BK Alive
News and Information for BK Families
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THIS NEWSLETTER CONTAINS A LOT OF INFORMATION, AND THE LENGTH OF THE NEWSLETTER CAUSES IT TO BE TRUNCATED.
LOOK FOR THE BLUE LINK AT THE BOTTOM OF THE EMAIL THAT SAYS "VIEW ENTIRE MESSAGE" TO EXPAND THE EMAIL, OR CLICK HERE TO SEE ARCHIVED COMMUNICATIONS FROM BK.
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Next Week
Monday 10/4 - Periods 1-4
8:30 AM Start, 3:00 PM Release
Tuesday 10/5 - Periods 5-7
9:00 AM Start, 2:45 - 3:15 PM Office Hours
Wednesday 10/6 - Straight 7 Schedule
8:30 AM Start, 3:05 PM Release
Thursday 10/7 - Periods 1-3
9:00 AM Start, 2:45 - 3:15 PM Office Hours
Dress up: Tie Dye
Friday 10/8 - Periods 4-7
8:30 AM Start, 3:00 PM Release
Important Upcoming Dates
Saturday, October 2nd - Homecoming Dance
Wednesday, October 13th - PSAT for all Sophomores and Juniors at BK (See below for more info.)
Monday, October 18th - BK Music Concert @ 7:00 PM
Thursday, October 21 - All School Mass
October 28 & 29 - Parent/Teacher Student Progress Conferences
October 28th - 31st - Bishop Kelly Fall Play, Dracula
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A Note from Rich and Mike |
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Dear BK Families,
Happy October! As we complete our sixth week of the 2021-22 school year, we continue to be grateful to our community and the efforts we have all put in together - students, teachers, staff and parents - to make this such a successful start to the school year.
In this BK Alive letter, in addition to providing a COVID-19 update, we wanted to share some of the highlights of Homecoming Week here at BK.
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Homecoming 2021
We have had a very fun - and safe - Homecoming week, with almost all activities taking place outdoors. The week started with Class Hall decorations on Sunday where each class decorated in the theme of their respective country (Seniors-USA; Juniors-France; Sophomores-Italy; Freshman-Japan). Throughout the week, students came dressed up in attire from various decades, spirit wear, western wear, and tie-dye! We held a buff-puff (volleyball) tournament throughout the week during lunch-time on the baseball outfield - congratulations to the sophomore boys who won the tournament! And then beat the faculty team on Thursday!
We had a wonderful parade (in lieu of an indoor assembly) on Tuesday where Fall sports teams, band, clubs, and homecoming royalty participated. It was quite a sight! We believe we may have revived an annual Homecoming tradition here at BK. The Knights for Life group also hosted a movie night in the Library on Tuesday. We also had some super exciting Powder-puff match-ups on Wednesday night. The Sophomores defeated the Freshmen 16 to 0 and the Juniors defeated the Seniors 22-12.
Today has been a busy day as we hosted a sold-out Alumknights and Friends Golf tournament at Quail Hollow. The Homecoming Football game will take place tonight at 7:00 pm against our rival Middleton. We will be welcoming Alumknights back to campus for this game. Best of luck to Coach Brennan (BK’77) and all the players! Homecoming Royalty will be crowned during half-time.
The week ends tomorrow night with the Homecoming Dance hosted by the Student Council! The dance will take place on the Lachiondo Family Plaza from 8pm-11:00 PM. Students need to bring their student I.D.
Special thanks to the ASB and class officers and their Advisor Patrick Kelly. '16; Pep Club and their moderator, Gina Shanahan; and Vice Principal for Student Affairs, Cheryl Hutchinson for putting together such a fun and safe week during these challenging times. GO KNIGHTS!
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COVID-19 at BK
We are continuing to track and publish our school data on BK.org daily. As of today, 10/1/21, we have had 42 positive student and 9 staff cases since the start of school six weeks ago, with 2 student and 2 staff cases added this week. We currently have 2 students and no staff members out in quarantine.
In our COVID assessment meeting this week, we reviewed our three key internal metrics - number of cases and spread within our school, attendance rates, and percentage of staff out - plus the community metrics on cases and hospital capacity. Here is the update on each metric:
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1) Number of cases and spread within our school - our positive student cases have dropped every week for the past four weeks, from 12 to 7 to 5 to 2 this past week. That is encouraging news and speaks to two things in our minds - masks work and you and your children are doing a good job outside of school. We are still not aware of any spread that has occurred within the school.
