Weekly News and Notes, August 28

 Greetings,

We have a few updates from UHS this week, as we prepare to welcome our staff back next week, in finalizing some other details for the start of the school year.

Grade 8 Orientation

Information regarding grade 8 orientation was shared earlier this week. One of the questions that came up was if students who are going to be fully remote should come to the orientation event. The short answer is that this is an individual decision. We certainly welcome everyone, and it is nice to put faces next to names and to have you hear from us. However, we also understand that some families may be hesitant, and we appreciate that as well. We will be working to share all the information, regardless.

Athletics Update

The MIAA published sport modifications for the fall sports, and we are processing all of these details in order to prioritize safety for the coming season. We will, as a league, be working on geographic pods that minimize cross-over and travel in the coming season, and we are also intending on being consistent as a league with respect to start dates for sports. Right now, our priority is getting our staff and students back into the building, and then we will hopefully have opportunities for athletics and extracurricular activities to start safely. We appreciate your patience as we work with our fellow member schools and the district and state as a whole.

Cohorts

Our intention is to release cohorts next week. Letters will be sent home documenting the cohort, which should also be visible on iStudent and iParent. We realize that there may be some family situations with respect to other schools to which we are not privy. If there is a mistake - meaning children from the same household have been assigned to different cohorts - please reach out to us directly, and we will remedy the situation. While we have some classes and areas where the numbers could be impactful due to space considerations, we will do our best to be accommodating to families. Please do not change cohorts without confirmation from school administration.

Finally, these past few months have been fraught with a variety of challenges for us all: personal, professional, emotional, economic, medical. Many people have called, emailed privately, or posted very publicly on social media their thoughts, opinions, and considerations, relative to everything from classroom safety, to the role of educators, to concerns about academic progress and post-secondary planning. There has been anger, frustration, sadness, impatience, and guilt. 

As principal, I take the responsibility of safety - academic, emotional, and physical - to heart. To those ends, I can assure you that our teams have worked tirelessly to make sure that psychological, emotional, physical, and academic safety remain priorities amidst conditions that I never could have imagined possible. We commit to that safety whether students and staff come through our doors occasionally, daily, or not at all - and regardless of the place in which they will learn. We commit to that safety knowing full well the fear that some of our professionals have in coming to work, knowing that there is no way we can only mitigate risk. And we commit to these next couple of weeks, in designing learning for our students that is robust, authentic, connection-focused, and aligned with the very excellence our community has come to expect from this school. In so doing, we know we can put the feelings of anger and angst to rest, and replace them with that same pride, accomplishment, and spirit that is a hallmark of our work together at UHS.

Feel free to reach out with any questions. We look forward to seeing staff and students back in our building very soon.