Dear Kent Middle School Families,

Thank you to the many families who showed support for our Kent musicians and our one-of-a-kind Kent Middle School music program during our three performances last week. The song selection included tunes from Bruce Pearson, The Spice Girls, Stevie Wonder, ABBA, and much more… now that is one-of-a-kind! Much appreciation is extended to Kent music director Mr. Michael Martinez for inspiring and leading our Kent musicians, and for his creative music curation. Thank you also to our partners in education, the KSPTA and KIK, for their ongoing financial support of Kent music. Congratulations to our many Kent musicians!

Kent Library Refresh Construction Project – The Kent Middle School Library is like the heart of our school. Students, staff, and community members flow in and out of this shared space daily, with collaboration, creation, innovation, exploration, communication, and learning flourishing within its walls. Thanks to Kentfield Invests in Kids (KIK), we are starting a Library Refresh Construction Project to improve and enhance this important space on our campus. The most transformative element of this project includes the movement of standalone bookshelves and the removal of outdated study carrels in order to centralize most book browsing to the southwest corner of the library, opening up the remainder of the library for collaborative workspaces and flexible set-ups that can support both small and large student and community groups. Once the bookshelves are moved, new carpet installed throughout and simple paint touch-up will complete this year’s refresh. In order to support the completion of this project, the Library will be closed from February 16th through March 5th, opening again for student use the week of March 6th. With a new look and a new feel, our Library will likely need a new name! We look forward to working with our students in the months of March and April to re-brand our new and improved Library space with a new name and fitting logo. I look forward to sharing the outcome of this project with you soon, and encourage you to view it as a part of our Open House on March 30th!

Measure of Academic Progress (MAP Growth) Testing This Week - This week students will be taking the MAP Growth assessment for two sessions of their English class and two sessions of their math class. We administer this assessment twice a year to monitor student progress in the areas of reading and mathematics, and look forward to sharing the results of this test administration with you in early March, just as we did with the last round of testing in October, 2022. The results serve as a helpful instructional tool for teachers and an important progress monitoring tool for our school, so we encourage all students to give their full effort and attention to these tests when completing them at school. 6th, 7th, and 8th grade parents, thank you for supporting your student to arrive at school each day with a charged Chromebook!

Let’s have an awesome week ahead!