Welcome Back! We are glad you are here!
PARENT/TEACHER CONFERENCES
Will be held Wednesday, November 18th and Thursday, November 19th. Sixth grade core teachers will be in the Cafeteria and Media Center from 4:30 – 8:30 and Seventh and Eighth grade core teachers will be in the gym from 5:30-8:30. Encore instructors will be in their classrooms. All conferences will follow a drop-in format.
SCHWAN’S FUNDRAISER
Nov. 18th & 19th, CMS Student Leaders will be sponsoring a Schwan’s truckload sale. Stock up on food for the winter or get a jump on your holiday baking! You can pre-order items (encouraged) or just show up and shop. Catalogs are available for browsing and pre-ordering. Pre-orders are due in the office by Nov. 17th. You can also go to the website at
www.schwans.com for more items.
STUDENT DIRECTORIES
Our generous PTO group has once again paid for the publication of the Directory. We will distribute one free to each household; this will be done during P/T Conferences in the main office.
“GOING GREEN” ENVIRONMENTAL CLUB
Congratulations to Sandy Yonker as she spearheads a brand new recycling initiative for the District. With the generous help of Craig Ross and Tom Vance, CMS will be recycling plastic bottles and aluminum cans each day. The new collection containers arrive Nov. 13th. Students will be hearing morning announcements regarding student participation in this very worthwhile pilot.
Assistant Principal Bonnie Neal accepts National Promising Practice awards on behalf of Central Middle School at the National Character Education Conference in Washington, D.C.
Safe Routes to School Initiative
Walking & Biking Safely to School
Safe Routes to Central Middle School
Portage Central Middle School recognized at State and National levels for Character Education Program
CMS has completed its fourth year of a focused, comprehensive, continually developing Character Education effort. 
During the 2008-09 school year, Central Middle has been awarded an Honorable Mention from the Michigan State Schools of Character competition and two Promising Practices Awards from the national Character Education Partnership organization. Central Middle will be offering an exhibit to share its character education practices at the 1st Annual "Embedding Character Education into the 21st Century School" conference in Beverly Hills, Mi. in June and also at the National Forum for Education in Washington D.C. in October. Central Middle's winning practices will also be featured in the CEP's National Schools of Character publication and on the CEP website.
Kalamazoo County Substance Abuse Task Force
Click here for the flyer.
Michigan Bridge Building Challenge
The Michigan Department of Transportation, 2009 Michigan Bridge Building Challenge was held on Wednesday, April 15 in Lansing, Michigan. Portage Central Middle school had 18 students involved in this state level bridge building competition. Portage Central High School had 9 high school students invited to compete. Science teacher Dale Freeland coached the high school students. 7th Grade Science teachers Mike Champion and Amy Franks coached the middle school participants.
All of the competing middle school students had to design and build a drawbridge. The high school students had to build a suspension bridge. Given specific parameters, and the same amount of balsawood, each team had to design and construct a working bridge. Creativity, teamwork, problem solving, science, math, language arts, and social studies skills were used by all of the team members.
Each group generated lengthy proposals. MDOT personnel informed us that 132 proposals were submitted and 19 were chosen to compete in the state finals. The finalist teams presented a Power Point presentation in Lansing that explained the bridge building process and the lessons learned. The top engineers from the Michigan Department of Transportation judged the presentations and the bridges.
After each presentation the students then took their finished bridges to a testing room where machines were used to test weight and the strength of each bridge. Mr. Champion and Mrs. Franks are happy to report that 3 teams from Portage Central Middle School came away with the 1st, 2nd, and 3rd place finishes for their bridges. Team members John Blanchard, Sky Lester, and Ben Alburtus won first prize and $200 each for their winning drawbridge. 2nd prize and $375 in shared prize money went to Bob Corcoran, Shelly Mannes, and Rachel Bates. 3rd Place and $75 each went to team members John West, Natalie Criswell, and Cam Brandt.
