Cockrill Middle School

Welcome to the
18-19 School Year!

Find information about next year's registration here.

Announcements:

Tuesday night we hosted our annual CMS Poetry Slam and had 20 students compete. Here are the results!

1st place: Eannah Jones
2nd place: Ciara Sutherland
3rd place: Madelyn Larcom
4th place: Ashlyn Loera
5th place: Madison Branch
Alternates (6th & 7th place): Grace Jones & Shaye Rivera

These students will compete this coming Monday, February 25th at 6:30 PM at Dowell Middle School in the District Slam. Please congratulate these fantastic performers if you see them in the hallways and wish them luck next week at the district competition. They did a phenomenal job! ☺

Also, special thanks go out to Amber Epperson, Traci Tanner, Emily Dahl, Sarah Hawthorne and Magan Watz for acting as judges for the slam.

Congratulations to our 8th graders for winning the 2019 Collin County Bar Association Mock Trial! We are incredibly proud of everyone's work and commitment. Thank you to all of the families for supporting them. Some returning high school students served as mentors, and we're thrilled we are building a community of kiddos who support each other; this wouldn't have been possible without the months of dedication by their leader, Mrs. Sara Gray. She pushes the kids and makes them the best they can be. A huge thanks to the two attorneys who set Cockrill apart, this wouldn't have been possible without the months of time Mr. Murphy and Mr. Henry from Abernathy Law donated to coach our students. Way to go, Cockrill! We think we have more than a few future law students in our midst.

Today during students’ social studies class, your current sixth and seventh graders, received their 2019-20 course selection forms. Come to open house this Thursday to learn more and check out information on our Cockrill website.

National Junior Honor Society applications are now OPEN. Pick up applications from Mr. Moore in room D203, the library, or the front office. All applications are due back MONDAY February 25 to Mr. Moore.

Congratulations to Mrs. Jonker, Cockrill's 2018-2019 Teacher of the Year!!!

As cheer tryout season is quickly approaching, CMS Cheer coaches wanted to let you all know that Infinite Bounds (an all star cheer gym in Plano) is offering TWO open gym/cheer tryout prep sessions.

These sessions are open to ALL students (ages 11-17) wanting to tryout for their school cheer teams!

Mark your calendars for February 9 and February 23 from 11:30 am-11:00 pm. The cost is $15/student.

Infinite Bounds has spring floors, tumble tracks, air tracks, trampolines, tumbling equipment, etc. The tumbling coaches are very experienced and can work with all ability levels.

We will also be working on motion placement, stretching, jumps, and overall execution.

This is a GREAT way for everyone to get in some extra practice, meet new people, and have some fun!

“We’ve committed to making relationship-building intentional in our school and not something that happens for some kids if they are lucky or some kids if they have the right teacher or some kids if they fit in with the right crowd.
In order to do that you have to put things in place that support every student.”
- Dr. Amber Epperson, principal of Cockrill Middle School

Club CREED at Cockrill MS promotes the social and emotional well-being of students, and, subsequently, it initiates LIVE KIND on an essential level.
*click below to see the video

ANDREW DUTTON MEMORIAL SCHOLARSHIP
As many of you know, at the end of last year, we lost one of our CMS staff members, Andrew Dutton. CMS is family, and this loss was felt across our entire community. We continue to heal and have spent time considering how to thoughtfully honor Andrew Dutton with a legacy memorial from the CMS community. Three ideas have developed that we want to share with you.
1. Mr. Williams, the head CMS band director and dear friend of Mr. Dutton, has arranged for an original piece of music to be commissioned in Mr. Dutton's name. The piece will be inspired by the music Mr. Dutton loved. The piece will be played at a concert and dedicated to Mr. Dutton at that time. The concert will be, Thursday, May 23rd at McKinney North HS. The concert will start at 6:30 pm.

2. We are asking that a score of that piece be framed with a memorial plaque to hang in our building.

3. Our staff has coordinated with McKinney Education Foundation (MEF) to create an endowed scholarship to be awarded annually at the MEF scholarship awards banquet in Mr. Dutton's name. Once endowed, this fund will provide a $500 scholarship each year to a graduating senior who attended CMS and meets criteria designated by the Dutton family. You may support this endowment by making a contribution directly to MEF.

You can make a direct donation to the fund on the MEF website HERE. In the Order/Transaction section you can designate your gift to an endowment and include Andrew Dutton's name. The first $500 dollars collected by MEF will be captured for the scholarship this year. After that, all funds will go to the endowment fund for future years. Feel free to share this link and information in our community using social media to help us reach former students and others impacted by Mr. Dutton.

Today, our classroom spelling bee winners competed to become our Cockrill Spelling Champion. Here are the results.

