Please share this weeks' Principal Report with your student. You are welcome to join in on the Ram Jam!
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Dear GMHS Students and Families,
Hello and Happy Friday! I hope this message finds you all doing well. Well, we made it through an unbelievable school year! Before you all head off to hopefully a fun summer break, I wanted to share some important updates with you.
- Give Us Your Feedback
- Finals Grades
- Transcript Requests
- Refunds
- Summer Homework Expectation
- Jeffco Public Library
- Construction Projects
- Facebook Live 5/29 1:00 p.m. - Please watch!
- Remembering the Class of 2020
- 20-21 School Year
- Restart Plan
- Staffing and Budget Update
- How to communicate with us over the summer
As always if you have any questions or need any support, please don't hesitate to reach out. I hope you all have a great summer break! Even though we do not know exactly what the next school year will be like, we will be learning, we will stay connected, and will continue to be kind and support each other.
Take care,
Colleen Owens
Principal
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Give Us Your Feedback
We really appreciate all of your flexibility and support during these last few months. In an effort for continuous improvement, we ask for your feedback and insights on what we did that you felt worked, what we should alter if we start the new year in an online environment, and any other insights you can provide for our summer planning.
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Final Grades
- Teachers entered final grades for the semester today.
- Next Steps:
- GMHS Counselor and grade level assistant principals will be reviewing final grade reports next week to determine:
- Whether there were extenuating circumstances that affected student final grades
- Determine whether grades should stay a letter grade, Pass or No Credit.
- If you have concerns about your final grades:
- Email your grade level counselor and explain your concern (please be as detailed as possible)
- The counselor and assistant principal will look at the grades and determine if extenuating circumstances affected the final outcome.
- The Counselor or grade level assistant principal may reach out to the student and parent/guardian to discuss the options available.
- We want to make sure we do all we can to support our students and families.
- Final grades will be posted to student transcripts by early June.
Transcripts
To request final transcripts and official final transcripts, please check our GMHSRAms.org for who to contact depending on the time of your request. Our office staff will be working remotely most of the summer due to multiple factors including the major construction happening in the building.
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Refunds
- We are issuing refunds for athletic fees, prom, and partial graduation fees.
- If you have questions about refunds please submit them to the Family Questions for GMHS form and we will respond back to you individually.
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Summer Homework Expectation
- Teachers will not be assigning mandatory summer homework since we are not yet clear on what the fall schedule will look like.
- Teachers may provide optional opportunities for students to engage in continued learning over the summer.
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Ms. Vezzetti will be doing a video series like the one above throughout the summer on all the Jeffco Public Libraries resources, short 5-min. (or less) videos featuring different online resources:
- Axis 360 - ebooks, audiobooks
- Hoopla - ebooks, audiobooks, e-graphic novels, movies
- Teen Books Cloud - graphic novels, enhanced novels, e-books, classic literature, National Geographic videos, educator resources, and audiobooks.
- Kanopy - movies, app available on your Roku devices
- Mango Languages - learn a different language
- Creative Bug - More than 1,000 award-winning art and craft video classes taught by recognized design experts and artists.
- Lynda.com - courses taught by industry professionals on software, computer programming, web design, photography, video, job and career skills and more.
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Please follow the above link on our GMHSRams.org website for updates and pictures of the construction this summer! You won't believe the in-progress photos - take a look!
GMHS Virtual Groundbreaking - Facebook Live
Join us on Facebook on Friday, May 29th at 1:00 p.m. for a Virtual Groundbreaking!
Superintendent, Dr. Glass
Board of Education President, Susan Harmon
Principal, Mrs. Owens
and several others will take part in the virtual celebration!
Thank you to our Contractors:
Athletic Fields
Hord. Coplan, Macht Architects
ECI Site Construction Management
Building
MOA Architects
GE Johnson Construction Company
Furniture
BCI Interiors
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Remembering the Class of 2020
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We know not everyone follows our social media so we wanted to share the following videos of the Class of 2020.
