Thorndale ISD

Volume 1, Issue 8: 12/1/23

Posted on December 1, 2023

Greetings Bulldogs! Happy Friday!

I hope you had a restful, relaxing, and rejuvenating Thanksgiving Break! I always love the chance to slow down and focus on family, but I am also a fan of routines and a schedule so I am happy to be back!

Please take some time to look through all the celebrations, pictures, and activities highlighted in this week's blog because it is truly hard to believe all of the areas in which Thorndale ISD kids are achieving outstanding levels of success through opportunities.

Culinary Classes Making Thanksgiving Meals:

If any of you have kiddos in our Culinary Arts classes, I hope they helped you prepare your Thanksgiving meal if you made one, because I can tell you first hand, they learned how to do it, and do it well!

Check out these pictures of the spread prepared in our culinary classes. Yum!!

2023 Midterm Schedule (MS & HS):

As we enter December we are on a countdown to midterms and Christmas Break!!!

This year's midterms will be delivered to Middle School and High School students over the 18th, 19th, and 20th. As a reminder, as shown in the calendar below, December 20th is an early release and all students ES-HS will be released at 12:30.

Additionally, we have made the decision to release students a bit early in MS and HS ONLY on the 19th. This is because every year, at campuses across the state, students take a final on one day, and then have to report back to that class on the following day simply to fill the full-day schedule.

This causes wasted time, distractions, and sometimes misbehavior. Thus, we cut that out. Please see below for a copy of the MS and HS bell schedules for those days. ES students will have a normal day schedule on the 19th. NOTE: any student who rides the bus and/or doesn’t have a ride home at 1:15 pm on the 19th will be allowed to stay on their campus and will be supervised until the normal 3:45 dismissal as we do not want this to cause any hardship to any families.
This extra time is the perfect time for MS and HS teachers to grade midterms and get that input before the break!

Middle School Dance – TONIGHT

Its not too late for our middle schoolers to decide they want to join us for the Glowstick Dance tonight (12/1/23) at the TMS cafeteria from 6-8:30pm. Hope to see you there!

Congratulations – College Signing Ceremony!

It is a really big deal when a student, at any school, regardless of the size gets the opportunity to continue playing sports at the next level. Well, Thorndale class of 2024 already has one! Please help me congratulate Bernice Gonzalez College Signing to Western Texas College to play Softball.

FFA Chapter Conducting Teams Competing at STATE:

Volleyball All District:

Football All-District:

Thorndale Bass Club Makes a Big Splash!

Just before the Thanksgiving Break our Bass club competed in another competition and did amazing! Check out the size of those fish!

Frog Dissection Day:

I am sure we all have vivid memory of some sort of dissection we did back in school. Some loved it, some hated it, and others were somewhere in between. But, nonetheless, it was a powerful hand on learning opportunity. In fact, I can still smell that smell of the frogs on dissection day!

Well, I want to thank our amazing science teacher Mrs. Hengst for providing our kiddos with that experience. Check out the smiles… and uneasy looks 😊

Learning About Weather from THE Kristen Currie from KXAN:

1st grade has a special guest before the holiday break as Kristen Currie from KXAN came and took our standard weather lesson to the next level! How cool is that.

4th Graders Practicing Fractions:

From a former High School Math teacher, I tell all parents if you want to practice one thing to help your kids with math it is fractions, fractions, fractions! Kiddos struggle with them all throughout school. But in TISD our 4th graders are practicing all kinds of fractions and using visuals to help clarify it! Great stuff.

Other Celebrations!

Don’t get me wrong, I love academic success and I love extracurricular success. But a little secret about me is that I believe that the most important thing we can instill in our children is to be good people.

Check out our amazing FFCLA students who traveled to a local nursing home to decorate for Christmas, share a meal, and spend time with some amazing residents who absolutely love young visitors. What a great feel good opportunity for everyone involved.

District Facility Committee Meetings:

Our community committee has now met three times! Attendance at the first 3 meetings has averaged about 35-40 people, which is great!

Here is a copy of the presentations thus far:

At the next meeting, our architects and project managers will have taken all of the priorities our committee has developed and assign approximate costs to them.

The key to a bond in Thorndale ISD is that we have identified more needs than we can afford in a single bond. Thus, we must move from a mindset of “we are going to do X but we are NOT going to do anything to address “Y” to a mindset of “we are going to do X now and we are going to do Y for next”. That is the long-range planning that is going to be the most powerful in improving TISD facilities to meet the needs of all students.

In this upcoming meeting, we will use the financial information we have been given from our financial advisors to “fill the bucket” that represents our bond budget with the many needs we identified until our bucket is full. Here is a visual of what I am describing:

Imagine each of those blue boxes are specific projects, examples being: upgrades/new AG building, Field house upgrades, band hall expansion/upgrades/new build, new high school, safety upgrades, connecting campuses, ES or MS renovations, etc. etc. The committee has identified approximately 50 different needs!

We know we have some really big projects on our wish list, and a couple smaller ones. We also know, we simply will not be able to do it all in one bond due to our tax-assessed values. Thus, we will also fill a secondary “bucket” of potential needs we want to address in our next bond, when our local assessment values rise.

The work is exciting, hard, and necessary. Stay tuned for more updates!

We are on schedule for our timeline to have the community committee present the committee's work at our January board meeting.

Upcoming Events – December 1st – 15th:

For the most up-to-date information on upcoming events, please visit our Thorndale ISD website. However, here are some highlights of important dates below:

Most sincerely,

Zack Kleypas
Superintendent
Thorndale ISD
#TISDStrivingForExcellence

“Keep improving, always, in all ways.”