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2) Attendance rates - our weekly attendance has continued to improve from the low of 92.7% the week of 9/6 - 9/10 to 95.4% this past week. This again is encouraging progress but still below our goal and what we experienced at the start of school of 98%.
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3) Faculty/Staff absenteeism - this has steadied a bit this past week with 6 faculty out daily on average this past week, 2 for COVID reasons.
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4) Community factors - Incidence rates for Ada County have risen from 295.90 cases/100,000 the week of September 3rd to 587.64 cases/100,000 this week. This is in the Red/High transmission category. Hospitals and ICUs continue to be full in Boise, Meridian, and Nampa for both St. Luke’s and Saint Alphonsus, and both health systems continue to operate with “crisis standards of care” in place. Staffing shortages and very tired and stressed healthcare workers exist at all hospitals and clinics in our valley, with many people reassigned to help with the surge in hospitals. There are some hopeful signs that COVID-19 positivity rates and hospitalizations are declining slightly but there is also a large backlog of tests/cases to be processed at our health districts. It is too early to tell if these are positive trends.
We need to continue to do our part here at BK in helping control the spread and mitigate risks. We would ask that you continue to follow our COVID protocols at all sporting events, especially indoors for volleyball. We do not have the personnel to enforce these beyond our players at games so would ask that you take the personal responsibility to do so. If fans do not follow our protocols, and we have an outbreak from a game, some of our teams may not be able to finish the season successfully and fan attendance at our winter indoor sports (basketball and wrestling) could be at risk. Thank you for your cooperation.
As is our practice, we will review our current mask policy and other mitigation policies and protocols next Wednesday at our COVID-19 assessment meeting to determine if we should make any changes for the coming two weeks. Until then, we will continue with mandatory masking while indoors in BK buildings for the week of October 4-8.
We will do our part in enforcing these and other protocols here at BK and would ask that you please continue your efforts on proper indoor mask wearing outside of school, staying home when sick, considering being vaccinated if you/your child are not already, discouraging sleepovers, movie nights, car pools, and being kind, civil, understanding and respectful to our BK team and to each other. We are making progress. And remember - we all want the same thing - our kids in school every day for face-to-face learning. Every day. Safely. And we must work together to make this happen all school year.
Thank you for your support, understanding, feedback, and trust.
God bless,
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Mike Caldwell
Principal
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Each week Bishop Kelly faculty and staff nominate students, and students nominate faculty and staff, who have demonstrated the BK Way attributes of Faith, Safe and Caring Place, Academic Excellence, Activities, Honor, Generosity, Community, and Partnership.
Congratulations to this week's Knights of the Week!
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Alyson Chou
Community
In Alyson's years here at Bishop Kelly she has operated an informational social media account that served to keep all BK students informed of important announcements, upcoming deadlines, and BK events. She did this totally on her own so that all BK students had information at their fingertips. I have really appreciated her help keeping her peers in the know, and I hope they aren't too lost without her next year!
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Rhyan Baez
Academic Excellence
Rhyan is a true leader in class. He helps create a great learning environment by openly and courageously engaging our material in a serious way, voicing questions others have. He speaks his mind and moves classroom discussions forward constructively. He also gives his all to his classwork, setting a great example to his peers!
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Ben Boroff,
Activities, Honor
One story from this past weekend's Mountain Bike Race at JUG Mountain captures the character of Ben Boroff and why he is being selected for this week's Knight of the Week. Ben had a great race two weeks ago at Grand Targhee where he placed 5th and podiumed for the first time. Going into the Jug race this past weekend, he had big goals for a top 3 finish and had a good place in the lineup to start. At the start he jumped out with the leaders of the pack and was in a fast mix of 5 great racers. At about the 500 yard mark, one racer in the pack got a little too aggressive and caused Ben and another rider to crash. Ben was separated from his bike at the crash and had to watch the entire field pass before him. After over 50 racers passed him, Ben grabbed his bike, had to fix the handlebars and then instead of taking off, he let the other rider use his tool and waited until the other rider was ready to go before he took off. Ben started dead last after the crash in a field of about 60 riders. Over the next 15 miles and 3 laps, Ben picked off one rider at a time in astounding fashion. It was truly incredible. Ben finished in 6th place, just out of the podium spot. The best part of this story was the character that Ben showed in the face of adversity. This is what Ben is all about and why he is this week's Knight of the Week
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Faculty/Staff Knight of the Week
Mrs. Gina Shanahan, Mr. Patrick Kelly, and Mrs. Cheryl Hutchinson
Generosity, Community, Activities
Mrs. Shanahan is Pep Club Advisor, Mr. Kelly is Student Council Advisor, and Mrs. Hutchinson is the Vice Principal of Student Affairs at BK. All three led and/or aided several events during homecoming week that included our homecoming parade; hall decorations; power-puff and buff-puff; homecoming royalty , and the homecoming dance! Thank you for all of your hard work this week!
