Regular attendance in all classes is an expectation of all Austin ISD students. State law and District policy state that students must be in attendance for 90% of the instructional days for a class to receive credit.Parents: Making sure your student is in school and on time every day is the law. For more information visit the district's attendance page. Also, please review our Student Handbook for more information on attendance procedures. 

Notifications: If you have already submitted your note for an absence or your student is participating in a school-related event, please disregard the message you received as the attendance code has not been updated yet.

Please send in documentation of student absences, including medical notes,  using the School Absence Form on the AISD website. We DO NOT accept phone calls or voicemail messages as documentation for a student's absence. You may also use the QR code provided below:

Tardies: If a student arrives after 8:20a.m, they must report to the front office and be signed in by parent/guardian. If a student is more than 20 minutes late to other class periods, they will be marked ABSENT by the teacher.

Attendance Discrepancies: For discrepancies (errors) in your student's attendance, we ask THE STUDENT to contact his/her teacher for correction.  The Attendance Specialist is not able to make any corrections without teacher approval.  The teacher accounts for whether or not the student is present or absent in class. If a substitute teacher marks students absent, the attendance can not be changed unless their presence can be verified by a teacher or an administrator.

STUDENTS, PER DISTRICT POLICY, ARE NOT ALLOWED TO BE PICKED UP AFTER 3:20 PM.

At Austin ISD, the safety of our students is our top priority. As part of our commitment to ensuring a safe environment, we would like to remind you of our medication policy. For the safety of all students, it is against district policy for students to carry any medications with them during school hours. This includes both prescription and over-the-counter medications. Texas state law permits students to carry emergency medications (such as epinephrine auto-injections and asthma inhalers) only with a physician's order. This ensures that proper protocols are followed and that students who need these medications can access them safely. 

If your student requires medication during school hours, please ensure that it is stored in the school health room, submit the necessary forms, and provide the medication in its original sealed container. More information may be found on the Austin ISD website: Medical Forms | Austin ISD.

Due to some unforeseen & unexpected personal circumstances, Ms. Lopez-Stern is needing to step away from her role. We will have a substitute in with students next week who works regularly at Bailey & Ms. Lopez Stern has provided us with sub plans for continuity of learning. We have reached out to Talent Strategy & our LOTE department for support finding a qualified, long term substitute while we resume our search for a teacher. We will continue to provide regular updates on this position & our other vacancies. 

Thank you to all of our amazing student athletes & performers who made our first pep rally a success! We had great performances from our band, cheer, and Star Strutters; we were also able to celebrate our fall student athletes. With many of our students performing, we were able to fit the remaining students in the stands. We will look forward to inviting parents/guardians to attend in the future. 

We held our first Principal Connect of the year this past Thursday morning. Thank you to everyone who came out! To support providing opportunities for all parents/guardians to engage with this offering, we’ll be varying the times & have reached out to Blazier Elementary to host us for one; thank you to the parent who made that recommendation! Check out our Parent Connect Newsletter for more information. 

Native Plants & Animals Student Organization Starts Thursday, September 24th! Bailey's Native Plants & Animals program will begin hosting its weekly after school student organization next Thursday, September 24th from 4:00pm - 5:00 pm by the chicken coop. All students and their families are welcome to attend, although students must have a signed permission form if parents did not opt in for all school activities during the school registration process (pick up from Ms. Tafoya in room 405). During NPA Student Organization, students will learn how to care for our chickens and ducks, as well as how to identify and grow native Texas plants. Learn more at www.baileynpa.org.

Welcome Ms. Chapa! Ms. Chapa will be serving Bailey Middle School as our Communities in Schools Program Manager. Ms. Chapa previously taught at the elementary level in Austin ISD for over 20 years. Click here to learn more about Ms. Chapa & Communities in Schools. 

Homecoming next week! If a student is planning to wear a mum or garter, please ensure they do not include distracting items such as cowbells. Also, they should not extend past the waist. We also have our spirit week, next week, September 22-25, 2026, we’ll have themed dress up days. Students MUST still be in dress code. 

Google Classroom: Our students were auto-populated into classes based on their information in Frontline. However, with moving away from 1:1 this year, classes are using them to differing degrees. Frontline is still the best source for information for your student’s schedule, grades, & attendance. For guardian access, we’ll need to attach each parent to students as a campus as this is not automatically pulled from our student information system. Admin is working through a plan to support this endeavor. 

Yearbook: Our new AVID teacher, Ms. Ply, will be meeting with administration this week to discuss starting the yearbook as an after-school student organization. We have already started utilizing resources from our AV Art class to take photos. We also discussed this at PTA recently & will look for ways to partner with parents. 

Stacked Classes: In some sections, advanced and grade-level sections are combined, allowing students to learn together, with teachers differentiating through the complexity and pacing of instruction, discussion, assignments, and support so that all students are appropriately challenged. For all classes, we use the district’s same grade-level; this model supports flexible scheduling and strong instruction. 

Student Safety: With our larger student body, we continue to refine our systems & strengthen supervision, including adding teachers to after-school duty, transition routines, common-area coverage, and student-support systems. We also follow our district’s student success guide for student consequences & take physical aggression very seriously. Please continue to encourage your students to report concerns to a campus staff member.

As we start the year off, we want to provide an opportunity for parents and guardians to send questions to our campus leadership team for us to review & respond to in our weekly newsletter.

Athletics Game Schedule 9/21-9/25

9/22 Football A Teams vs. Kealing MS at Burger Stadium; 7th at 6 PM | 8th at 7:30 PM

9/24 Volleyball vs. Gorzycki at 6 PM; 8th at Gorzycki | 7th at Bailey

Please help support Bailey Athletics by donating to our athletic fundraiser! Click the links below. GO BEARS!

Girls Athletic Fundraiser

Boys Athletics Fundraiser

September Principal Connect

Thursday, September 17, 2026, 8:30-9:30 am

Student Holiday

Monday, September 21, 2026

Homecoming

Tuesday, September 22, 2026, 6:00 pm

6th Grade Social

Friday, September 25, 2026 After School

Fall Parent Conferences

Monday, October 12, 2026

Hispanic Heritage Cultural Night

October 8, 2026, 5:30-7:00 pm

Annual Bailey Bonfire

Friday, October 30, 2026

Website bailey.austinschools.org

School Twitter: @BMSBears

Athletics Twitter:@BMSAthletics

Austin ISD Dress Code

BMS Student Success Guide

Bell Schedule

Staff Directory

Parent Information Hub

Acknowledge a great Bailey staff member with a RAVE AWARD

Join a parent organization - PTA, CAC, one of our Booster Organizations

Make sure you’re signed up in Voly to be a volunteer. We will have needs throughout the year & we always appreciate parents volunteering to help during lunchtime!

Support your student’s teachers with a thank you note, goodie from their Amazon wish list, or an Austin ISD RAVE!

Know someone who might want to be part of our staff? Send them our way; we’d love to talk to them more about opportunities. 

Consider donating to Bailey through our PTA or Austin Ed Fund.