Champion- Colin Pacheco
2nd Place - Allison Braaten

Colin will compete in the district Spelling Bee on January 17 at 6:00pm at Faubion.

Thanks go to our Spelling Bee Committee: Lynn Buchmiller, Lauren Scott, Anne Chelbos, Teri McCarthy, and Brad Watkins!

2019-2020 School Year Information:

Find information about next year's registration here.

Information from your CMS Counselors
8th grade parents- It’s hard to believe that we will soon begin the registration process for high school. 8th graders have already had the opportunity this year to complete the Cluster Finder (interest inventory) in Naviance to get some ideas into career clusters and interests they may want to explore in high school.

McKinney ISD offers many wonderful programs that coincide with these clusters through our College and Career Readiness and Career and Technical Education Programs.

2018-2019 School Year Information:

Here is information on Lunch and Breakfast services provided here at CMS:
- Cafeteria information (English)
- Cafeteria information (Spanish)
- January Breakfast Menu
- January Lunch Menu
- February Breakfast Menu
- February Lunch Menu

CLUB CREED
We are excited to launch a new initiative at CMS this year! Club CREED will be a course on every child's schedule. When you access your child's schedule, the teacher name may say "staff", but every child will have an assigned teacher before the first day of school.This course will give our students and staff a unique opportunity to practice team building, develop positive relationships, learn helfpul social skills, and promote our school's pillars of character development. These include:
Courage, Respect, Empathy, Excellence, and Determination.
Club CREED will meet at 8:45 every Monday morning or the first day of instruction each week. Classes will be assigned by grade level, so grade levels will not be mixed. The class will meet for 20 minutes and then students will move to first period and the day will proceed as usual. We will have a revised bell schedule on Club CREED days so class times remain balanced.
Club CREED will meet every day for the first two weeks of school to allow the class members to build connections.
Our teachers have been studying and developing a rich curriculum for this course all summer, and we can't wait to get started!

SCHOOL SAFETY
A critical ingredient in the safe school recipe is the uniform classroom response to any incident. Weather events, fires, accidents, intruders and other threats to student safety are scenarios that are planned and trained for by all McKinney ISD schools and District Administration and staff. Historically, schools have taken this scenario-based approach to respond to hazards and threats. Each McKinney ISD classroom is furnished with the Standard Response Protocol poster that provides teachers with readily accessible response procedures and provides information during a crisis event. The attached handout explains Standard Response Protocol that is taught to students, faculty, and staff.
Standard Response Protocol Parent Handout

BUS TRANSPORTATION QUESTIONS
For questions regarding bus transportation, please contact Durham Transportation directly at 972-542-8316. Or visit this site Durham Transportation Services.

LUNCH DELIVERY FOR STUDENTS
Due to a variety of safety concerns related to food allergies and campus safety and security, McKinney ISD will no longer allow students to utilize food delivery services at school. This includes services such as Uber Eats, Doordash and direct restaurant delivery. However, parents/guardians will still be permitted to drop food off for their children. This rule does not apply to deliveries organized by McKinney ISD faculty or a teacher serving as a sponsor of a student organization. We appreciate your cooperation in our efforts to create a safe and secure environment for students.

Important Information

Free and Reduced Meal Program
The online application system for the Free and Reduced Meal Program is now active. We would suggest this as the best option for anyone applying to the program, as it is usually much faster than the paper application (whereas the paper application can take up to 10 days). The online application is available at www.mckinneyisd.schoollunchapp.com.

Home Access Center or HAC is now available on your mobile device using the eSchoolPLUS Family app. McKinney ISD parents and students can use the app to view attendance, classwork, class and activity calendar events, student grade information, and alerts and notifications.

After you download the app from Google Play or the Apple App Store, simply choose your school district name and state and log in with the student’s Home Access Center credentials.

If you do not have a Home Access Center account and password, please contact your child's enrolled campus for more information.

Click here to download:
https://www.mckinneyisd.net/app/

Click here for more information:
https://www.mckinneyisd.net/communications/mobile-app/

The McKinney Vento Homeless Education Assistance Program protects the right for homeless children and youth to receive a free and appropriate public education.

Homelessness includes children and youth who are living with a friend, relative or someone else because they lost their home or can’t afford housing, children and youth who are staying in a motel or hotel due to lack of adequate alternative accommodations, children and youth who are living in an emergency or transitional shelter or a domestic violence shelter. It also includes children and youth who are living in cars, parks, public spaces, abandoned buildings, substandard housing, bus or train stations or many other similar settings.

Under the law, no student shall be stigmatized by school personnel due to homelessness.

Dr. Jack Cockrill Middle School
1351 N. Hardin Blvd.
McKinney, TX 75071
Phone: 469-302-7900
Fax: 469-302-7901

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