April 10th, 2020

Good Afternoon Parents, Guardians and Students:

Congratulations, you made it to the weekend and the first full week of Distance Learning. Please keep an eye out for a special message being put together by Mr. Wilmes from the staff this week.

Distance Learning Reminders

• The learning is to be asynchronous, which means students can work on tasks and assignments anytime throughout the entire day. Students do not have to be fully engaged between 9:00 am and noon. This looks different each day for each student.
• Students need to complete their attendance each day and engage in the learning. Attendance needs to be completed by 3:00 pm. We do our best to cross check each day to ensure a student is counted as attending if they engaged but did not complete their attendance. However, we do not always “catch” each student that hasn’t done their attendance. This is the student's responsibility each day. The attendance form is located in your Google Classroom.
• Students need to contact their teacher if they feel they are receiving too much or too little work to do.
• Grades for fourth quarter will be Pass/Fail, this is a hold harmless quarter meaning your grade cannot go down from your third quarter grade, it can only go up or remain the same, your final semester grade will be Pass/Fail.
• Our mental health team is available to students, this information is located on the learning template that has been sent out on numerous occasions. It is also located on the front page of our website if you need to access. The learning template also includes the link to the district if you are experiencing problems with your technology. Click here for the link to the learning template.

If you have specific questions regarding your learning please contact your teacher, if you have any other questions please contact your grade level administrator.

New Hires

I have some announcements and celebrations this week. We were able to finalize the hiring for the following positions:

• Assistant Principal:  Allison Huck will be joining us. Allison is currently the Assistant Principal at Cimarron Middle School in Parker and lives in the Newton community. We are extremely happy to have Allison join our Newton team.
• .5 Social Worker:  Megan Rotter will be joining our Mental Health team. Megan spent approximately eight weeks working for us this winter when Mrs. Swingler took her maternity leave. Megan did a great job and we welcome her return to Newton. 
• Full Time Special Education Para:  Julia Olson currently works half time in our Learning Services Program and has now accepted the full time position. We are excited to have Julia return to full time work with our program and our students.

Next week we will be interviewing for our sixth grade language arts position, sixth grade science/math and eighth grade math. I will keep you updated as we fill these positions.

Disney Day

Thank  you to everyone who participated in our Disney Day on Wednesday and the Make a Wish community event with Arapahoe High School. It is my understanding that Arapahoe, with our assistance…..met their goal.

Have a great weekend. Take care and be safe. We miss all of you!

James O’Tremba

Principal, Newton Middle School