Dear Parent/Guardian,
We hope that your summer, while a bit different this year, is still as healthy and happy as it can be. This email is intended to inform you of the scheduling change that we will be making for the 2020-2021 school year. We are not going to bombard you with too much information in this email; we will go into other details about the upcoming school year in future emails. This is the most significant change to your student’s daily schedule.
We are going to operate on a schedule with students having a maximum of (4) classes during the fall semester which meet every day either in person or virtually. We feel confident that this is best for our students, because it allows them to hone their focus a bit and we hope that it eases the fact that their learning will be split between in-person and virtual learning. These 4 classes will meet from September to January, earning students up to 4 full credits in the fall semester. They will start another set of classes in January, allowing students to still earn up to 8 credits for the year.
This type of schedule does have pros and cons. Like every schedule that any school could possibly create; there is no perfect schedule. Given the situation we are in, we feel as though this is best for our students. One of the downsides is for students taking an AP class. For this year only, it will not be possible to offer all of the AP classes that we have in the past. Students who are impacted by this change will receive a separate email from Mrs. Ketch outlining their options.
We are in the process of scheduling students into classes and refining the master schedule. Student schedules will be available soon on Infinite Campus. We will also mail students schedules out in a couple of weeks.
You are probably aware that the Department of Education came out with a “green” designation for the entire state of Maine. While this is a good thing, it is a bit deceiving, because it really means that the best we can do is some in-person learning with all of the distancing and masking precautions. In other words, we can have about half of the school in our building for in-person learning while still abiding by the 6’ distancing that must be maintained between students/staff.
Our plan at this time, will be for us to operate with a hybrid learning schedule. Your son/daughter will be in school for in-person learning on Monday/Tuesday or Thursday/Friday. However, they WILL BE EXPECTED to take part in virtual learning for each of the other three days. This is important to keep in mind, as many of our students have other responsibilities, such as jobs or baby-sitting, outside of the school day. This means they will have school expectations all five days of the week throughout the school year.
I will continue to send these parent e-mails one time per week to keep you informed.
If there are any changes to your contact information, please get those to us.
We know that there are many questions out there and we want to provide a place for you to ask those questions. Here is a link to a google form, where you can ask questions, https://forms.gle/YCgMQPsNmS3b4jux7. We will see your questions and address them in a “Frequently Asked Questions” page on our school website. Please understand, we are doing the best that we can to answer your questions, admittedly, we do not have all of the answers. We will work hard to get you an answer, if you stump us. (-:
These are challenging times for all of us. We know that changes to the normal operation of school can be stressful for students and families, we understand. The whole situation is stressful for us as well. Please know that we are going to do everything that we can to provide the same great educational 0pportunities that we have offered in the past while keeping everyone safe.
Thank You.
Take Care.
Scott Gordon Amy Ketch Jeremy Bousquet
Principal Asst. Principal - Acad. Asst. Principal/AD