Blog of Craig Smith: Beginning of Year Letter to LNC Families 2021

Dear Parents and Families of the LNC Community:

First and foremost, I hope the summer weeks have given our entire community an opportunity to relax, refresh and rejuvenate after the stressful, yet still successful, 2020-2021 school year. Furthermore, I hope this finds you healthy and well. On behalf of the Lake Norman Charter High School faculty, staff, Mr. Funchess and the administrative team, I would like to officially welcome you to the 2021-2022 school year. I am honored to serve as principal of the high school, and your partnership, in addition to our collaborative efforts aligned with LNC’s mission and core values, will continue inspiring our students to “learn, lead and serve.”

Mr. Smith and Mr. Funchess

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 to assist in a smooth opening to the school year. Please do not hesitate to contact me (csmith@lncharter.org) with any questions.

TECHNOLOGY

We are proudly in year eight of LNC’s 1:World Program and the fifth year of laptop utilization at the high school. If your student is a freshman, they took their laptop home at the conclusion of Freshman Kick-off provided they had paid the $125 tech co-pay. Our upperclassmen may pick up their laptops on Wednesday, August 4 between the hours of 9:00-11:00 AM and 1:00-3:00 PM, no sign-up required. Families of 10th-12th grade students must pay the co-pay by Tuesday, August 3 before picking up their technology. That co-pay can be paid here.

SCHEDULES

You can expect to receive your student’s schedule via the email address we have on file by next Friday, August 6. Please remember these schedules are final unless there is an obvious scheduling error.

FIRST DAY OF SCHOOL

The first day of school for our freshmen is Wednesday, August 11 from 7:45 - 11:15 AM. We welcome all of our HS students on Thursday, August 12 which is a regular, full day from 7:45 AM - 2:45 PM. Student enrollment is critical to ensuring that students are engaged with their teacher and curriculum in order 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 Valerie Norris (vnorris@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. Please be reminded that prior to the first day of school all parents are required to complete LNC’s parent acknowledgement form.

LUNCHES/CARPOOL/STUDENT PARKING

Remember, the PTO does not offer an ordered lunch option in the first few weeks of school so students will need to pack a lunch. We will communicate more information about the PTO-led lunch program before school begins. Additionally, look for carpool and student parking information to also be communicated before the opening of school. As always, we appreciate your patience in advance during the first few weeks of carpool, as it takes some time for everyone to learn their appropriate procedures.

NEW BELL SCHEDULE

A key focus for the opening of this school year will be reacclimating our students to a more traditional school day after the wide-range of instructional environments we endured in 2020-2021. To put this in perspective, our students have not experienced an in-person 7:45 AM - 2:45 PM school day since March 13, 2020. All of this in mind, we are very excited to share a brand-new daily bell schedule design for this year:

1st Period: 7:45 - 8:32 AM

2nd Period: 8:36 - 9:23 AM

Knight Time (3rd Period): 9:27 - 9:57 AM

4th Period: 10:01 - 10:50 AM

5th Period (1st Lunch): 10:54 - 11:24 (Lunch); 11:24 - 12:11 (Class)

5th Period (2nd Lunch): 10:54 - 11:41 (Class); 11:41 - 12:11 (Lunch)

6th Period: 12:15 - 1:02 PM

7th Period: 1:06 - 1:53 PM

8th Period: 1:57 - 2:45 PM

Years ago, within our School-Life Balance committee (a pre-pandemic LNC strategic area of focus), we informally discussed the potential benefits of implementing a schoolwide flex period daily for all students. Furthermore, in February of 2019, in alignment with her Passion Project for the Digital Multimedia & Global Citizenship course, student Jenna Frank (class of 2020) formally and impressively presented the idea of “Knight Time” to me and Mr. Funchess.

Every student will have a 30-minute period known as “Knight Time,” denoted on their schedule as 3rd period. This time will initially serve as a study hall environment to allow our students to physically and mentally reacclimate to a traditional full day, full week instructional schedule. Eventually, we will be able to capitalize on this flexible time for a wide range of student support purposes, ranging from academic, social-emotional and general day-to-day needs of our students.

As always, we will be sharing with our students which lunch they are assigned on the opening day of school, based on their 5th period.

SERVICE & ENGAGEMENT

We look forward to reinitiating our commitment to service by returning our service program for high school students, our Serve10 program to our parents and LNC’s Day of Service scheduled on 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 details about these items once school is in session.

On an lighter note, please be aware of our upcoming social events for 2021-2022, the Royal Golf Outing on November 7 and Boots Bulls & BBQ on April 2, 2022.

BACK TO SCHOOL NIGHT

Our Back to School Night for the high school will occur on Tuesday, August 17 at 6:00 PM, giving all families the chance to visit classrooms, engage in critical conversations with teachers, and simply tour the building by following their student’s schedule. We will provide more information on Back to School Night as it draws closer.

PARENT/PRINCIPAL CONNECTION

Our monthly Principal’s Coffee Chats will continue and I cordially invite all parents to join us for the first installment on Tuesday, September 7 at 8:00 AM. We will also continue to live-stream the coffee chat, allowing all families to view the chat live or watch/listen to the archive at your convenience. More information will be shared closer to the date, but the agenda for the September chat will include a high school counseling overview for the year.

In addition, I encourage our families to connect with me through Twitter and my professional blog. I utilize both of these forums to communicate our successes, promote school-related events, share resources and collaborate with my professional learning network.

NEW HS STAFF

Next, I would like to take this opportunity to introduce our new faculty to LNC:

Mrs. Jessie Dennis - Math III and Math IV

Mrs. Cynthia Hamilton - English 9 and English 10

Mr. Alejandro Luna - Spanish I and Spanish II [Start date TBD]

Mr. Garrett Norris - Biology

Also, former LNC English teacher Mr. Matthew Seneca rejoins the team as our next theatre/dance teacher, shared between the high school and the middle school.

We are extremely excited to welcome this group to our LNC Community.

CAMPUS UPGRADES

Many of you have not physically been on our campus over the past year and a half so we invite you to notice all of the Elevate LNC improvements that have been made during that time. On behalf of the LNC board and administration, I want to thank you for your support in “elevating” the experience for our students and, with your partnership, we look forward to completing the final element of the Elevate project, Knights Fieldhouse.

The fundamental expectation for our faculty, staff, students and parents is to simply be your best, every day, as we collectively reacclimate to a full time, in-person instructional environment.

I hope you continue to enjoy these last few weeks of summer break and we enthusiastically await the opening of school on August 11 (freshmen) and August 12 (all students). We thank you all in advance for being your best in 2021-2022.

Yours in education,