Warrior’s World From the Chief

Dear Parents and Guardians-

Happy New Year to you all, we hope that you had a wonderful Christmas break. As

much as I enjoyed the break from the daily grind, I am happy to be back in a regular

routine, but it sure was hard waking up this morning. J

During the break, I hope that you had some restful time to relax with family and

friends in spite of such a busy time of the year. I think the tragedy in Connecticut cer-

tainly made me pause to think about the blessings here at Abita Springs Middle

School, as well as in my own family. It has also made us think of the safety of our own

children and students. Just a few weeks ago, Sandy Hook was a quiet little town that I

would bet most of us never heard of. And now, we mourn the loss of precious lives,

along with the families.

That being said, please do not be offended when we ask for your driver’s license.

Please know that the rules we put in place, such as asking parents to come to the of-

fice first before anywhere else on the campus and asking that you never go directly to

a classroom without checking in first, are not meant to upset you, but rather to keep

all of our students safe each day. Do not be alarmed when you see a sheriff deputy’s

car here, as they are walking through our school making sure things are safe and

sound. We have a huge job here, just as you do at home, and we could not do our job

without your constant support. For this, we thank each of you.

It may be a great time to review with your child the classroom and school rules, as

well as the behavior expectations for Positive Behavior Support. Also, please review

the handbook concerning our policy for tardiness and absences. Attendance is crucial

to your child’s progress.

May your new year be filled with happiness, health and many wonderful opportuni-

ties. Stay safe, and keep in touch.

Sincerely,

Donna Forrest and Rhonda Meyers

January 2013

Upcoming Events

January 8th

4th Grade Field Trip

FHS Theater

January 10th

PTA Meeting 6pm

LEAP Parent Night

January 16th

1st Semester Awards

9am, ASES Gym

January 21st

Martin Luther King,

Jr Day– No School

January 25th

1st Semester Posi-

tive Behavior Re-ward

January 29th

LA Philharmonic

Orchestra Trip to FBC

January 31st

Free Dress for

Perfect Attendance

Abita Springs Middle School PT

A

72079 Maple St., Abita Springs, LA 70420 985-892-2070

Working Together As One

PTA President’s Message

Warrior’s World

Page 2

WOW!!!!! Half the year gone already.... it’s hard to believe. I would like to welcome all the faculty, staff, and students back to school this new year. I hope all had a very Merry Christmas and Happy New Year. At the end of last school year the incoming board met and really set the bar high for the present school year. We have ex-ceeded our goals in almost every category because of hard work, great faculty/staff, and wonderful parents and kids. Coach Bill Walsh, while at Stanford University, told me “ Anyone can coach if they had all the talent, but it’s those who are successful with no talent that are the great coaches.” Here at ASMS, I must say; we have all the talent! We ended the year on December 20th, with our Christmas dinner for the faculty and staff, and if you couldn’t make it, or haven’t heard, it was a huge success. I would like to thank all who were there for all the hard work they put in. If you ask anyone who was there, we really had lots of fun doing the dinner and serving the faculty and staff. FRET NOT if you missed it because we have two huge events planned for the second half of the year, AND WE NEED YOUR HELP!!! We will be putting on the first annual Spring Fair in March 2013 and are going to need tons of people to help with it. The second event will be teacher appreciation week, and we look forward to hav-ing your help with that event as well. Our membership drive is still on; we are in need of corporate memberships, Dad memberships and Grandpar-ent memberships as well as a total number increase to get to 100%. THAT IS OUR GOAL!! A major academic event is fast on the horizon. LEAP and iLEAP is right around the corner so everyone really needs to help their child/children get ready for the test so that they can perform to their highest potential. This is a very important test so we really should not slack off at all. Our full PTA meeting is Thursday, January 10, 2013 at 6:00pm in the gymnasium. It will come before a LEAP TEST briefing by our Administration. It is a very important meeting so I hope to see everyone there. Dan Curtis ASMS PTA President

Abita Springs Push Mow Parade Saturday, February 2, 2013

2013 Theme: “We’re Not Mandeville” • Parade Rolls at 11 a.m. • Begins and Ends at the Abita Springs Trailhead • Free Party with live music at the trailhead following the parade. • Food and drinks available from vendors.

This Mardi Gras parade is produced by the Town of Abita Springs and bene-fits the Abita Springs Trailhead Museum. The king of this year’s parade is Abita Springs Citizen of the Year, Bryan Gowland. This year’s honorary krewe captain is Mandeville Mayor Donald Villere. The krewe of Push Mow was founded by Abita Springs’ artists. The organization takes pride in their origi-nal themes, floats, marching groups, and costumes. Registration information is available on parade’s official website, www.pushmow.com

There are many ways that you can get information about what is happening at the school and with the PTA.

The first is to call or email one of the Board members.

