Failing Students Required For In-Person Instruction

FAILING STUDENTS REQUIRED FOR IN-PERSON INSTRUCTION
Posted on 12/16/2020

Dear Newman Families,

We have come to the end of our first semester and almost the end of the calendar year 2020! Christmas is here!

Thank you for all your support and cooperation to help Newman help its students achieve their education—both through online and in-person instruction. Thanks also to all our faculty and staff for their continued commitment to our students.

Based on TEA’s options for Texas school systems regarding student proficiency, we ask all online students who have failed in any subject (scored less than 70%) in the last 9 weeks’ cycle to return to in-person instruction in January 2021. This plan will help ensure excellence and prevent failure among Newman Warriors.

If you are an online student/parent of an online student, you may receive a letter of warning concerning failing grades in the last 6 - week progress report period. If the student still fails by the end of 9 weeks, the student/parent will hear from your campus about the need to start in-person instruction. For information on how to switch to in-person instruction and also for the appeal process regarding the school’s decision requiring your child’s in-person instruction, please contact your campus principal.

We will continue to observe COVID-19 safety protocols to the best of our ability.  Thankfully, we are seeing that children are neither as vulnerable to the virus, nor as prone to be carriers as adults.

You will be glad to note that due to an unprecedented opportunity to avail of 15 more additional classrooms at the NIAA elementary campus in Arlington, we are able to transfer in-person instruction students and teachers of our small NIAG over-flow site to the NIAA Fielder campus and utilize the Grace campus as a District-wide online instruction and training center! At last, our elementary teachers will be relieved of teaching both online and in-person instruction and be able to focus on one mode of instruction.

Our elementary online teachers from across the District will be trained and will operate from the Grace campus under the leadership of Mike Kunkel, our Online Education Coordinator. (Both Ashley Blakeslee and Stephanie Robinson will be co-principals at the NIAA elementary campus, forming a strong and extraordinary team). Newman’s dream of making its online instruction an outstanding one will become a reality! We hope to extend this service to our secondary teachers in the future.

Together, despite COVID-19, we can still make dreams happen for our children. As you support the school, the school will continue to prepare its students for their great future.

Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year!

Dr. Sheba George

Superintendent