Author: Kaci Elder

by

January (mid-year!) KCA Community Newsletter

Welcome to the middle! This weekend marked the midpoint of the school year, with 1½ intensives and 1 semester complete and 1½  intensives and 1 semester to go.

Would you like to celebrate with us this Thursday night?

Last week, while the majority of students studied Photography w/ Melissa for the first half of the Winter Intensive, a small crew learned playwriting w/ Ryan. Students wrote 7 plays in 3 days! Their plays will be performed Thursday and y’all are invited. We aren’t advertising widely to the public (mostly because our performance space is so small and partly because, well, performing can be terrifying and starting small can make it less so).

A Whirlwind Theatre Festival is just that — a whirlwind. It has a long history across the country and is usually called a “24-hour Theatre Festival” in which participants write, direct, act, and perform new plays within a 24-hour window. Illinois Valley artists have created 10 Whirlwind Theatre Festivals (some of you have participated as creators and/or audience members, as y’all well know!). This is the first time the festival is staged at a local school. We’re slowing the pace considerably, yet creating and performing brand new plays within a 2-week window is still quite a challenge!

Tomorrow, students will decide who will act, direct, design lighting, create sound effects, write the playbill, collect props, sew costumes, paint backdrops, and stage manage. And come Thursday at 6pm a performance it shall be! The theme is “Not From Around Here.” To throw in a bit of a teaser, two of the requirements (all decided by the kids) are to include an egg and an epiphany expressed in alliteration.

Doors open at 5:45pm, Performance at 6pm, followed by an Audience Talk-Back with students. If possible, please bring a $5-10 donation to help students fund a dance (will it be a prom? A morp? An anti-prom? That’ll be up to the kids + our budget).

Check out the Photography class photos while you’re here! They are awesome.

Final thought of the day: We sure hope report cards land in your mailbox within the next day or so. We mailed them last Thursday. Students were also given a student copy of their report card, so hopefully they’ve shared it with you. Let us know if yours didn’t arrive: kaci@kcahs.org.

The complete newsletter is HERE.

by

October KCA Community Newsletter

Open House! Friday the 13th! 2-5pm! Y’all invited!
Alissa, Pixie, and Melissa (who are definitely not posing for the camera, by the way) really want to make sure that you come to our Open House on Friday the 13th from 2-5pm! The Open House is open to everyone: students, families, community members, and Hanby Lane neighbors who have spent the past two months wondering why a gaggle of teens has suddenly descended upon their neighborhood!
Ummmm…
There’s no other way to say this without telling a story (if you’re impatient and just want the spoiler, you’ll find it on the last line): Last Wednesday began like any other day. There was oatmeal eaten, compost buckets filling and dishes washing, with one classroom studying The Metamorphosis while the other classroom discussed healthy living. Then came the 20-minute break between 1st and 2nd period, and with that break came the common ritual called teachers-check-their-emails.

One of those teachers-check-their-emails emails contained the subject line “G5 Notification – New Grant Award Notification S282B230004″ and it began its message with the words “The U.S. Department of Education (ED) is pleased to notify you that your grant has been selected for funding. You may access your electronically signed Grant Award Notification (GAN) documents for this new award, S282B230004 & GAN action number 1, at http://www.g5.gov under Grant Maintenance, Award Documents.”

This was most peculiar, as the teachers were not awaiting a grant notification and the email did not specify the nature of the grant. The teachers-check-their-emails teacher who received this email was certain this was a scam. A scam! The teacher first googled “Is Grant Award Notification S282B230004 a scam?” but, alas, nothing popped up. So they called the telephone number listed in the email, thinking “Certainly, calling this number will reveal the scam to be a scam!” But when the automated voice on the other end of the line said “You have called the United States Department of Education,” the teacher slammed down their phone in astonishment (since it’s 2023, we all know this was a cell phone and cell phones cannot be “slammed down,” but please, if you can, keep in your mind the imagery of a phone, circa 1997, being dramatically “slammed down”).

After more investigating and with increasingly shaky hands, the teacher who had received this email determined that It. Was. Real. and hearkened to a grant application that had been submitted many, many months before and which had been assigned approximately 0.00% chance of success.