Congratulations and best wishes to the Class of 2020! We have enjoyed getting to know you! We are Proud of you and will miss you very much!
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2020-2021 Restart Planning
Jeffco Public Schools is working on a plan for next school year. Information is coming out today to families to see the draft and provide feedback through June.
Here is what I know as of today:
- I will work with the district and GMHS staff in May and June to create three plans. 1) returning to school n our traditional structure; 2) returning in a full online environment; and 3) returning in a hybrid environment.
- There are many unknowns at this time. Two major items that we need to determine to plan for a full online or hybrid environment:
- What the public health restrictions will be when we return (social distancing, sanitizing, etc).
- Determining which staff and students will continue working and learning from home and which staff and students will be able to come to school for hybrid learning.
- In early July I should receive an updated Jeffco Plan that will be our guide.
- We will survey staff and students to advise us of which staff and students will work fully online and which we need to schedule into learning opportunities in the school building for hybrid learning.
- With this information, we will build a master schedule for hybrid learning. Hybrid learning is not really defined at this point. It could include staff and students coming to school for elective classes, to receive support for online classes, for assessments, or other learning opportunities. We just do not know at this time, but we will figure it out and communicate options in July or early August.
For now, look for communication from the District (today and ongoing). Review the draft plan and provide your feedback when requested. This is all uncharted territory and your feedback is valued and critical to our planning.
I will be working through June 19th and then back on July 7th so please reach out to me with questions. We will track your questions and keep them for an FAQ document.
I know how crazy all of this sounds and I appreciate your continued partnership, patience and flexibility. We all want answers and to know what the fall will look like. Unfortunately, at this time we don't have those answers. We will focus on what we can control like creating multiple plans for what we believe we may need to plan for and adapt as best we can when clearer information is available. Thank you for your support.
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With the closure of schools, the State Legislature was also closed. Since much of our school budget is based on State funding, it is unclear how our school budget will be impacted. I am hoping to receive more information on whether we need to adjust our school budget in June.
In the meantime, when we submitted our budget for 20-21 we were already working with budget cuts. Below is an update on cuts that GMHS made to next year's budget prior to the pandemic. We are very hopeful that no additional cuts will be needed given possible reductions due to the pandemic..
Budget Staffing:
- Reductions
- 3 teaching positions (Mr. Cale, Ms. Olson, Mr. Hall)
- Site tech support has been cut from 40 hours/week to 20 hours/week.
- Reduce professional development for staff.
- Two teachers taking a leave of absence (Ms. Fisher and Ms. Mayo)
- Due to the current hiring freeze in Jeffco we cannot replace these positions at this time. We hope to fill Ms. Mayo's position if the freeze is lifted.
Staffing
- Our Financial Secretary, Karen Garret will be retiring in July and we will be posting this position in July.
- We hired a math teacher to fill Mr. Reiter's position. Mr. Reiter has accepted a position in another school district.
- We hired a math teacher to fill Ms. Frankovic's position who was at GMHS on a temporary contract and has accepted another position in another school district.
If there are additional cuts that need to be made once we know what our budget is, we will let you know in our summer newsletter in late July or early August.
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Communication with GMHS
- gmhsramnation@gmail.com - use this email for any questions and concerns. Multiple staff members are tracking communications to this email via spreadsheet to ensure your inquiries are addressed.
- You may also use the Family Questions for GMHS Form to submit questions to the school.
School Counselors will be working through the first week of June.
- Counselor Contact Information
- Alicia Kuehn - Current 9th grade and 10th grade for 20-21
- akuehn@jeffcoschools.us
- Erin Slaughter - Current 10th grade and 11th grade for 20-21
- eslaught@jeffcoschools.us
- Kim Angcay - Current 11th grade and 12th grade for 20-21
- kaangcay@jeffcoschools.us
- Laura Oliver - Current 12th grade and 9th grade for 20-21
- loliver@jeffcoschools.us
- Dr. Lisa Langerman - School Psychologist
- lschrade@jeffcoschools.us
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