Dear PWMS families,

I wanted to send an update on a few things now that we are in our second week of distance learning.  Despite the fact this isn’t an ideal situation for anyone, we are encouraging families to remain patient and flexible as we weave through these next few weeks.  A partnership between school and home is more important now than ever before.

First of all, I want to make sure families clearly understand that grades during distance learning matters!  At the conclusion of distance learning last spring, the department of education urged schools to consider not giving students an “F” when it came to assigning final grades.  We simply weren’t as fully prepared for distance learning last spring as we are now.  As a result, please note that grading during these 5 weeks of distance learning will affect students’ overall grade for the year.  A student may receive an “F” if they do not complete/pass their assigned work.  Please reiterate this with your student(s).  

With that being said, it’s important that students log into their teachers Google Classroom/Meet at their required times each day.  Attendance is being taken daily and for those students not “attending” consistently I will be making phone calls and/or trying to visit in person.  Additionally, please communicate with us if your student(s) is facing any obstacles/roadblocks during distance learning.  We want to be able to offer as much support as we possibly can during this time.

Next, our 2nd quarter ends on Friday, January 15.  There is a staff development day scheduled for Monday, January 18 so students will not be in school on that day (they won’t have school responsibilities).  At the time of this letter, the plan is to have students report back to school in a hybrid model on Tuesday, January 19 (K-6 in person, 7th-8th grade Cohort A in person.  If this changes, you will be notified in advance.

Finally, please note that since the beginning of the school year our district has been using a software program, GoGuardian.  Now that we are in a distance learning model for the next few weeks, this can help us monitor student engagement.  The GoGuardian tool is designed to help teachers manage Chromebook usage in their classrooms and monitor student activity on the device. The goal of the tool is to help keep students on-task and away from inappropriate content.  Last week we did have to remind some students to stay on task with their work as a result of an alert from the GoGuardian software.  If you like to find out more about GoGuardian you can find information here:

https://www.goguardian.com/ 

Here again is an overview of our daily schedule through January 15:

Take care and Happy Holidays!

Scott Bjerke, Principal