President Dan Curtis dcurtis0135@charter.net 985-373-2971

Vice President Jeff Ruth jruth@22global.com 985-966-5315

Secretary Jill Barringer jbarringer002@att.net 985-892-2070

Treasurer Janet Dufrene jnorth1007@aol.com 985-966-7371

We also have a link on the school’s website at http://abitaspringsmiddle.stpsb.org/. We have boxes in the of-

fice at school where you can drop off items for us to pick up. The PTA has gone technical and now has a Face-

book page at https://www.facebook.com/AbitaSpringsMiddleSchoolPta. Just “like” our page and you will get

updates directly to your news feed as they are posted. This is also a great way for you to give us suggestions,

feedback and questions. Please do not post student or teacher specific information on this site. Those ques-

tions should be sent to the teacher or administrators. Finally, we have an email address for the PTA at

asmspta@gmail.com. We welcome your feedback and questions .

PTA Gets Technical

We are having an amazing year so far in the financial department. You guys have all been so amazing in help-

ing us to reach our financial goals and we couldn’t do it without you. We received our first Box Tops for Educa-

tion check over the holidays and it was for $2200! We will be scheduling our next BTFE contest for February

so start saving up your box tops now. We also have over $600 in Community Coffee labels that will be sent in

this month. We are working on scheduling our next family spirit night at a local restaurant. These nights are so

important because the money from these nights gets disbursed directly to the teachers. PTA doesn’t keep any

of this money. The teachers use this money to buy supplies for their classrooms. We were able to disburse 4

checks of $50 each at the last PTA meeting from the funds received from our Raising Cane’s Family Night. The

teachers who received checks were Coach Alford, Mrs. Barringer, Mrs. Brownlee and Mrs. Young-Bridges. We

are hoping to have an even better turn out at our next night.

We are planning some fundraising/community events for the Spring. Our hopes are that any money we earn

over and above our budgeted funds can be used to make some improvements around the school. We are con-

sidering several projects including new sod and sprinklers for the playground and lighting for the parking lot/

circle. Our campus is VERY dark at night and we think lighting in the circle will make the campus more useful

when there are night time events. We will provide more details as we get them.

Thank you again for all of your support. As always, our books are open to the public. If anyone is interested in

inspecting our books please contact me at jnorth1007@aol.com and I will make an appointment to let you look

through our checks and deposits.

Sincerely,

Janet Dufrene, Treasurer

Financial Footnotes

Page 3

Membership Levels

Parent/Dad: $5.00

Grandparent: $5.00

Student: $5.00

Corporate: $25

The Mission of the Parent Teacher Association®

PTA® serves as:

• A powerful voice for all children, • A relevant resource for families and communities, and • A strong advocate for the education and well-being of every child.

We only have until March 1st to achieve our membership goals. We have been doing an amazing job

with your help but we need a little more help. The most dire area is in Dad memberships. Dad’s are

such a vital part of the PTA at ASMS and yet we have only 68 dads who have purchased their mem-

bership. That is HALF as many dads as we have moms. We are very proud of the strong male role

models and presence we have on our campus and we believe that these males are a major part of

why our children do so well. We only need 31 more Dad memberships to reach the goal set for us by

the state of 100. We would love to see as many dads join as we have moms. Our total mom member-

ship number is 117. Our ultimate goal is to show the community, our kids, our administration that

the dads of our community are as involved if not more involved than the moms. Please consider

purchasing a membership for the dad in your family. If you already have you can also purchase a

sponsored membership for other dads who might not be able to do it. They are only $5.

We have been having a contest for all of the teachers in the school for 100% membership in their

classrooms. If a teacher reaches 100% their classroom will get a reward. We have several teachers

who have already gotten to that number. Those teachers include:

Mrs. Hernandez, Mrs. Barringer, Mrs., Endermann and Mrs. Stewart.

We also have several teachers that are within 10 memberships of reaching their goal:

Mrs. Bond (5), Mrs. Spitznagel (5), and Mrs. Blades (2)

Please consider helping these teachers reach their goal. We have many, many more teachers that fall

between the 10-15 memberships needed range. If your child’s teacher is not listed above please con-

sider purchasing a membership for your family. Thank you for your help.

Membership G0als

Unit Goal: 490 LA Goal: 225 Dads: 100 Grandparents:50 Corporate Sponsors:20

Unit Actual: 380 Students: 69 Dads:68 Grandparents:54 Corporate Sponsors:10

www.pta.org

Members Only

Page 4

Over the Christmas Holidays we had our students works from the Re-

flections Contest move on to the District level of judging. We sent on

30 entries from some very talented students in the photography, lit-

erature and visual arts categories. Of these entries we had 2 students

who had their works recognized at the District Level. The students are

as follows:

Alexa Theriot Award of Merit Photography

Max Barbier Award of Excellence Photography

Alexa will be recognized at the District PTA Children’s Award Banquet

later this year with a certificate and a trophy. Max will also be recog-

nized at the banquet and his work will be forwarded on to be judged

at the State Level of the competition. Both students and their families

and teachers will be invited to attend the District Banquet. We are very proud of all of the students who sub-

mitted entries for this contest. We have over 1/4 of our students do some sort of entry for Reflections. All of

the works were amazing and we thank the teachers, students and families for supporting this program. We will

announce the results of the State level of judging as soon as we get them. Thank you again!!

