Dear MHS Students and Families,
I trust that you had a nice weekend and enjoyed the cooler, perfect-temp weather. I have a lot to share with you, so please take some time to read this update.
Updated Schedule and Arrival Time/Cut Off
The MHS leadership team met last week to discuss our schedule and some changes necessary to support teaching and learning. The only changes that affect our students is a specific arrival time of 8:15 for morning cohorts and 12:15 for afternoon cohorts. There is no change in instructional time. Because health checks will occur when students enter the building and there will be dedicated staff to support these checks, students who arrive any later than 9 am for the morning cohort and 1:00 pm for the afternoon cohort will be marked absent. With this said, all appointments should be scheduled outside of instructional time. Students will not be able to exit and enter the building unless it is for a class-specific activity. An additional change in our schedule for students is shaving off 15 minutes from our TA time to support teacher collaboration opportunities. You’ll notice in the schedule that we have noted those times, and you’ll also notice a change in wording for lunch. I’ll speak to this later.
Breakfast/Lunch Orders
After numerous brainstorming sessions with our food service department, we are beginning to arrive at a plan for students who choose to get breakfast/lunch at school. Students will not eat breakfast or lunch in the building; however, they will have the opportunity to order breakfast/lunch a day ahead and meals will be delivered to classrooms in the last 30 minutes of each cohort’s class. Students will have the opportunity to get online during the first 5 minutes of class to fill out a form which will be sent to food services. They will state whether they want breakfast and/or lunch. Those in the morning cohort will get breakfast/lunch delivered prior to them leaving the building. The meals will be bagged and ‘grab and go’. The morning cohort’s lunch will be for that day and breakfast will be for the day after prior to entering the building. Those students who are in the afternoon cohort will get their meal(s) at the end of their afternoon course and will also eat breakfast and/or lunch prior to entering the building the following day. Students can pay for meals two ways: 1) Online through My School Bucks https://www.myschoolbucks.com/ver2/getmain?requestAction=home; or 2) through a deposit envelope that will be in every classroom and delivered to food service directly. We will include this information again as we get a bit closer to the school year. Should they choose, all students will have access to breakfast/lunch each school day. Of course, this plan can be as well thought out as possible, but we’ll need to see how it evolves when we’re in person and make changes as necessary. For those students who are virtual, you will hear more about how to access meals in future communication.
Student Schedules
We are in the process of rebuilding our master schedule based on the changes that have taken place in our 2020-2021 schedule and some movement of staff (Kerrin McCadden, Jerry Tillotson, Myles Chater, and Diane Baker) who will be teaching at VTVLC this year to support our students who have chosen to learn online. This is having an effect on us not being able to send student schedules out until the end of August. Additionally, it has also had an impact on elective options. Please see the email sent to senior students last week. Most of these electives are impacting our seniors, but there may be some juniors who may need to work with their guidance counselor on alternative options such as online courses and/or dual enrollment. Removing four teachers from our staffing absolutely puts pressure elsewhere. Although we created this schedule to continue to provide our students the opportunity to take all courses they signed up for in the spring, we did not anticipate this significant shift. We’ll make it work, but it will mean students who signed up for psychology, sociology, economics, USII,and creative writing will have to find alternative options to take those courses should they need them or have the desire to take them.
Our goal is to send out student schedules by mail on August 26th. On August 28th, our teachers will be reaching out, by email, to each student and family in their course to share which cohort students will be placed. Just as a reminder, there will be only two courses across the week but students may have a mix of morning and afternoon, depending on how the course is split. Teachers will also connect individually with students in their TA to welcome students, review their 2020-2021 schedule, their quarter 1 schedule, cohort placement, and then additional ‘need-to-know’ information for preparation coming into school. These meetings will take place on September 1st and 2nd. Students’ TA will reach out to them ahead of time to set up a meeting that works for both the student and teacher.
Special Courses
Some of our courses will not be placed in a student’s schedule as a designated block class due to AOE guidelines and/or the need for flexible placement. All 9th grade students will see a Block 9 PE class for Q1, Q2, Q3 or Q4. Students enrolled in a PE class will be communicating directly with Brian Gallagher who will work with students outside of their schedule to create fitness goals and oversee fitness activity beyond the cohort schedule. Students who signed up for PE II and Personal Wellness may still be signed up for those courses per quarter with a similar format to 9th grade PE; however, we had to limit the number of students who could take the course as we have not been able to hire another PE teacher to replace Carolyn Kiniry. Seniors who need this course for graduation credit will be given priority, then juniors and then sophomores. Mr. Gallagher will be offering fitness enrichment classes throughout the year, per AOE guidelines, and students should take advantage of those opportunities should it fit their schedule.
Similar to PE, Personalized Learning Study (PLS) and Community Based Learning (CBL) will also show up as a Block 9 course within a quarter.
We continue to try and find ways to support Drivers Ed within our current schedule. The state requires us to offer instruction and driving concurrently, which is proving to be a challenge within our schedule due to the stipulation of hours of instruction and drive time. We are, however, committed to finding a way to keep this opportunity in place for as many of our students as we can. I’ll update this when we have a plan moving forward.
Last but not least, we are working diligently on formatting a safety protocol document that outlines all of the procedures and logistical information it will take for us to mitigate risk throughout the school year. The team has been working hard on creating a clear and comprehensive document that will be sent out to students and families. We anticipate creating a video to support the document as there will be an abundance of new information. We hope to have the document out to you on Monday, August 24th.
I know this is a lot of information and there will continue to be more as we get closer to the school year. As opposed to sending everything all at once, I’m doing my best to scaffold information so you don’t get too overwhelmed with the incredible amount of changes ahead.
Thank you to all who continue to support our efforts. It’s a daunting task, but the MHS community should feel proud and thankful for the leadership we have within our district, school administration, teachers, and staff.
Renée DeVore
