April 5th 2020

Good evening,

I hope this finds everyone in your household healthy. I want to thank those of you that have reached out to Katie Novak to offer your assistance as we work to try to assist families in Groton and Dunstable who have food needs at this time. Many people have offered time, money, gift cards, and food which, along with the donations from the Loaves and Fishes Food Pantry, will help us to support families in need at this time. Should your family need some assistance please contact Katie at knovak@oldsite.oldsite.oldsite.gdrsd.org

REMOTE LEARNING WEBSITE GOES LIVE!

As I shared in my Friday evening briefing tomorrow morning the GDRSD Remote Learning Website will go live. The link to the remote learning site is: PARENT/STUDENT website: https://sites.google.com/oldsite.oldsite.oldsite.gdrsd.org/distancelearningopportunities/home.

I want to thank all of the staff  for their tireless hours that each of them has spent getting the website and the individual teacher sites and plans completed in an extremely short time. We literally only had about one week from the time we received the DESE go-ahead to the creation of the website and the individual teacher plans/sites.

As of April 6th the assignments that teachers will assign your student will be required; this is a change from the optional enrichment assignments that had been shared thus far. The new website has separate links for each school, and under each school each grade. There are also links to the email addresses for the school adjustment counselors, guidance counselors, and social worker staff of each school. High level details of the plan may also be found via a link on the Remote Learning Website. Should you lose the link to the Remote Learning Website there will also be a link to this site on the district website at www.oldsite.oldsite.oldsite.gdrsd.org.

Some families may find the workload difficult for their student to handle; please contact your student’s teacher if this turns out to be the case. Some families may find that the workload assigned to their student was not as time-intensive as they would have liked; please contact your student’s teacher if this turns out to be the case. Students may have misunderstood the assignment or may not have done reworking of the assignment as teachers had intended, as well as there are numerous enrichment resources on the district remote learning website. If after contacting your student’s teacher you feel that you still have concerns, please contact your student’s principal – following school committee policy for the process of sharing concerns. If after reaching out to both of these individuals you still feel that your concerns have not been heard, please feel free to contact me at lchesson@oldsite.oldsite.oldsite.gdrsd.org or Katie Novak at knovak@oldsite.oldsite.oldsite.gdrsd.org.

COMMUNICATIONS FROM MY OFFICE:

One of the things we heard from parents was that the number of emails that they are now receiving is difficult for many parents to handle. As a result, I will no longer be sending home a nightly briefing, but instead will be posting them under a link on the district Remote Learning website. This will allow each parent to choose to access the nightly briefing or not, as meets their needs.

The days passed have not been easy. The days ahead may be even more challenging. Today I read a saying that I think sums it up for me – We are now faced with a most difficult choice. We can choose to go through this – which is an understandable choice.  Or we can show our children that we can also grow through this. Thank you for sharing some time during your evening with me.

Laura Chesson, Superintendent

 

Here’s the link for the PARENT/STUDENT website again: https://sites.google.com/oldsite.oldsite.oldsite.gdrsd.org/distancelearningopportunities/home