Cultural Arts

Page 5

Safety Poster Contest The following students participated in the Safety Poster Contest and had their posters chosen to move on to

the District Level of judging”

Hailey Morvant, Jennifer Nuccio, Carli Cintron, Cameron Kastner, Maelin Crum, Alanna Watt, Gregory Ol-

sen, Cali Carroll, Alexis Gratia and Jon Chauviere.

We will notify students and parents when we get the results of the judging at the District Level.

Thank you so much to Mrs. Hernandez and Mrs. Barringer for assigning the safety posters to their students.

This not only helped provide extra support to the students in what the rules of the school are but also why

those rules are in place and how they keep us safe. We are very proud of these students and look forward to

seeing them represent us at the next level.

Safety Rules

in Our Schools

The Friends Of Rachel Club is working very hard on creating a positive atmosphere on campus by starting up a

website for students, faculty, staff, and parents to use to promote kindness. On this website, you will be able to

post positive comments about people on campus. All comments will be monitored by F.O.R./B1 teacher

representatives before they are posted. The club is also filming videos to raise student awareness of how to

spread kindness and compassion around campus. These videos will be shown on broadcast in conjunction

with B1 anti-bullying videos.

B1's goal for January is "Planting seeds of Kindness for a Better Tomorrow." Each homeroom will be planting

seeds around campus and labeling their "garden" with a creative sign. Peer Meditation is in full swing on cam-

pus!

All peer mediators have been trained thoroughly and have been meditating solutions to conflicts on campus.

New peer mediation forms have been delivered to teachers. Students should see teachers and ask for these

forms as needed.

As always,

Take a Stand and Lend a Hand!!!

B1 “Take a Stand, Lend a Hand”

“It gets better. It seems hard, you know, I think being different is always gonna be a tough climb. There's always gonna be people that are scared of it. But at the end of the day you give those bullies, those people, that are so ignorant, if you give them the power to affect you, you're letting them win. And they don't deserve that. What you're doing by being yourself is you're keeping it real, and you're being really brave.”

― Adam Lambert

Page 6

4-H Summer Camp registration begins Monday, January 7th. Call the 4-H office

at 985-875-2635 if you want a chance to go. Space is limited so call soon! The

camp is scheduled for July 8-12, 2013 and is going to be fun and educational.

Don’t forget to keep working on your books. The new books will arrive by Friday,

January 11th if you already turned yours in. We have a meeting, Tuesday, January

8th at 2:30pm.

Cookbook sales will continue on the last Tuesday of every month at lunch for $1

each. The recipes included are from the 4-H members’ kitchens and all money

earned will go toward 4-H events for the year. We have already earned $30 on

our cookbook sales! Thank you to all who participated!

4-H

Fourth graders Katie Lambert (L) and Elissa Young (R), both in Ms. Damare's class at Abita Springs

Middle School are pictured with their award-winning drawings submitted for the Americanism Contest

sponsored by the Veterans of Foreign Wars. The winning students received certificates and monetary

awards from the Ladies Auxiliary of the VFW.

TERRIFIC TURKEYS from Ms. Damare's class:

Derricka Wallace, Mitchell Martin, Ernest Helmer, Angel Hadlow, and Cayden Anderson

ASMS Spirit Cart Spirit Cart sales have started and the kids are loving it! Spirit Cart opens during lunch every Tuesday unless

weather prohibits it. We have been very busy and have been trying different things in order to allow all children

a chance to purchase something. We may limit the number of items a child can purchase at one time and ask

them to get back in line so that others will have a chance before the bell rings. There is a limited amount of time

for the kids to shop so we don’t want to miss out on anyone. Please bear with us as we give them a shopping ex-

perience while also teaching patience and respect for others. Thank you for your support. Please let us know if

you are interested in helping out by working the Spirit Cart with us.

---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------———-

ASMS Spirit Items Order Form

School Year 2012-2013

Parent's name:__________________________________ Phone # ____________________

Child's name:_________________________________________

(If you have more than one child at ASMS, please put the name of the child to whom you wish the order to be

delivered.)

Homeroom teacher: ____________________________________Grade (circle): 4th 5th 6th

Please return completed orders with payment to your child's homeroom or the school office in an envelope marked "Spirit Cart." Orders will be delivered to your child's homeroom on

Tuesdays by the Spirit Cart volunteers.

