Welcome to the 2025-26 School Year!

Inferno News - Welcome Back Edition

Principal's Message

Welcome back! We are so excited to kick off the 2025-2026 school year and can’t wait to see our students on Tuesday, September 2.

Our school office is now open daily from 9:00 a.m. to 3:30 p.m. If you need anything at all, please call us at 780-962-0357 or send an email to greystone@psd.ca. Once the school year begins, our office hours will be 8:30 a.m. to 4:15 p.m. If your plans have changed and you are no longer planning to attend GCMS this year, please contact the office as soon as possible to let us know.

This is going to be a fantastic year at Greystone! We are building on our strong foundation of Literacy, Numeracy, and Social-Emotional Learning while also launching an exciting new focus on the Utility of School. We want to help our students find deeper connections to their learning by creating more authentic and relevant experiences across all grades, and especially through our Career and Technology Foundations (CTF) and Languages and Fine Arts options at the junior high level.

Stay in the loop with all the latest school news and extracurriculars by reading my weekly newsletter - Inferno News, sent out every Friday afternoon. I'll make sure it's short and to the point, with all the important details you need to know. 

Mark your calendars for our School Open House on Thursday, September 11, from 6:00 to 7:00 p.m. This is a great chance to tour the school, meet our amazing teachers and staff, and let your child show you where they'll be learning this year. We hope you can make it!

Keep reading for some important updates on operational changes for the new year.

Enjoy the last bit of your summer break, and we’ll see you soon!

Scott Jaspers-Fayer

Principal, Greystone Centennial Middle School

Class Lists and First Day

Our office staff has returned and are now busy working on the back end to place students for this school year. Your child's teacher will be posted on PowerSchool parent portal on Monday, August 26 at noon. Please note that we will not be making class changes, as many hours have gone into making class lists by last year's teachers and considering class requests that were taken into account last spring.. Your child's teacher will reach out to you via email before the first day of school about specific first day details. 

On the first day, Tuesday, September 2, students can use their designated pod entrance doors to enter the school. Doors will open at 8:50 AM daily. If you are unsure of which door to use, or if you are unsure who your child's teacher is, please enter through the front doors and staff will be able to assist you.

Helpful Links

• Office Opening Details
• 2025-2026 Staff List
• Weekly Announcements (for students)
• Student Code of Conduct
• Inferno News - Updated every 1-2 weeks (for parents/families)
• Parkland School Division 2025-2026 calendar
• Greystone Calendar of Events
• School Map
• School fees and school supply lists
• School Supplies from Write-On-Stationery

Weekly Schedule

We are switching from a 4-day schedule to a 5-day schedule for 2025-2026. In previous years, Friday was a rotational day, where the schedule followed one of the other weekdays depending on the week. This year, going to a 5-day schedule, every weekday will have its own set schedule, improving consistency.

Fees

We have updated our school fees for 2025-2026, and have aimed to reduce them wherever possible. Unfortunately, non-payment of fees has continued to be an issue in 2024-2025, to the point where it is having an operational impact at the school level. Our fees that are charged for our programs are charged for cost-recovery, and when these fees go unpaid, we are required to cover these from our operational budget that is typically used for staffing and school operations

This year, for sports teams involving tryouts, CTF, and Languages/Fine Arts, and non-curricular field trips, we will be requiring payment at the start of these seasons/terms. If payment is an issue, there are options such as setting up an interest-free payment plan with the division, or a fee waiver for families that qualify. The goal of this policy is not to turn families away, but rather to ensure the school can cover the costs associated with providing activities and programming of this nature.  We are hoping that an increase in communication on our end, helps us to ensure payment as well as allows access to programming for our students.  Should immediate payment be an issue, please contact the office to discuss.  Our finance secretary this year is Shelley Robinson (shelley.robinson@psd.ca) and can support you with these options and other inquiries or payments. We wish our outgoing finance secretary Cecilia Bentancor the best going forward as she looks to tackle some new endeavors!

Options/CTF

With the schedule change, we are also doing some adjustments to our complimentary programming for junior high.

• Grade 7 will have an 80 minute CTF block on Tuesday afternoons
• Grade 8-9 will have an 80 minute CTF block on Thursday afternoons
• Grade 7-9 will have a double (2-60 minute) blocks on Wednesday afternoons
• This will allow more students access to a variety of languages and arts programming than years prior (example, taking both choir and french)

Language & Fine Arts Program options for Term 1 (September - January) as well as CTF programming options for Term 1 (September - November) & Term 2 (November - January) will be communicated to students and parents early in September.  

Attendance

The division is continuing with their attendance intervention initiative for 2025-2026. At Greystone, students falling below 80% attendance will be flagged and we will be reaching out to look for ways to improve attendance in a collaborative way. The goal should be to have your child attending 90% of school days or more. To find more information about PSD attendance, see here.

School Council

We would love to see some new faces at our school council and fundraising society (FOGS) meetings this year! We typically meet on the 4th Wednesday of the month at 6:30 PM. Our first meeting is September 24!

FOGS has done a wonderful job supporting our school over the years. Last year, they organized and ran our hot lunch program, supported our school events with concessions (dance, track and field), ran pop-up lunches, and purchased a number of items to support our programming. Last year alone, FOGS outfitted the entire Purple Pod with new, modern furniture, purchased lighting for our drama/music programs, and purchased new mixers and archery targets! We appreciate their support!

Volunteer Opportunities

If you are interested in volunteering at Greystone throughout the school year, please take a look at our Volunteer Handbook.  This can be found on our website under Parents - Get Involved.  This resource outlines the policies around volunteering in our school as well as lists some of the possibilities (Pages 2-4).  If you are interested in volunteering, you can reach out to the office.  Once we have settled into the school year, we will connect and make the necessary arrangements.