Important News

I would just like to take a moment to wish all of you a fantastic Winter Break. I hope that you have the opportunity to spend time with family, friends, and loved ones. And, I hope that our students have the chance to relax and rejuvenate, and return to school ready for a successful beginning to the 2020 year!

This school year, MHMS has embraced the motto of Believe, Belong, Become, during DEN this week, students viewed a video, created by the MHMS staff, showing how much we believe in them. Staff members took time to tell our students things that they wanted them to know. Their messages ranged from statements about how hard middle school was for them, to how their students help them get through hard times in their own lives, to how much they enjoying learning and growing with students. DEN ended with students identifying staff members in the building who they personally connect with.

The Murray Hill Metropolitan is a student created & GT Seminar newspaper: Our Mission: "At the Murray Hill Metropolitan we are dedicated to authentic, realistic and unbiased news for our students, their families and the public. Every month we cover a wide variety of stories from what's happening at Washington to our new hall pass system. We hope to make sure our school is conscious and respectful of other people's opinions, the news and politics."

I would like to wish everyone in our school community a Happy Thanksgiving. I hope that you have the opportunity to relax and spend time with family and/or friends. I wish all who are traveling during this holiday safe travels. And, we look forward to starting off the month of December after the Thanksgiving Break!

In celebration of Read Across America Day, The MHMS Reading and Media departments are sponsoring a bookmark contest. Prizes will be awarded for the top three bookmarks.

The Board is scheduled to make final decisions about boundary changes for the 2020-2021 school year today, Thursday, November 21. Though the Board’s final decision may not impact every Howard County school, the public process and conversations have impacted every community in some way.

Effective December 1, HCPSS is launching a color-coding notification system for emergency and other non-scheduled school closings, including for inclement weather. The operating status will be identified on the new Status website and communicated through multiple notification sources.

We have had a lot of remarkable things going on at MHMS of which we are so proud. Last week, Cathy Smith, a representative from Grassroots, spoke to our 6th and 7th grade students about the services that Grassroots provides for the Howard County community. As a part of our service learning initiative at MHMS, our students engage in several activities throughout the school year to directly support Grassroots. Our first activity included concerts from our Performing Arts groups; at the concerts, we collected over $1100.00 in donations!

On Friday, our band students had the opportunity to enjoy an amazing performance by The Chesapeake Saxophone Ensemble during an in-house field trip. Thank you to Ms. Hersey for setting up this great experience for our students. Thank you to all of the families who donated and volunteered for our Fall Fling event. Fall Fling is a fun way for our students to get to know one another and engage in our MHMS community. Next week is SPIRIT WEEK!!!! We are looking forward to all of our MHMS students (and staff) participating in SPIRIT WEEK next week. Spirit Days are as follows:

Fall pictures will be taken on October 14th. All students will be photographed for the purpose of the MHMS Yearbook. If you wish to purchase fall pictures, picture package options were sent home with students yesterday, and also can be found here: PictureDay1 .pdf PictureDay2.pdf . Please complete the appropriate information and submit payment on October 14th, or order and pay online in advance, at mylifetouch.com, and use Picture Day ID: MJ019394Q0. Please consider ordering school pictures, as it is a great keepsake, and also serves as a fundraiser for our school.