This letter to parents of the student body from
Dr. Cowan was mailed with our 1st Semester grade cards.
January 12, 2012
Dear Cape Central Parents:
As I announced in my November
parent letter, our goal was to have first-semester report cards in the mail by
Friday, January 13. Understandably,
some always ask why it seems to take longer than anticipated to receive
first-semester grades. Please
understand, in a school our size, we inevitably have several students ill the
week of exams, and we must provide a legitimate amount of time for those
students to complete their exams after we return from holiday recess.
After all make-up exams are finished, we take extra care in confirming
first-semester grades as well as class rank and grade point average that are all
critical for our graduating seniors to use in college admission and scholarship
application. It is also
credit-bearing, semester grades that we use to calculate and publish our senior
high school honor roll.
Consequently, much must be done, and it must be done as accurately as possible,
to serve our students well. Thank
you for your patience and understanding, and please contact us if you have
questions or need for additional information.
First Semester Honor Roll
Each year, we have questions
about how we determine our semester honor roll.
I refer you to page 7 of our
Student Handbook and Student Code of Conduct which in part reads:
“To be considered for the Honor Roll, students must currently be enrolled
in courses that offer a minimum of two units of credit and must have no grade
below a C. (A grade of C-
disqualifies the student from being on the Honor Roll.)
If a student attains an 8.0 average, she or he will achieve the B Honor
Roll. If she or he attains a 10.0,
she or he will achieve the A Honor Roll.”
If you have additional questions, please contact your counselor or
assistant principal at your convenience.
Two Reasons to Celebrate
Our attendance for first
semester was 95.00% as a school with our sophomore class leading our four grade
levels with a rate of daily attendance of 95.63%, followed by our juniors at
95.36%, our freshmen at 94.66%, and our seniors at 94.37%.
As a Missouri A+ High School, our annual goal is for all of our students,
and for our school as a whole, to have a daily rate of attendance of 95% or
higher. Please know, in my eleven
years as principal at Cape Central, this is the first semester we have reached
our 95.00% goal with our previous high having been 94.9.
For a senior high school of our size to hit 95% is a major
accomplishment, and I thank you for all you do daily to be certain our kids are
in school. In addition, we have a
second reason to celebrate in that we had only 35 students who failed to earn
credit in one or more classes first semester due to excessive absences.
As a point of reference, first semester last year we had 60 students who
failed to earn credit due to poor attendance.
Without doubt, good attendance supports a higher level of academic
success. Our attendance
expectation is rigorous but really quite simple in principle:
we cannot teach our kids if they are not here!
Automated Call System
As some of you know, we continue
to use an automated call system that contacts your home on the evening of any
day your daughter or son is absent and we do not hear from you.
Our goal, of course, is to hear from you by 9:00 A.M. on the day of an
absence so that we do not have to disturb you during the day at home or at work.
In addition, we can use our automated call system to notify you about
snow days, emergencies and special events on campus.
Naturally, no procedure or practice is perfect for all of our students
and families, but our goal is always to meet the needs of as many as possible as
efficiently as possible.
Student Phone Messages
Please remember, in a school our
size that we simply cannot deliver all of the phone messages many would like for
us to deliver. If you have a
message that needs to be delivered during the academic day, please know we call
our kids to the Main Office hourly by intercom for messages during class change.
If you have an emergency, please ask for a principal and one of us will
do our best to assist you. We do
ask that you only leave messages that are absolutely necessary so that we can
manage those necessary messages more efficiently.
With approximately 1150 students and 150 faculty and staff, you can only
imagine how much time could be devoted to nothing but taking and delivering
casual messages.
Enrollment for 2012-13
As some veteran parents may
recall, we begin our enrollment for the following academic year in January of
each current academic year. As in
the past, we will begin with our current juniors and then move to our current
sophomores and freshmen and conclude with our grade 8 students at Central Junior
High School. We invited all juniors
and junior parents to join us for an informational meeting on Wednesday, January
11. We are pleased to invite next
our current sophomores and freshmen and their parents to join us for
similar sessions on Wednesday, February 8, 6:30 P.M. in The Commons.
Finally, we are pleased to invite our current eighth grade students and
their parents to join us Monday, March 12, 6:30 P.M. in The Commons.
