Thursday Performance cancelled due to weather

Our evening performance of Into the Woods tonight (Thursday, February 26) is cancelled due to weather. We will have additional performances on the dates and times listed below - thank you for your consideration!

Into the Woods - Theater Production

New Century Charter School will present our production of Into the Woods - a 2-act Broadway Musical by Stephen Sonheim on the following dates - the public is invited to attend! Performances will take place at Maplewood Academy Auditorium at 700 Main Street North in Hutchinson, MN.

Thursday, February 26 - CANCELLED DUE TO WEATHER

Friday, February 27 - 11:00 AM Matinee - public is welcome.

Saturday, February 28 - 7:00 PM Evening Performance

Sunday, March 1 - 2:00 PM Matinee Performance

Tickets are $6 for adults and $4 for students. Refreshments, flowers, awards for the actors, etc. are all available at the auditorium for purchase during the performances. Thank you for supporting our Theatre group!

College Planning

In responding to parental input asking for more information on how to go about preparing for college, NCCS will be holding its second college night on Tuesday, 17 February. We will have a representative from Ridgewater who will spend some time on all of the things to think about and act on while juniors and seniors in high school. In addition, there will be information on PSEO presented. This is designed to help students understand what PSEO has been created to do and how to plan collaboratively with NCCS advisors so that this experience enhances the overall secondary educational experience. There is a 30 March deadline for participation in PSEO. By this date, PSEO participants for the 09-10 school year need to inform the secondary school of their desire to participate. Since PSEO is a cost to the district, this deadline has been imposed by the state to assist districts in budgeting for the upcoming school year. Parents of all sophomores and juniors please plan on attending this information session.

New Century Presents "Into the Woods"

You are invited to attend New Century's annual spring musical - our production this year is "INTO THE WOODS" - a two-act musical by Stephen Sonheim.

It is a delightful story intertwining the plots of several Fairy Tales including Little Red Riding Hood, Jack & the Beanstalk, Rapunzel and Cinderella - tied together by a more original story involving a Baker and his wife and their quest to begin a family. It also includes references to several other well-known tales.

There are 28 cast members and 20 additional students involved in the technical aspects of our production. Our student matinee is on Friday, February 27th.

Our performances will be at Maplewood Academy Auditorium at 700 Main Street North on Thursday, February 26th at 7:00 PM, Saturday, February 28th at 7:00 PM and Sunday, March 1st at 2:00 PM. Tickets are $6 for adults and $4 for students.

Great Turnout - Charter School Day at Capitol

Tremendous Turnout for 3rd Annual Charter School Day at Capitol

Yesterday, over 350 parents, school administrators, board members, teachers and students from across the state participated in the 3rd Annual MACS Charter School Day at the Capitol. (This year's turnout was about a 50% increase over last year.)

Those who participated had over one hundred scheduled meetings with legislators - and there were a number of impromptu meetings that occurred as folks moved around the Capitol complex.

The response to our three key messages...

1. Charter Schools are Public Schools that make a difference in kids’ lives
2. Charter Schools Support Real Accountability and Enhancing Innovation
3. Lease Aid Reductions will mean cuts in funding for the classroom, as charters have no other funding source for facilities

...seemed to be well received by most legislators. In fact, a couple of legislators indicated that they wanted to sign on our bill - the Charter School Accountability and Enhancement Act of 2009.

I want to express my appreciation to everyone who participated, and also to our lobbying team - Peg Larsen, Lynne Osterman, and Bill Hoffman - and to our MACS staff - Margaret Uttke, Shad Cooper, and our volunteer interns Carolyn Westra, Stacy Lahr and Max Sirianni - for making the day a tremendous success.

While we have a long way to go in the session - and there will be up days and down days as the legislative process unfolds - yesterday was an up day. We heard good things from both legislators and legislative staff about the students and folks who participated; they did the individual schools and the charter school movement proud.

Everyone in the charter school movement shoul thank the participants for taking the day to come to the Capitol and to help tell the story of Minnesota's charter schools, especially in what is a critical session for the future of charter schools in Minnesota.

I am extraordinarily grateful for everyone's participation and work.

Gratefully,

Eugene Piccolo

Executive Director

09-10 Budget - These will be difficult times for the NCCS board as they structure a budget for the upcoming school year that is responsive to student needs while facing less funding from the state. While nobody, including the legislators themselves, know right now the outcome of the funding session in May, it is pretty well expected that there will not be a lot of new funding for education. All business organizations, including the one that NCCS employs, are recommending that the budget be built with no increase. While all of the unexpected expenses that came with a move into a new building will be slowing, and some of the expenses will now have a track record which will allow the board to be able to predict, money will still be tight. The NCCS board finance committee is hard at work looking at areas in which money can be saved and will be bringing various proposals to the full board over the next few months. A budget must be in place by June 30th as per state statute. Please feel free to contact NCCS board members with your thoughts.

Drug Sweep

As many of you know, on Thursday 5 February we invited a team of law enforcement officers in to conduct a search of NCCS using a dog trained to uncover illegal substances. We are pleased to be able to report that while the dog showed interest in a few work stations, there were no illegal drugs discovered on the premises. While this is good news, we are not naive enough to believe that this means that our school is drug free and that none of our students are involved in this activity. We will continue to work in helping staff and students understand the importance of avoiding this type of destructive activity and will continue to implement procedures to eliminate this in our school. On the day before this took place, our staff were trained by county workers in the identification and detection of illegal substances and in effective ways to talk with students whom they suspect are involved in these activities. We had the same session for parents on the night of the search which unfortunately was not well attended. Parents, we need your help in this area. We as school employees have responsibilities to detect and eliminate this type of activity during students’ time at school, but as you all know, this activity takes place outside of the school doors as well. Please be vigilant and be willing to challenge your child if you see activity that would be indicative of illegal substance abuse. As partners we will be able to help our students better avoid the negative spiral that takes place when adolescents get involved in this type of destructive activity.

Cell phones and text messaging

We have been having an ever increasing amount of student use of cell phones during school hours. NCCS has a policy that prohibits students from using cell phones during school hours because of the distracting qualities inherent in their use. Added to this is the increase use of negative communication that takes place between students, at times referred to as cyber-bullying. We are seeing increased activity in this area and it is becoming increasingly more difficult to fulfill our responsibility of maintaining students’ safety while this happens so quickly and easily out of sight of a school employee. Quite often when we take phones away we hear that students want them returned or are in immediate need of their phone in order to keep in touch with parents using the text message component. While we recognize that there are times when parents and students need to communicate with each other during the day, we ask for your help in keeping these to times of actual emergency. When we take phones away and hear that we are depriving students of their need to communicate with parents, we let them know that they are free to use the school phones for this purpose at a time when it is not disruptive to the educational process. We need to be able to curtail cell phone use during school hours as it is our responsibility to maintain a safe and undisrupted educational setting. Please help us by refraining from text messaging your child during school hours and letting them know that they should follow school procedures to contact parents during the day.