End-of-school activities go on outside at Frontier Middle School
Cheryl Schweizer/Columbia Basin Herald Ashley Casillas, right, Moses Lake High School class of 2020, stopped by Frontier Middle School to pick up the letter she wrote to herself in eighth grade. Frontier staff is hosting activities out front each Tuesday and Thursday to make the end of school easier for past and present students.
Cheryl Schweizer/Columbia Basin Herald Dallas Toy, right, Moses Lake High School class of 2020, picks up the letter he wrote to himself in eighth grade from Frontier Middle School counselor Dana Santos, left. Frontier staff is setting up outside the school each Tuesday and Thursday to help students, past and present, with the end of the school year chores.
Cheryl Schweizer/Columbia Basin Herald A Frontier Middle School student drops a donation for the FMS food drive. Frontier staff is doing business outside the building each Tuesday and Thursday to make end of school activities easier for students.
MOSES LAKE — There are a lot of traditions associated with high school graduation and the end of the school year — a lot of year-end chores to finish. But 2020 isn’t a normal year. Due to the COVID-19 outbreak, the state closed schools March 18.
Teachers and administrators at Moses Lake’s Frontier Middle School are combining all the demands and activities at the end of a normal school year into something new.
Staff members set up shop in the FMS parking lot on Third Street from 11 a.m. to 1 p.m. Tuesday and Thursday. Frontier counselor Dana Santos said teachers and administrators will be out front each Tuesday and Thursday throughout May.
Staff members are collecting food for the annual FMS food drive, allowing students to pick up personal items left behind when school closed and to drop off school-owned equipment.
And Moses Lake High School seniors who were FMS eighth-graders can come to pick up their letters.
Frontier science teachers ask eighth-graders to write a letter to themselves, which will be delivered when they graduate from high school. Normally, those are delivered when the seniors come back to FMS just before graduation, but this year is different.
“We have it set up so they can come get their letters. During our food drive,” Santos said. The food drive is another FMS tradition.
Dallas Toy came by to pick up his letter. He had put some coins in his envelope, because the day he wrote the letter he didn’t have any bills, he said. The contents of the letter were a mystery — he couldn’t remember what he had written to his older self.
Ashley Casillas also came by to pick up her letter, and she posed for a picture, letter in hand, for FMS social media. Like Dallas, Ashley said she couldn’t remember what she had written.
The food drive is kind of a competition conducted by subject area, including history, math and science — and lunch, the favorite subject of FMS principal Greg Kittrell, who will retire at the end of the school year.
As of Thursday, lunch was leading the pack in food donations.
“Make sure you say Mr. Kittrell’s subject is lunch. He’ll be happy about that,” Santos said.
Cheryl Schweizer can be reached via email at [email protected].