If you know of any students who are considering joining us for next year
from other schools in our area, please invite them to join us for the grade-appropriate
session.
Centennial
Celebration Continues
As you surely know by now, the 2011-12 academic year is our
centennial year at Cape Central culminating 100 years of high school education
in the School District of Cape Girardeau.
Throughout our first semester, we have had many special events inviting
alumni to “Come Home to Central,” and our celebration will continue to build
with excitement as we move towards our Centennial Commencement 2012.
At Fall Homecoming, we were pleased to release formally a published
history of our school authored by alumnus and current Cape Central librarian
Julia Jorgensen entitled Cape Central High School Centennial 1912-2012:
100 Years of Teaching, Learning, Caring!
Please know, this historic book is a limited edition, and once they are
gone, we will not likely have a second printing.
If you would like to review or purchase a copy, please contact our Cape
Central Library at 334-0644. The
cost is $50.00. We sincerely
believe this is a book all graduates will come to cherish.
Girardot Yearbook
Please know, you should have received a mailing at your
home from Jostens with instructions on how to order your 2011-12
Girardot Centennial Yearbook.
Now that the December deadline for
advanced sales has passed, the price of our yearbook is
$65.00. If you have already
purchased a yearbook through CHS and are still receiving mailings from Jostens,
you may contact us to verify your order. Jostens will not have access to
orders placed at CHS. Should you
have any questions, you may contact us at
chs_girardot@yahoo.com.
Special Assignment
for Senior Parents
Included with this mailing is a master list of all of our
seniors who are scheduled to be graduated in this spring’s Centennial
Commencement. Please take a moment
to confirm that your senior is included and that her or his name is listed and
spelled accurately. Annually, we
have discrepancies between how some of our graduates choose to list and spell
their names and how their parents choose to list and spell their names.
Our goal with this master list is to give senior parents a chance to
confirm the accuracy of the names we have copied from our files.
If you have questions or concerns, please contact Mrs. Marlene
Rothenberger at 335-8228, and she will be most pleased to assist you.
The two questions being asked most frequently on campus
right now are: will we really have
to wear uniforms next year and when will the construction be finished?
Let me address the far more certain
question first. Our classroom
addition is progressing extremely well, and we are on schedule for it to be in
full use when we begin our new academic year next fall.
Needless to say, to find a permanent home for our 54 traveling sections
and to eliminate teachers racing through our hallways with carts will be one of
the highlights of our fall semester.
Soon and very soon, the external walls will be enclosed, and the internal
work will continue to progress on schedule, we certainly believe.
Although our construction management team tells us our performing arts
center is still on schedule to be finished by the end of first semester, I
personally believe it could be after Christmas given the delayed start due to a
budget review and the multiple days of wet weather we experienced late fall.
Trust me, I will be the happiest buckaroo on the ranch if I am wrong!
With regard to uniforms, the current plan is to host our second public
forum on Tuesday, January 17, 6:00-8:00 P.M. at Central Junior High School
Auditorium. Then, our District
Dress Code Committee will review the information gleaned from our two public
forums, make possible changes to our current recommendation, and offer a final
recommendation to our Board of Education on February 27.
Of course, plans can change, but as of today, this is the plan as I
understand it. Although I am
not on the District Committee, I do support the recommendation that our kids as
well as our staff and faculty be expected to dress more formally during our
academic day. For me personally,
most difficult topics come down to some simple conclusions.
Quite simply, after many conversations over the years with students,
parents, faculty and leaders of other schools—public and private—that have
adopted a uniform policy, I am convinced it is a beneficial move for us to make
based on two philosophical conclusions I personally have reached.
My first conclusion is that when we dress for success, we are more
likely to experience success. My
second conclusion is that a school uniform will increase our sense of shared
identity as a learning community.
To repeat, I have concluded, simply, that the possibility for an enhanced
culture of student success and a more prominent commitment to a shared identity
have the potential to make Cape Central an even better school for an even
greater number of kids. As we
know, change that is substantive and systemic rarely comes easily and almost
always generates anxiety. However,
a maxim by which I have come to live my life is as follows:
we can change without improving, but we cannot improve without changing.
Joyous Moments of Changing
Wonder!