All of the students worked hard and we are extremely proud of this excellent showing of the talented students we have enrolled in Portage Public Schools. Thank you to all of the students who participated.
State qualifying team members –
Mr. Champion’s students-, John Blanchard, Sky Lester, and Ben Alburtus, Cam Brandt, John West, Natalie Criswell, Sam McCauley, Payton Mills, and Mikey O'Strander
Mrs. Franks’ students – Rachel Polous, Geneviene Sertic, Logan Fisher, Jori Philips, Julian Xu, Brittany Leach, Bob Corcoran, Shelly Mannes, and Rachel Bates.
Cell Phone Alert!
Students may be in possession of a cell phone at school; however, according to our Portage Public Schools policy # 5390 in the Student Handbook, “use of the phone is limited to the period before classes begin in the morning and after the student’s last class in the afternoon.” Cell phones are not to be used during classes, during passing periods or during lunch. Cell phones should be turned off and out of sight for the duration of the school day. Failure to follow these guidelines may result in the phone being confiscated by a staff member. A parent will then have to contact the office to retrieve the phone.
Parent Newsletter Changes
As a cost saving measure, we will only be mailing our first and last newsletter of the year. The remaining newsletters will be available on-line the first of each month. Parents must sign up here and will be notified via e-mail when the newsletter is posted. If you do not have internet access, copies will be available in the front office.
Our PTO
We have a very active Parent-Teacher Organization in our building and strongly encourage your involvement. We meet on the fourth Tuesday of each month in the Media Center at 6:30 pm.
The 2008-2009 officers include: President Susan Fulling (sfulling@charter.net); Vice President Debbie Malloy (Debbie@Malloy.org); Secretary Dana Pope (mipopes@tds.net); Treasurer Kimberly Cornue (kccomue@chartermi.net).
Want your photos considered for publication in the CMS Yearbook?
So do we! Students, parents and teachers can contribute content to the yearbook staff by uploading digital photos directly to our
eShare website for potential use in our yearbook. You can eShare photos of field trips, sporting events, school and community activities, and your friends that might otherwise be missed by our staff photographers.
Please eShare your pictures quickly as we are constantly selecting images to meet page deadlines. Provide as much detail as possible (including names and grades) for each photo, so we have all the information needed for accurate identification.
The more you eShare, the better our coverage can be. It’s easy! Start eSharing today by going to
www.hjeshare.com where you can enter our
CMS School Code: 7004795 and get going. Last date to submit photos is February 28, 2010.
Character Counts 2009-2010
All three grade levels are well underway toward studying their CC curriculum for this year. The sixth graders are engaged in individual lessons on each pillar (trustworthiness, respect, responsibility, fairness, caring and citizenship); the seventh graders will be studying the Seven Step Path to Better Decision Making, using the pillar values to assist in making important choices in life; and the eighth graders will be involved with the Honor Above All program, which focuses on academic honesty and developing personal integrity.
CMS C.I.A - Citizenship in Action
Citizenship in Action (CIA) is a new club that was started last year to give CMS students an opportunity to participate in community service projects. There are no requirements to participate and no set number of hours or projects that have to be volunteered for. Nearly 100 students volunteered for at least one of the 22 projects, for a total of 300 hours of service. All of the CIA activities took place after school or on the weekend. Students who volunteered received a purple CIA T-shirt provided by the PTO and snacks. But the motivation for most students came from their desire to be good citizens and to help someone else and have fun. Some of the activities were serving lemonade at Celery Flats, planting flowers and cleaning the school grounds at CMS in the fall and spring, raking leaves for senior citizens through Portage Senior Center, ringing bells and collecting money for Salvation Army, donating grains of rice through Freerice.com, writing letters to our troops overseas through Operation Gratitude, creating posters for School Spirit Week and Earth Day, and walking and collecting money for the CROP walk.
If you have ideas for a project or need the help of energetic students please contact Kris Winkle at 323-5614 or kwinkle@portageps.org.