Here are some remarks from our students:
- Mrs. Shanahan worked very hard during this homecoming week and getting everything set up for powderpuff and other activities
- Mrs. Shanahan is putting in a lot of hard work to make homecoming happen for us students and is an overall great person that I look up to.
- Mrs. Shanahan is doing an amazing job with homecoming preparation, and making BK a fun place full of school spirit.
- Mr. Kelly is such a wonderful teacher who has been extremely helpful and kind to all of his students that he teaches. I nominate him for being such a good teacher/advisor and great person in general.
- Mr. Kelly's class is always fun. He is kind and generous. He is a nice teacher.
- Mr. Kelly is a great teacher with a kind heart. He always helps with assignments and is very funny.
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"To Be Hutched": verb- to discipline with love and care for all BK Students
- I am very thankful for the help Mrs. Hutchinson has given to all the students here at BK. This week has been so fun and amazing. For sure one of the best experiences for my first Homecoming week. I can't wait for homecoming. Thank you so much and God Bless You.
- I am so grateful for everything that Mrs. Hutchinson has done for homecoming week. Homecoming week was so much fun and I loved all of the dress-up days and the special themes. I especially enjoyed the buff puff games and the decades-day dress-up. The country-themed hallways were also a ton of fun to look at and you just made homecoming week so much fun for us.
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National Merit Semifinalists
and Commended Scholars
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National Merit Scholarship Corporation (NMSC) announced the names of approximately 16,000 Semifinalists in the 67th annual National Merit Scholarship Program. These academically talented high school seniors have an opportunity to continue in the competition for some 7,5000 National Merit Scholarships worth nearly $30 million offered next spring.
Bishop Kelly High School is pleased to announce that we have four students among those who have earned the Semifinalist recognition.
Parker Anderson
Matthew Benson
Sarah East
Christopher Martino
High school juniors entered the 2022 National Merit Scholarship Program by taking the 2020 Preliminary SAT/National Merit Scholarship Qualifying Test which serves as an initial screen of program entrants. The nationwide pool of Semifinalists, representing less than one percent of high school seniors, includes the highest-scoring entrants in each state. The number of Semifinalists in a state is proportional to the state's percentage of the national total of graduating seniors.
Bishop Kelly also had 5 seniors recognized as Commended Students in the National Merit Scholarship Program. These students are among 50,000 seniors in the nation who have achieved this honor. The BK Commended Students are Maggie Hunter, Shan Peck, Jacob Risch, Molly Sparkman, and Audrey Thomson.
Congratulations to all of these Knights!
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National Merit Semifinalists Parker Anderson and Matthew Benson. |
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National Merit Semifinalists Sarah East and Christopher Martino |
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PSAT for all Sophomores and Juniors
Wednesday, October 13th
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On Wednesday, October 13th, all Sophomores and Juniors will be taking the PSAT here at Bishop Kelly.
Students should plan to arrive by 8:15 that morning. Testing will begin at 8:30 and late arrivals will not be allowed to test. Students need to bring two #2 pencils (mechanical pencils do not work!), a calculator, and a snack and water bottle. Cell phones and smartwatches are not allowed in testing rooms, so they should be left at home or in the car - students will not have access to their lockers on test day! Bishop Kelly's regular dress code is in effect during the test. Testing should be complete @ 12:00 for standard test takers.
The PSAT is also the National Merit Scholarship Qualifying Test for Juniors.
There are study guides for the test available in the counseling center - room 412.
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Student Photos and Senior Yearbook Ads |
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New to BK or Need a School Photo?
Parker Portraits will be on campus to take student pictures on Thursday, October 14th at 8:00 a.m. in the cafeteria. This is a 9:00 start day, so students will need to arrive early to have their photo taken before school starts. If your student needs to have a picture taken, or if you'd like a re-take from the previous photo, please sign up on THIS FORM.
Also, if your student didn't take a photo at the beginning of the year, or wasn't at BK yet, please use the information below to order. Orders must be placed by October 14th:
Leave STUDENT KEY blank
Select "Bishop Kelly Fall 21 plus retake day" from the Job/Event menu & click open
Enter Student Details (Name, Grade & Teacher)
Enter Contact Details & Click Submit
Choose your package
Add to cart then checkout
If you are signing up for retakes, you do not need to order again. Just bring the original picture packet to the portrait session, and those will be replaced with the new photo.
