Things are good at MNHS and I'm so proud of our students. We continue to grow as a student body in all aspects and I continue to be amazed at the great chemistry that is being formed by our students in support of each other. Our students are working hard and are constantly "Unleashing Excellence" in all that they do. Their efforts are to be applauded as they carry the banner of Bulldog Pride in everything they do.

The MNHS Student Council and HOSA students sponsored a "Cancer Awareness" day to honor MNHS teacher Dina DeVoe, who has been diagnosed with breast cancer. Through the leadership efforts of these two outstanding organizations, MNHS students raised more than $6000 for Ms. DeVoe to help offset the costs associated with her illness. The students organized several events to help raise the money for this cause. The most gratifying event that displayed great warmth and love by our student body was demonstrated with the pep rally honoring Ms. DeVoe. For their efforts, KRLD radio named our Student Council and HOSA organization the "Community Hero" for the week. This was an outstanding effort by the students of MNHS to display their love and affection for Ms. DeVoe and also for our school.

NHS recently held it's induction ceremony for the 2008-2009 school year. We had 53 students inducted to bring our total to 96 members serving our National Honor Society.

The Rotary Academic Excellence Award ceremony was held this week and MNHS had 167 students receive this honor.

MNHS Site Based Committee established a new mission statement for our school. The committee is very dedicated to supporting the needs of our school and their work is greatly appreciated. Our new mission statement reads as follows:

The McKinney North High School community inspires and empowers students to reach their full potential through a positive and collaborative environment that ensures success for all.

MISD Strategic Plan is in the beginning stages. A group of 30 community members, parents, teachers, students, and administrators recently met for a 3 day summit to discuss the future of MISD. They have drafted a district mission statement, belief statements and much more to be approved by the MISD Board of Trustees. Another piece of the strategic planning model is the development of action teams. These action teams are open to you and I strongly encourage you to be involved in this process. Please go to the MISD web page for more information.

Join the Lions, the Broncos and the Bulldogs as we bring Christmas to 800 Title-1 students across McKinney.

The MNHS PTSO will be sponsoring a Principal's coffee on January 13 at 10:00. This is a great opportunity to be a part of such a great organization such as PTSO and to learn more about our school.
We will have preliminary discussions for the Shattered Dream programs for the 2009-2010 school year.

On November 29th McKinney Project Graduation will host our third annual Festival of Trees Gala and Silent Auction beginning at 7:00 pm. This year we will be at the beautiful Stonebridge Country Club on Beacon Hill. You will be able to bid on a wonderful display of decorated trees ranging in size from 9' to 2', wreaths, centerpieces and gingerbread houses, quilts and Christmas canvases. More than 100 items will be available. There will be several special door prizes given that night. Tickets are on sale now for $30.00 each or 2 for $50.00 and must be purchased in advance.

Open house for viewing the displays will be Sunday, November 30th from noon-6 pm and Monday, December 1st, from 10:00 am-8:00 pm. Tickets for the open house are available at the door.

Please join us as we raise money for Project Graduation and have a fun evening enjoying the beautiful displays with friends. If you're interested in purchasing tickets you can email me at deanamcg@tx.rr.com

For more information please go to www.projectgraduationmckinney.com

I hope to see you all there.

Deana McGonagill
Co-Director
McKinney Project Graduation

Seniors:
At this time seniors should continue their college applications as well as their scholarship applications. This is an exciting time for our seniors. We need to help keep them focused with high expectations for grades through graduation. Grades continue for our seniors until graduation, some students think the 2nd semester doesn't count in GPA and colleges don't look at the 2nd semester. This is not the case. The college that your child will attend will receive a final transcript.

Juniors:
Please encourage your child to sign up for the spring SAT Reasoning Test and/or the ACT test. This year beginning in the spring SAT is letting our junior students have the option of what testing to send to the college. A student wanting to wait on sending the scores should not list any colleges on the application. If a student chooses to test multiple times, the student will get to choose which test scores to send from one particular test. ACT has always done this but this is a change for SAT. It will ask for our school code. Our school code is 444632.

Sophomores:
Students need to take advantage of tutoring on a regular basis. If a student is struggling in a class we encourage a student to attend tutoring for that class weekly. This is also a great time for students to become involved with school activities. When a student is creating a resume for college it looks much better to be committed to several activities over a period of time. This shows the colleges commitment and also will give your child a better chance of having a leadership role as they become juniors and seniors.

Freshman:
The counselors have been going into the freshman classes this week. They will be presenting a power point showing graduation requirements and also showing students a variety of transcripts. Students will see what a credit looks like on a transcript, what it looks like when a student is denied credit due to attendance, and what it looks like if the student is not awarding credit due to a failing grade. The counselors want to make sure that students see what a transcript looks like and what it represents to the college. Also students that failed a required course will be taking that class over. Some students do not really understand this until this presentation.

Support our MISD Academic Decathlon teams this year!

McKinney ISD is responsible for enlisting speech judges for the Speech Contest portion of the Academic Decathlon regional meet held at MacArthur High School in Irving, Texas. Participants will need to be available from 2:30-9:00 pm on January 30, 2009.

If you are interested, please contact (your Academic Decathlon coach) or Matt Bolinger at 469-742-4004 or mbolinger@mckinneyisd.net for more information.

As always, thank you for supporting your student and McKinney North High School.

Jimmy Spann
Principal
McKinney North High School
Go Dawgs!