Please see our COVID-19 update. Enjoy the weekend!
We have been approved for free lunch and breakfast for all students attending through December 31st. Signup is the same as when we started school this year. If you have questions contact your student's school.
Good afternoon. Please see the letter regarding our COVID-19 updates.
Mr. Jones demonstrating Bernoulli's principle and discussing scaling to larger objects in 7th grade science.
We will continue to update you as we have new positive COVID-19 cases. Please read the letter for our update today.
Information about Common Goal/Teacherease below:
Mobile App Updates
9/8/2020
Over the past few weeks we released updates to our mobile apps. We made a number of nice changes, and wanted to make customers aware of them.
New Parent/Student Mobile App
We recently released a complete rewrite of the parent/student mobile app. It looks more like a mobile app, and less like a mobile web-page -- similar to the teacher/admin app. We hope you like the updated user interface.
Android Parent App
The parent app is now available on Android. This gives parents access to mobile apps on both of the major platforms: iOS and Android. We think this is meaningful as schools can direct parents to use the mobile app, and it will work regardless of their choice of device.
Instead of creating a separate app, we added parents to the existing TeacherEase app. The Android app now works for teachers, admins, AND parents/guardians (but not students yet).
https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.teacherease.mobile.android
Unfortunately, students cannot yet use the mobile app on Android. We need to do more work to comply with Google’s Family Policy, which currently prevents us from using “Sign-In with Google” and some other functionality we need. Once resolved, we’ll release a separate app for students.
Notifications on Android
We also implemented notifications on Android, which were a gap in the previous teacher/admin release. Parents can receive notifications when their student is absent, grades were entered, homework assigned, etc. Teachers can receive notifications too, when they receive a parent message, students turn in work, etc.
With the exception of student support, Android is now at feature parity with iOS. All features available in iOS are in the Android app too.
Improved Control of Notifications
Since enabling notifications in mobile apps, we redesigned the communications flow from school to students and parents. The first improvement is to allow recipients to control how they receive messages. When a message is sent, they can choose to receive it as email, mobile app notification, or both. Some users want real-time results and prefer their phone to buzz whenever there’s an update. Others would rather messages silently queue, to be checked later. This is configured in “Notification Settings.”
When admins/teachers send a message to parents/students, they don’t need to be concerned with recipients’ notification preferences. They just send a message, and it will be delivered using the recipient's preference (email, mobile app, or both). TeacherEase uses the right format based upon the recipient’s notification settings.
If an admin/teacher sends a message, and the recipient has chosen to receive it as a mobile app notification (and not email), then they receive a notification. The first thing the recipient sees is the notification (it will show in their news feed too).
If the user clicks on the notification (or news feed item), they are taken to a TeacherEase page to view the full message on their device. As usual, messages are logged and can be viewed later.
If users don’t install the app, or enable notifications on their device, they can’t choose app notifications in the TeacherEase settings. We’d encourage users to enable notifications.
We hope you like the new mobile functionality.
The Common Goal Team
Just a Reminder- There will be no school on Monday, September 7th in observance of Labor Day! Enjoy your weekend!
We are now reporting our internal COVID data at least weekly to the public. You can find the link here: http://bit.ly/vandalscovid
Stay safe and enjoy the Labor Day weekend!
Parents/Guardians/Students,
Good day everyone! We wanted to reach out to the families of our students to thank you for your support and efforts of your child's education. Parents, students, teachers, administrators, and support staff are all learning day by day about this new educational format and how to best serve our students. Parental involvement has always been an important component in student learning and growth. Right now, more than ever, we need to work together as a school and community to give our students the best education they can have in these challenging times. Please have daily conversations with your child about their learning and their school work that needs to be completed and submitted on remote days. As a reminder, students are accountable for all classwork completion and their grades will reflect their progress. Have them explain to you, as parents, Google classroom and what they are doing in these platforms. We understand it is hard for parents to know what all is going on in Google classroom because none of us learned the way the students are learning today.
Every day that is on the school calendar is a school day whether or not the student is in attendance. Students are expected to participate in learning activities on these remote days. Yes, that means on Fridays too, which is a remote learning day for all students. If you have any questions, please contact the junior high at 283-5151.
Respectfully,
Brian Kern, Principal
Good news this evening to share! The USDA announced yesterday that the free meal program has been extended until December 31st. We are able to provide free meals to all students effective immediately.
We are currently having phone bandwidth issues. I am working on this issue, so sorry for the inconvenience this morning.
We will move forward with our hybrid learning model next week based on our updated metrics that I shared yesterday. This is being sent out in response to Fayette County hitting the COVID Warning level today. Thank you for your patience and understanding this week.
Informational update- Our COVID-19 Mitigation Metrics have been updated to reflect the new IDPH COVID-19 County & School Metrics released this week.
JH Softball at Home vs Ramsey has been moved to Friday 8/28 @ 4:30pm
JH Baseball at Home vs Effingham has been moved to Wednesday 8/26 @ 4:30pm
All Tuesday events remain as scheduled at this time.
Please complete the meal request form for Monday and Tuesday before 8:00 a.m on 8-24 if you want to order meals. https://forms.gle/fxqg28rFe9qg3hbc9
Details:
Two meals will be available for pick-up on both Monday and Tuesday during our adaptive pause Remote Learning Days.
Times: 11:00 a.m. to 12:00 p.m.
Location: Outside VES/VJHS, VCHS, the old post office in Hagarstown, the church at Vera, old water tower in Shobonier, and the storage shed in Bluff City.
Wednesday hybrid remote learners will receive their meals for Wednesday during the Tuesday distribution.
We are doing our best to honor in-person learning while being mindful we must have a safe learning environment for all who walk through our doors. My hope & request is that we can find a way to be respectful regardless of opinions. In my heart I know we are #VandalStrong.
Good morning Vandals. I am attaching our COVID-19 Mitigation Metrics as a means for transparency. We are contact tracing within our staff currently. Please see the bold section which is from the most recent IDPH guidance.
Dear Parents and Guardians. Please read the attached letter. We will be Remote Learning for all on Monday and Tuesday. More information will follow.
Good evening Vandal fans! We know and understand the wide range of opinions about wearing masks. However, we need to come together to give our kids the opportunity to continue playing this fall. Below is an email we received from the IESA in regards to spectators and participants wearing a mask during contests. We are asking to please abide by these expectations.
To All IESA Member Schools:
We have received numerous calls and emails about the wearing of face coverings by players, coaches, and spectators. To alleviate many of these calls and to help you answer the questions you are receiving, please refer to the document we have put together. Hopefully, this will assist all of us regarding the questions surrounding the wearing of face coverings.
Unfortunately, we are receiving many reports of players, coaches, and particularly parents and spectators who are not following the face covering mandates. We are also receiving reports of schools who are doing a good job of abiding by the face covering mandates. But, the number of those who are not following the mandates exceeds the good reports. I have said this before, and I think it bears repeating especially to those who question the wearing of face coverings at outdoor events. If we want our student-athletes to have the privilege of participating in education-based sports and the benefits provided by doing so, we ALL have to be accountable for following the mandates and requirements. If we do not, we may not have any choice but to shut things down.
Here is the face covering document :
https://www.iesa.org/temp/IESAFaceCoverings.pdf