June 2012

Dear Parents:

As we conclude another challenging and exciting school year, it is time to begin preparing for the next one. We want to take this opportunity to share some information with you and to invite your participation in making 2012-13 a positive experience for your children. We look forward to meeting many of the parents of students who are new to Bolles at the orientation in August.

We have posted here a variety of materials regarding the 2012-13 school year for your review. Please read through this information carefully and share it with your child. We urge your attention to the dates and deadlines and encourage you to be in contact with the appropriate persons if you have questions or concerns.

The items marked with “required reply” must be completed and returned to the Registrar’s Office by August 1 in order for you to receive your child’s class schedule card.

Summer Reading and Books

The summer reading list provided here describes the selections for all students entering the Bolles Upper School San Jose Campus.

Study Guides are available by using the link indicating that there is a study guide. Not all titles have study guides provided. The Summer Reading Brochure gives the required reading selections for all students entering our middle and upper schools. You may purchase summer reading books at our San Jose Campus Store or from most retail stores.

San Jose Upper School Campus Store Summer Hours can be viewed here

Late Enrollment and Summer Reading A student who enrolls between August 1 and August 15 will be responsible for reading ONE English and ONE Social Studies summer reading selection, and must complete a second selection in each subject area within the first two weeks of school. If a student enrolls after August 15, he or she is responsible for ONE English and ONE Social Studies summer selection within the first week of school and whether a second will be required is at the discretion of the classroom teachers.

Dress Code Information

There is a prescribed dress code policy at Bolles Upper School San Jose campus. If you have any questions about the information provided here, please call the Upper School Office.

Immunizations and Health Forms 

There are a few medical forms that need to be supplied to the school:

REQUIRED REPLY Medical Information — The medical information form downloadable here lets us know what, if any, over-the-counter medicines you would like us to give your child as the need arises, and some important information in case of an emergency. Please return this form to the Registrar’s Office by August 1.

The Bolles School is required by HIPAA (the Federal Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act) to preserve the privacy of your child’s health information.  In accordance with this policy, access to all student health forms is limited to the School nurse or administrative staff, and is only utilized for the safety and protection of your child or in an emergency.  By signing this form, you authorize The Bolles School to use your child’s health information only in the manner for which it was intended.

REQUIRED REPLY, OBTAIN FORM FROM YOUR DOCTOR Florida Certificate of Immunization (New Students Only) — You must obtain a copy of the Florida Certificate of Immunization from your child’s physician and return the completed form, signed by the doctor, to the Registrar’s Office by August 1.

REQUIRED REPLY, OBTAIN FORM FROM YOUR CHILD'S SENDING SCHOOL Cumulative Records (New Students Only) — We are required to maintain the records of your child’s complete academic history. Please contact your child’s sending school and ask them to forward the cumulative records to the Registrar’s Office by August 1.

REQUIRED REPLY 2012 – 13 Confidential Student Information Sheet — This information is for statistical use only. The School is often asked by our accrediting agencies, scholarship verification authorities, and the Department of Education, for statistics reflected in the questions below. Your cooperation in helping us to achieve accuracy in reporting this information is essential. Please be assured that all information will be held confidential. Download form here and mail to the registrars office.

Athletics Information and Participation Form

The 2012-13 FHSAA Sports Calendar can be viewed here.

REQUIRED REPLY Physical Exam and Athletic Permission — The Physical Exam and Athletic Permission form, which you received in an earlier mailing, is required for all students in grades 6-12, whether or not they will participate in interscholastic sports. The physical exam section must be dated after April 1, 2010. Please attach a copy of your child’s birth certificate to this form if it is not already on file. If you are uncertain if your child's birth certificate is on file, please verify with Dawn Pickren at 256-5005, and return these items to the Registrar’s Office by August 1, 2012. If you do not have the form you can download one here.

From The Dean — John Newman and Angela Gamble

As part of the student services component at The Bolles School, the Dean’s Office plays an integral role in your child’s school day. As such, we would like to present some guidelines and offer a few suggestions that might assist your family in meeting the day to day challenges of student life.

Attendance: If a student is absent from school all or part of a day, please notify the Dean’s Office by note or telephone the same day as the absence. If you know in advance that an absence will occur, please inform the Dean’s Office as soon as possible. Please keep in mind that absence from a class may have an adverse effect on a student’s extracurricular participation and that made-up work for an unexcused absence carries an academic penalty.

Underclassmen are required to be in school until 3:45 p.m. and are not afforded off-campus privileges. All underclassmen should have scheduled classes or activities for all school day hours.

Signing In and Out: Students arriving late or leaving early must have parental permission, and must come to the Dean’s Office to sign in immediately upon arrival or sign out immediately prior to their departure. Parents wishing to have their children sign out during the lunch hours must personally sign them out in the Dean’s Office.