_____________FOR STAFF USE ONLY. PLEASE DO NOT WRITE BELOW THIS LINE._____________

Cash Amt __________ OR Check Amt __________/Date_______________/Number__________

Item Description Quan-

tity

Price Total

ASMS shoelaces, pair navy w/white "ASMS", 36"

(5-6 pairs of holes)

X 2.00 =

ASMS logo keychain white/navy, vinyl w/metal ring, logo &

phone #

X 0.75 =

ASMS logo pencil

bag

clear/white, vinyl with zipper and binder

holes

X 1.00 =

ASMS logo sticker clear/white, 4" round

(not reversed/not a window cling)

X 1.00 =

ASMS lanyard navy w/white "ASMS" X 1.00 =

ASMS pencil navy/silver X 0.25 =

Total (Enclose payment with order. Make checks payable to ASMS PTA.) =

Corporate Sponsors

Amazing Views of the Smokies

1455 E. Parkway Gatlinburg, TN 37738

(865)436-3613

Northshore Auto & Truck Accessories

1856 Collins Blvd.

Covington, LA 70433

(985) 898-2211

Clayton Charbonnet, DDS Louisiana Orthodontic Specialists

61 Park Place Drive Covington, LA 70433

(985)867-3636

Dependable Siding Inc.

Mark Hosch, Owner

985-966-0628

New Construction, Repairs & Addi-tions

Vinyl Siding, Windows, Patio Covers, Gutters & Hardie Siding

Northshore Tire Repair & Service LLC

1990 Highway 190 West

Slidell, LA 70460

985-645-8747

Dale Wicker Construction

70204 8th Street Covington, LA 70433

(985)373-5862

(985)809-0818

Authentic Exterminating Inc.

P.O. Box 9102 Mandeville, LA 70470

(985)674-0634 (985)264-3776

Pest & Termite Service

Creative Arts of St. Tammany

70326 Highway 59

Abita Springs, LA 70420

(985) 590-3645

“Theater For Children by children

performed at The Swan”

www.dramaandmusic.com

Smoothie King

1600 N Highway 190 70456 Highway 21

Covington, LA 70433

(985)809-9722 (985)875-7793 www.smoothieking.com

Corporate Sponsors

Tutor Me Online Professional Tutoring Service

Martha Schubert, M.Ed. www.tutormeonline.org

Helping Your Child Succeed Is Our Number One Priority

Cafeteria Menu

Monday Tuesday Wednesday Thursday Friday

1

No School

2

No School

3 Grits & French Toast

Chicken Quesadilla

French Fries

Salsa

Fruit

4 Pancakes

Pigs In A Blanket

Baked Beans

Carrot Sticks

Fruit Choice

7 Muffins

Shepherd's Pie

Green Beans

Fruit Choice

Roll

8 Beignets

Chicken Taco

Refried Beans

Salsa & Cheese

Fruit Choice

9 Ham Biscuits

Chicken Tenders

Macaroni & Cheese

Black Beans & Fruit

Texas Toast

10 Cinnamon Roll

Hamburger w Bun

French Fries

Lettuce

Fruit Choice

11 Breakfast Pizza

Chicken Fettuccini

Celery Sticks

Fruit Choice

Texas Toast

14 Cinnamon Roll

Spaghetti w Meat Sauce

Green Beans

Fruit Salad

Bread Sticks

15 Ham Biscuits

Chicken Nuggets

Potatoes w Gravy

Broccoli & Fruit

Texas Toast

16 Beignets

Ham & Cheese Sandwich

Baked Beans

Cole Slaw & Fruit

Brownie

17 Ham & Cheese Wrap

Fried Chicken

Rice w Gravy

Carrots & Fruit

Texas Toast

18 Grits & French Toast

Pizza

Corn

Fruit Choice

21

No School

MLK Day

22 Waffles

Chicken Taco

Corn

Salsa & Cheese

Fruit Choice

23 Beignets

Catfish

Baked Potato

Broccoli & Fruit

Texas Toast

24 Cinnamon Roll

Chicken Tenders

Macaroni & Cheese

Broccoli & Fruit

Texas Toast

25 Ham Biscuits

Hamburger w bun

Sweet Potato Fries

Lettuce

Fruit Choice

28 Cinnamon Roll

Chicken Poppers

Rice w Gravy

Broccoli & Fruit

Texas Toast

29 Ham Biscuits

Pigs In A Blanket

Baked beans

Carrot Sticks

Fruit Choice

30 Beignets

Chicken Quesadilla

French Fries

Salsa

Fruit

31 Ham & Cheese Wrap

Spaghetti w Meat Sauce

Green Beans

Fruit Salad

Bread Sticks