and most of them were larger than CCMS.  To add to this, our team was the only one which was new to the competition.  Against these odds, our students posted a 12th place finish in a field of 23 teams, putting us squarely in the middle of the pack against some of the biggest and best schools in the Pittsburgh area.  In addition, individual team members posted top 5 finishes in a few specific events.  The team represented themselves and our school well.  Our thanks go to Ms. Gillin, CCMS AmeriCorps worker and Science Olympiad coach, our team members, and the Central Cambria Education Foundation, who provided startup funds for the team.