Schools
Novato End Of Week Communication - May 1, 2020
After hours of discussion and debate, they came to consensus and their recommendation goes to the Board on Tuesday, May 5, 2020.
May 1, 2020
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Dear NUSD Community Member,
Today, May 1, marks the end of seven weeks of shelter in place and six weeks until the end of the school year – not that I’m counting! We’re more than half-way through our sheltering in place and we’ve all been doing remarkably well under these constraints. I’m so proud of our teachers, staff members, students and parents who have stepped up to meet this unprecedented time.
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Now that we’re in the final stretch of this school year, we’re starting to think about the next school year – 2020-2021. You may have heard the Governor say on Tuesday that school could start as early as July. Please know that I heard the same thing later Tuesday afternoon when I got home. I do not anticipate NUSD starting in July as I have concerns about this being in the best interest of our community, including staff members who have second jobs over the summer. Further, any change to the work year would need to be negotiated with our Labor partners and I do not believe this is an interest of theirs.
However, this announcement follows previous statements made by the Governor that plant seeds to tell us that we should expect things to look very different next year. My takeaway is that, while we don’t know exactly what the school year will look like, it will look different and we need to start shifting our thinking away how school years have traditionally started.
Over the next few weeks, we will work closely with our NUSD partners and community members, with support from the Marin County Office of Education and Marin County Public Health, to build the best return to school plan that we can. I anticipate that the guidelines will become clearer for us to better plan for the next school year. It’s likely the path forward may look very different for our elementary school students than it does for our middle and high school students. I’ll share more about this over the coming weeks.
Yesterday afternoon I convened the Spring 2020 Grading Committee with members representing students, counselors, teachers, assistant principals, and principals. The Committee was tasked with making a recommendation to the Board about secondary grading for the spring semester of 2020. The Committee brought a wide range of viewpoints to their assessment of the challenge and reviewed and discussed the Secondary Grading Survey results. After hours of discussion and debate, they came to consensus and their recommendation goes to the Board on Tuesday, May 5, 2020.
We continue to field questions generated through our Ongoing Survey https://bit.ly/NUSDSurvey. In addition, we released a layered Frequently Asked Questions web page last week which can be found here https://nusd.org/remote-learning/frequently-asked-questions/. It has been translated and the Spanish version will be posted this afternoon. This resource was generated from questions received in a variety of ways including our surveys. We hope it helps as we navigate this challenging time. Please keep the questions coming.
The continued physical and mental wellbeing of our students and families are foremost on my mind. Next Thursday, May 7, 2020, at 4 pm, NUSD’s mental health professionals will be holding a Facebook Live Session to address your questions/concerns/comments about mental health and related issues associated with the prolonged distance learning model. Arezu Iranipour, Tom Schmidt, and Jennifer Horos will be hosting the session. Here is a link to a survey to submit your questions and thoughts https://bit.ly/May7FBLiveSession. The Facebook Live event can be found on NUSD’s Facebook page @novatounified and you do not need a Facebook account to participate. There will also be a Facebook Live Session in Spanish on May 12, 2020 at 4 pm on the Spanish Facebook page @NUSDenespanol.
I want to thank each and every one of you, once again, for all you are doing during this tremendously challenging time.
Sincerely,
Kris
This press release was produced by the Novato Unified School District. The views expressed here are the author’s own.