Tux and Drape Photos
Sign ups close Sunday at midnight for on-campus tux/drape photos for seniors. Not sure if your senior has signed up? Check this list. The list also indicates your student's assigned time slot.
Seniors who are signed up need to bring $15 for the sitting fee. Cash, or check made to Parker Portraits will work. Please remind your student to be on time! We have A LOT of kids to get through, so it's important to stay on schedule. Also, remember that they do provide the tux and drape. Guys might want to wear a white t-shirt under the tux shirt, but it's completely optional. Ladies will need to wear a tank top or cami under the drape so that the straps can be pulled down, but their stomach is still covered.
Senior Ads In the Yearbook
The early bird pricing deadline for a senior ad in the yearbook is quickly approaching. October 19th is the deadline for a discounted price, and the regular deadline is November 18th. Don't miss this opportunity to send off your senior with a few special words and photos. The ads are built primarily online, and it's a simple process. For more information, see THIS FLYER and/or visit The Yearbook Company website. |
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Dear parents,
I have received a portion of my requested allotment of seasonal flu vaccine. I have both the Flumist nasal spray (live) and the injectable (non-live) variety of vaccines. If you would like your student to receive the seasonal flu vaccine at school, please check BK Alive or the school website for the consent form. There will also be copies available in the front office. You can return THIS SIGNED FORM to the main office. Information sheets on each vaccine are available in the Forms Manager section of BK.org, and in the front office. There is no cost to the student. Please contact me at school if you have questions.
Thank you,
Mrs. Cunningham, School Nurse
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2021 Winner's Choice Dinner & Auction
Golden Tickets & Auction Item Donations
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We are pleased to announce that our sponsorship opportunities for the 2021 Winner's Choice Knight's on the Range have SOLD OUT! We are so grateful for the support of our corporate sponsors who have partnered with us to help make our event a success and further our mission at the Bishop Kelly Foundation to provide funding, support and scholarships to Bishop Kelly High School! Stay tuned for next week's announcement of our last 4 sponsors.
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Signature Sponsor - 116 & West |
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Knight's Premier Sponsor - AgAmerica |
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Black and Gold Co-Sponsor
erstand Architects
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Black and Gold Co-Sponsor
CM Company, Inc.
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West Point
You are invited to join the West Point Directorate of Admissions for an informational event hosted exclusively for Idaho candidates interested in applying to West Point. A virtual briefing with your Admissions Officer, Major Brad Davis, and a panel of West Point cadets from Idaho will share insights on life as a cadet at West Point, and how to successfully apply to West Point.
Bosie PNACAC College Fair
Date: Saturday, October 9th, 2021
Location: Boise State University,
Student Union Building, 2nd Floor, Simplot Ballroom,
1700 W University Dr, Boise, ID 83725
Time: 1:00 pm -3:00 pm
Students: Register in advance by clicking here. After you register, StriveScan will send a barcode via text message and email. At the college fair, present your barcode to college representatives to receive more information about that college. The next day, receive an email with a report of all of the colleges and representatives you met, along with contact information and social media profiles.
10/5 @ 2:45-3:15 Seton Hall
10/8 @8:00-8:30 University of Arizona
To attend, sign up using SCOIR or come to the Counseling Center
College & Career Fairs
Registration for the NACAC Virtual College Fairs are now open!
Virtual College Tours
Student-driven virtual college tours
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Upcoming Catholic Community Events |
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Salt & Light Catholic Radio's Fall Pledge Drive is October 13-15 daily from 7am-6pm. BK will be highlighted on Friday, October 15 at 2pm. The theme is "Behold Him" and will focus on stories about the Blessed Sacrament plus there is a drawing for a pilgrimage to the Blessed Sacrament Shrine in Alabama. Tune in to the radio 102.3FM/1140AM, TuneIn Radio App, or listen online and find the complete parish schedule at saltandlightradio.com.
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Our website at www.bk.org is a wealth of information for parents and students alike!
Check out some of the cool tools that are just a few clicks away:
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- Front Office: 375-6010
- Fax: 375-3626
- Business Office Manager: 947-1209
- BK Development Office: 947-1325
- BK Foundation Office: 323-4789
To add, remove, or change your email address, or to remove your name from our regular mailing lists, please contact Chrissy at cbeckner@bk.org.
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Bishop Kelly High School | (208) 375-6010 | www.bk.org |
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