We are just 4 weeks away until our Warrior Challenge Student Fundraising event! I'm reaching out to our parents to ask if your
business or employer would like to sponsor this event. Click this link for a handout that explains our contribution levels and the promotional
opportunities that your business will receive. To see what we have
previously done to promote and thank our sponsors,
click this link for last year's event: http://www.ironacademy.org/2015-warrior-challenge/ We will also set up a web page to receive
online donations this year and your business will be listed there too. If you are interested in being a sponsor, please reply back to this message no later than Friday, Sept 22. As explained below, IA has a
matching grant to raise $100,000 by this December 31 and your sponsorship can help the school reach that goal!
What is the Warrior Challenge? In short, it is a student
fun-run type of event but instead of students asking for donations for
the number of times they walk/run around a track, our students will ask
for donations for how many sit-ups, push-ups,
or big tire flips they can do or for how FAST they can run one mile. I
will give a handout to our students this week with more details about
it. Students compete individually on how much funds they raise and
we have a tribe competition to earn the title
of the "Mightiest Tribe" for the year, as determined by the tribe's
academic performance, fundraising, and strength they show at the event.
How will your sponsorship contribution be used? Your
contribution underwrites the costs of our events but also will
contribute toward academic and extracurricular spending. The Iron
Parent Fellowship (our version of a PTA) has recently spent $850
for 4 microscopes and about $2000 toward school furniture (desks,
chairs, bookcases, carpets), photos to decorate our hallways, library
materials, and painting. The IPF checking account currently has a balance of around $4000 and we like to keep a minimum
balance of $3000 for emergency funds. This year our spending
plans include buying more science equipment (stereoscopes, additional
microscopes, dissection supplies); continue to support the library with
purchases of newer, recently written books (nearly
all of our library books are older used books); PE equipment; and
recreational items for the students to play during lunch or afterschool
care such as board games, corn hole, magnetic darts, etc. (If you do
happen to have any board games in good condition
that your family no longer uses, we'd be glad to accept that
donation!)
$100,000 matching grant: The school has a matching grant opportunity of up to $100,000 with a Dec 31
deadline! But this matching grant only applies toward new donations or
donations higher than what has previously been given. That is, if your
business
has not previously sponsored an IA event, then we can apply 100% of
your sponsorship toward the matching grant! If you sponsored the Warrior
Challenge last year, we can apply the amount above last year's
sponsorship rate toward the matching grant. The IPF
is under the school's 501c3 designation as a nonprofit organization.
Update from Mr. Hahn:
We love our students! It is a privilege to partner with your family in helping your son become a gentleman scholar and mighty man of God. Thank you for choosing Iron Academy. We had two amazing weeks at camp, and are pleased to see great potential in the students attending Iron this year. The new students are adapting well, and this year promises to be a landmark year for Iron Academy. We have a lot of information to pass on about upcoming events.
Mid-term grades will come out in September. In the meantime, homework assignments and grades are posted daily for your son on RenWeb. RenWeb also hosts an Iron family directory, in case you’d like to contact other Iron families. New families, please be sure our emails are not hiding in your spam folder. Most information will come via email, and we want you to stay in the loop. One of our focal points this year is to make sure we are communicating better with you. That starts today. Link to document for RenWeb login tutorial.
At the end of our first quarter, 6th and 9th grades will have one week of intensives. All other grades will continue classes as usual. In October, 6th grade will participate in orienteering and outdoor skills. We have a former Navy SEAL fly in from Kansas to teach our young men about orienteering (map and compass work) and other outdoor skills. 9th grade will focus on college application and resume planning. This class has been tremendously valuable for our 9th-grade students. It will be even better this year with the addition of our college counselor, Bethany Benson, arranging visitors and visiting monthly with our high school students. We’ll also have a night for parents to come in and learn about what you can and should be doing now. College, after all, is not far away. 7th, 8th, and 10th will not have a fall intensive.
We will be hosting a work day on campus on an upcoming Saturday. Summit Church may be coming in with a small army of volunteers to help us with several things: painting, removing coat rails/hooks, making cross country trails, etc. As we are trying to plan with them and in accordance with the volunteers, an announcement may come out within a very short time of the actual date.
We do have some volunteer opportunities if you are interested now.
- We need a volunteer team to pick up a refrigerator in Holly Springs and deliver/install it at school.
- We also need a father/son team with some easy technical work with a PC and speakers.
- We have some Bose speakers donated for use in the Study Skills room. We need an old-school receiver/stereo setup to power them. If you would like to procure an inexpensive used system (widely available on Craigslist) and install the system and speakers, we’d love to hear the Bose 401s in action.
- Becky Visser continues to lead a team of students and parents in making the school a beautiful place. Thank you, Becky! I know they will do wonders with any cash and time donations.
Our first tribe day will be September 25th. Attendance is mandatory for students. Students will start Blade Maintenance Plans this day, which will help hold him accountable to the honor code.
Fall sports awards will be September 26th at 7 pm, so mark your calendars if your son is participating in Fall sports. Basketball tryouts will be in October for middle and high school teams. Coach Mitchell will publish more about that.
In looking ahead, 10th graders will be taking the PSAT on Saturday, October 14th. Please put that on your calendar so your 10th grader can participate.
