Dear Parents/Guardians:
Over the course of the first semester we have encouraged each student/family to make a decision to participate in online learning, hybrid learning, or in-person learning. In fact, almost 1 in 4 of our K-12 students are participating in online learning for all or part of the school day. At the end of the first quarter, we encouraged students/families struggling with online learning to return to in-person learning. Several families returned to in-person learning at that time. Now, as we close in on the end of the semester, we have seen some students that are really successful with online learning and some students that are really struggling with online learning.
If your student is struggling with online learning, we ask you to give it one more push from now until the end of the first semester on January 13. We will continue to help in any way we can to see your student be successful at online learning. Starting January 14, all students who were not successful with online learning for the first semester will be required to return to in-person learning. For those students and families who are being successful with full-time online learning, or hybrid online learning, we will continue to work with you and offer support during the second semester, just as we are doing during the first semester.
As you could imagine these are tough decisions and we have given this a lot of consideration. In the end, it is our responsibility to help all learners be successful and knowing that there are students struggling online out there means we need to make a change. As they say, the definition of insanity is doing the same thing over again and expecting a different result. Students that fall behind one semester are really concerning but we still have a chance to bring them closer to grade level before the end of the school year. Students that fall behind an entire school year may take multiple years to catch up.
If your student has to come back to in-person learning it is not a failure but more of an intervention. More students struggle with online learning than in-person learning and that is common nationwide. As parents and educators, we just need to have the courage to know when to throw them a life preserver.
Thank you and if you have any questions, please let me know.
Sincerely,
Dr. Brian Jaeger, Superintendent