But thus it came to this: Kalmiopsis Community Arts High School has received a grant from the federal government for roughly $350,000 over the next three years.We are still in shock.

Read the rest of the newsletter HERE!

by

August 28, 2023 ~ the first morning

Dear KCA students, families, staff, school board, and community – School has been in session for 2 hours and 36 minutes, counting breakfast time, and so far we have seen: crockpot oatmeal, Dolly Parton radio, a bloody finger, a run to the store for a sculpture screwdriver, some who are quiet, others who like to chat, a few who are absent, a new bus driver driving in circles, a 504 AQI, pencils outlining hands, thumbs smoothing clay, and an escape from outside. Our community is beginning to build!

The complete newsletter is HERE.
by

Early August Newsletter

For our full newsletter, ye shall find it here:

Hey students and your grown-ups! Orientation is August 24 & 25! Here’s the deal:

Students and families, get ready! KCA’s first-ever orientation is Thursday 8/24 and Friday 8/25 at the school, 341 Cottage Park Drive #2 in Cave Junction.

~

Thursday 8/24 for students & their people
5-7pm

Overview of the school’s philosophy, courses, academic calendar, weekly schedule, and more! Bring your listening ears and your voice (Seek clarification! Ask questions! Or if you don’t like public speaking, sneak us a handwritten note!) and bring your appetite, but not too much of an appetite (Snacks provided! Sorry that we can’t afford to feed y’all dinner!)

~

Friday 8/24 just for students
10am-2pm

Have you ever planned your class schedule while eating pizza and painting your school? Probably not, so here’s your chance (and if you have previously eaten pizza while painting your school and planning your classes, we want to hear all about it).

Please try to get here by 10am, because we all know that means 10:15 and we really have to get started by then! Ariana the artist will be here to help us creatively paint a KCA wall, and one of your Teacher Leaders (Kaci, Melissa, or Ryan) will tug on your shirtsleeve to go have a chat to talk classes.

by

July Community Newsletter

Visit the complete newsletter HERE or read the preview below…

Our first student-created club: Movies!
Hey KCA students, what are you doing Thursdays after school? Do you like movies of any genre? Ninth-grade student Rainbow is creating a movie club to begin Thursday September 14th @ 4pm.

“I really like movies, and at one point I heard about a high school movie club, and I thought about Kalmiopsis,” he reflected while eating a burrito last Sunday at the Pine Portal, where his artist mom, Forest, works. (As an aside: Forest is creating five dream catchers for KCA, thanks to a grant from Four Way Community Foundation).

The movie club, which has yet to be named, will meet Thursdays after school to watch films and share snacks. Majority vote will decide which movies to watch, said Rainbow, who is looking for another student to co-coordinate the club. He’ll pitch the idea to his peers during a democratic meeting in Kalmiopsis Community Class, our schoolwide for-credit course that meets twice a week.

Rainbow spent 3rd-5th grade at the Dome School, has most recently been homeschooled, and is ready for high school at KCA. “I like the idea of Kalmiopsis and how it’s art-related and not like a regular public school. I think I will be a good fit and it will be a fun school.” Aside from movies, he likes to go on adventures, spend time with friends, and is currently working on a horror short-film series with another KCA student.

The movie club will be open to KCA, IVHS, homeschooled, unschooled, and otherly-schooled students.

Rainbow’s movie club embodies one of KCA’s four guiding principles – Youth Leadership Grows Genuine Confidence. The three other guiding principles are addressed throughout this newsletter.
by

June Community Newsletter!

Visit the complete newsletter HERE or read the preview below…

MAJOR LOCATION UPDATE (IT’S GOOD!)
written by Melissa, who has shouldered *all* this work

Hello KCA Community and Families,

We are pleased to announce that we have secured a home for the 2023-2024 school year! We have signed a lease for a unit in the Cottage Park Offices located in the Hanby neighborhood. The space is absolutely beautiful and is a newer construction with lots of bells and whistles. Our lease will start on July 1st and we would love to have any and all families/students schedule a time to come by and see the new space after we begin “office hours” in mid-July.

