Novato Unified School District Superintendent Update For March 19

Novato CA

20 March, 2021

8:58 AM

Description

Press release from the Novato Unified School District: March 19, 2021 Dear NUSD Family, "This has been a tremendous week with NFT and NUSD reaching an agreement on March 13 amending the Memorandum of Understanding for Flexible In-Person (FIP) students to have more days on campus and the Board voting to start the new schedules on April 12. I want to thank NFT for their collaboration in this timely negotiation process. Now that all of our teachers have been offered a Covid vaccine and Marin County reached the red tier (and the orange tier soon), it was the appropriate time to revisit our schedules. Topics included in today's update are: NUSD Schedules Beginning on Monday, April 12 Asynchronous Learning Day on Friday, April 2 Graduations, Promotions and Large Events JROTC Registration NIOT Novato Speaker Series Event on March 25 Virtual Learning Academy NUSD Schedules Beginning on Monday, April 12 On Tuesday, March 16, the NUSD Board approved increasing the amount of student learning time for NUSD students. This new plan will take effect on April 12. This plan will, at the least, double the on-campus learning time at all grade levels. The elementary and middle school schedules that will begin on April 12 are as follows: Elementary FIP Schedule Middle School FIP Schedule Middle School VLA Schedule Asynchronous Learning Day on Friday, April 2 Friday, April 2 will be an asynchronous learning day for elementary students in our Flexible In-Person program, and all middle and high schools in both FIP and VLA as teachers prepare for full classes of students returning on April 12. After a brief check in at the beginning of the day, students will be provided school work to complete this day. Graduations, Promotions and Large Events Great news! Our middle and high school principals are actively working with Marin County Public Health on large events like graduations, promotions and other large-scale school events. Our teams have asked lots of questions to help Marin County Public Health craft guidance on these events and we expect to receive this guidance soon after we return from spring break. This guidance will capture how we can handle high school graduations at our high school stadiums. Our goal is to make this happen with proper mitigation and believe we will be able to do so, should Covid data continue to trend downwards. JROTC Registration Attention high school families! Did you know that the JROTC Program at Novato High is a four-year elective leadership class? JROTC, also known as Air Force Junior Reserve Officer Training Corps, is first and foremost a program for students to develop their leadership skills, not a recruiting class for the military. In the first two years of the program, students (or cadets) learn the basics of leadership in the classroom through the curriculum and participating voluntarily in many events throughout the year. In years three and four, students hone their leadership skills by managing the entire program and all the events they participate in. This program at Novato High School is the only program of its kind in Marin County. If you think your student would benefit from such a program, please contact Richard Muench [email protected] or your student's counselor. NIOT Novato Speaker Series Event on March 25 Not In Our Town Novato's (NIOT Novato) highly acclaimed young adult panel featuring NUSD students is back on March 25, 2021, at 6:30 pm. This is a follow up conversation to the successful virtual panel presentation on February 11, 2021. This March 25 virtual event will take a deeper dive into examining how racism and discrimination dehumanizes and exploits African Americans and other communities of color in our town. To participate on March 25, please register at http://bit.ly/NIOTWebinar. More information can be found at https://www.niot.org/novato. Simultaneous Spanish interpretation will be available. Virtual Learning Academy Newsletters This week's VLA newsletters highlight Amy Wehr, VLA Hamilton teacher for elementary and for middle school, the updated schedule and upcoming suicide prevention parent education night for middle school families on March 23. Here are links to this week's VLA newsletters: Elementary – March 18, 2021 Middle School – March 18, 2021 Thinking about April 12, I'm looking forward to seeing many of our students back on campus without cohorts. It was a year ago that we shifted overnight to remote learning and it's been a journey to get us to where we are today. We will continue on that journey together. Have a great weekend." Sincerely, Kris Cosca www.nusd.org/COVID This press release was produced by the Novato Unified School District. The views expressed here are the author's own.