Weekly News and Notes

Greetings,

We have a few updates from Virtual UHS this week.

Classes/Assignments

This week, we started posting assignments that students are required to complete in order to demonstrate that they are continuing to access learning. Teachers are posting assignments on Monday and being flexible with due dates, though we are requesting that students return work for Friday. Where today is a holiday, there will be late work accepted, and students who hand things in that are not given credit (or who miss an assignment) may hand things in at a later time for credit.

We also have virtual class sessions meeting on Tuesdays and Wednesdays. Some families and students have inquired about attendance at these sessions, as some faculty members were taking attendance. Please know that they were doing so solely so we can get a sense of who is accessing our assignments and who are not - and if students are not attending the class sessions, nor are they handing in work, we will be focusing some outreach on those students.

At this point, from a grading standpoint, we are looking at the fourth quarter being a "credit/no credit" metric, and, for those who are concerned, we will be doing what we can to ensure that there is no impact on GPA for those marks.

Parent Town Hall

We appreciate the feedback from last week's Parent Town Hall. In the next week or so, we will try to schedule another meeting. We are waiting on contact from Zoom to ensure that we can handle more than 100 people - or we will simply host multiple meetings, perhaps one for underclassmen and one for juniors and seniors. We want to make sure that we can reach the highest number of attendees.

Printing Face Shields

We have mobilized our engineering and technology teachers, as well as several students, to be printing and manufacturing face shields. In collaboration with the Blackstone Valley Chamber of Commerce, several hundred of these shields have been distributed to medical and public safety professionals in our community. We are so grateful to be part of this endeavor and to support those on the front line battling this insidious virus!

Week That Was

Here's our weekly Week That Was video. As you can see, our educators and staff are working so very hard at maintaining connections and bringing content to our students, even from afar. In these extraordinary times, we hope we have maintained some connection for all of you!

Be safe!