This has been a long and arduous journey for us, and we are overly appreciative of everyone’s patience while we searched for the perfect building for our first few years.

Rusk Ranch Nature Center still is and will be our forever home, but we had to be very realistic with the actual time frame in which we need to develop that site.

Please feel free to reach out if you have any questions as we are always available.

With immense gratitude,

Melissa, Ryan and Kaci

We have a home, what’s that you say? We have a home, signed a three-year contract with the school district, so KCA will be here to stay!

by

March/April KCA Community Newsletter

Visit the complete newsletter HERE or read the preview below…

Meet our new Teacher Leader, Teresa!
This month is one year since I moved to the Illinois Valley. I followed my children, Phillip and Sharon Rose, and bought a family homestead. I love the IV and all it has to offer, including a welcoming community. My career as a nurse is winding down and I am seeking ways to be actively involved in our community. One being, KCA. The hats I am leaning towards wearing are ones of science instruction, quality and safety coordination, and being a school nurse, if needed.

My goal is to never have a child return home from school and say, “We didn’t do anything creative today to learn.”

Looking forward to working with you all!
by

February 2023 KCA Community Newsletter

Visit the complete newsletter HERE or read the preview below…

Next year’s intensives are shaping up!


Intensives are the heart and soul of KCA, the place where the Community and Arts of Kalmiopsis Community Arts High School really shine. Each year has three intensives, when students dive into one class all day for two weeks (intensive = intense!). 

What’s in store for next year?

Summer I Intensive (August 28 – September 7).
Students will choose from…

Sculpture with professional sculptor Terry Davis
Painting with … (a local artist who is *this* close to confirming!)
Playwriting, directing, and performing the 11th Illinois Valley Whirlwind Play Festival

Winter Intensive (January 16 – January 25).
We have some ideas, but nothing’s confirmed yet. What do you think?

Summer II Intensive (May 28 – June 6).
Wilderness skills training and a backpacking/camping trip for the entire school, led by Earth Scouts!


        by

        January 2023 KCA Community Newsletter

        Visit the complete newsletter HERE or read the preview below…

        enrollment now open

        It’s finally happening! Enrollment has begun for the 2023-2024 school year, and we are so ready to welcome the first students to Kalmiopsis Community Arts High School.


        January 1 – March 31
        Priority enrollment

        Early April
        Lottery Drawing (if needed)

        April 1 – ongoing
        Open enrollment

        August 28
        First day of school

        The first year of KCA is open to students in grades 9, 10, and 11 (12th grade will be added the following year). Any student who lives in Josephine and Jackson counties can enroll, including homeschooled students, houseless students, English Language Learners, students who are young parents, gender nonconforming students, students with disabilities, and students who have dropped out.

        However, according to charter school law, only students who live within Three Rivers School District boundaries and submit the Enrollment Form by March 31, 2023 are eligible for the lottery, which will be held if we receive more applications than the 16 seats/grade that we can accommodate. If we have enough space, everyone who submits an Enrollment Form by March 31 will be accepted.

        Spread the word, please!

        by

        Newsletter #12!

        Visit the complete newsletter HERE or read the preview below…

        Three Rivers School District Update
        They. Said. Yes.


        New Beginnings by Kaya Whittlinger

        At last night’s board meeting, the Three Rivers School District voted unanimously to approve the KCA charter proposal! Kalmiopsis Community Arts High School is opening next September to grades 9, 10, and 11!

        They based their vote on our resubmission, which addressed the concerns that caused our initial denial in May. Our next step is contract negotiations with the district and replacing the organizational board –Kimiko, Kaci, Ryan, and Melissa– with a founding board that will oversee KCA for the remainder of the planning phase and the first years of the school. (Kimiko, Kaci, Ryan, and Melissa will transition into staff positions under the oversight of the founding board.) If this role might be calling to you, call on us! We will also begin applying for permits to locate KCA at Rusk Ranch Nature Center. 

        For more updates, the entire newsletter is HERE. Thanks!