Dress Code: Please refer to the dress code section above. A student varying from the dress code might be asked to remain in the Dean’s Office and not attend class until the dress code variance has been corrected.

Parking: With on-campus parking at a premium, student parking is strictly on an assigned basis. The available spaces will be assigned during the summer based on seniority, with carpooling encouraged. The use of the assigned space is not transferable. Requests for parking spaces were required by the May 11 deadline and actual parking assignments will be completed August 13, 2012. These assignments may be picked up in the Campus Store after purchasing your parking decal.  

Demerits: Demerits are given as a consequence of misbehavior. Multiple demerits may be given for more serious offenses such as inappropriate language, class disruptions, and disrespect for another member of the Bolles community. With each demerit, students are responsible for completing a “lunch duty” which occurs on the day following the infraction. If a student accumulates a significant number of demerits, alternative consequences are implemented such as “Saturday” workdays and suspensions.

Missing Items: The lost and found area is located on the first floor of Ulmer Hall in the Dean’s Office. To minimize the risk of losing an item, students are encouraged to store all personal items in their school and P.E. lockers, with a lock securing their possessions. In addition, bookbags and athletic bags should be secured and never left unattended on campus. While the School cannot reimburse students for lost or stolen items, we have installed security gates with cameras to aid in monitoring campus traffic.

Messages for Students: During the academic day, some correspondence with students can be communicated through the message delivery system in the Dean’s Office. Those parents wishing to relay important information to their child are encouraged to call between the hours of 8:30 a.m. and 3:30 p.m. The Dean’s Office appreciates limiting student messages to information that is urgent and will make every attempt to notify the student. In an effort to limit distractions and better facilitate the learning experience on campus, students are reminded that the use of cell phones during the academic day is prohibited. Instead, students are encouraged to use the two courtesy phones provided on campus which are located in the Bent Student Center and the Ulmer Courtyard.

Senior Privileges: Seniors at The Bolles School are granted certain privileges not available to underclassmen. These include the ability to leave campus whenever the student is not scheduled for a class or activity (lunch, Activities Period, and “free” periods). Along with this privilege, students are responsible for attending all mandatory convocations which will be posted in the daily announcements. The Dean’s Office staff, realizing that the school day begins at home, appreciates your support in trying to better meet the needs of our students. If you have any questions, please give our office a call at 904-256-5040. We are looking forward to a positive and productive school year.

From the Director of College Counseling — Stephen E. Soud, Ph.D.

From time to time you may receive a solicitation from one of several companies that offer test preparation programs for required college admission tests such as the SAT and ACT. We want to provide you with information that we feel is relevant and that will help you make a decision appropriate for your son or daughter.

Two basic premises must be considered before a family reaches the decision to enroll a student in a test prep course: (1) it behooves anyone to be familiar with the format and content of a test before taking it; and (2) there is no independently documented evidence that test prep courses deliver the dramatic results that some in the industry claim. Students (and families) can make a significant investment in test prep, yet in some cases their scores go up, in some their scores don’t budge, and in some their scores actually go down. We have found the same of students who have not taken test prep courses. With that information taken into account, we encourage you to consider the following should you decide to enroll your son or daughter in a test prep course:

• Choose the format (size of class, frequency of meeting, etc.) that works best for your son or daughter.
• Don’t let a test prep course take up so much time that it lowers your child’s GPA. GPA (along with quality of curriculum) is still the top factor in virtually all admission decisions, and anything that lowers GPA is ultimately counterproductive.
• If your child is prone to test anxiety, be very careful about enrolling him or her in a test prep course. A growing number of educators are coming to believe that in some cases test prep can actually raise test anxiety, and thus have a negative effect on a child’s scores. Over the years we have worked with students whose scores went down during test pep, and then actually went up once they got out; we speculatively attribute this phenomenon to increased anxiety created by the test prep.
• Try to time the test prep so that it occurs shortly before an actual examination date. However, don’t allow the test prep to force your child into taking the SAT or ACT earlier than January of the junior year. The SAT and ACT are designed for spring-semester juniors and fall-semester seniors, and we have witnessed a number of students who have taken the tests prematurely and then gotten spooked by their scores. In effect, these students allowed a low test score to become a kind of self-fulfilling prophecy, and they never earned a score much higher than their initial results.

Again, we neither encourage nor discourage students’ taking test prep courses, and we do not endorse any particular program or company. It must be an individual decision.

We at Bolles are very proud of the College Counseling program that we offer, and we invite your questions about testing and test preparation at any time. Since it is not School policy to encourage outside groups to solicit your business, we are enclosing some basic information about those agencies which offer classes in Jacksonville. You are free, of course, to contact them directly. As always, we welcome your calls to our College Counseling or Academic offices if we can be of further service to you.


Download a list of Standardized Test Preparation Course Providers here.