Good Afternoon, Students and Families,
We hope this message finds you safe and healthy. We have been diligently working throughout the summer on how to best begin school. The safety of our students, families, faculty, and staff is our highest priority.
This morning, our Board reviewed our proposal and unanimously voted on how we will move forward. We wanted to provide everyone with this brief update. Next week, we will provide more detailed information, but we wanted to communicate with everyone on where we'll be heading as soon as possible.
For our first quarter, we will be completely online. We will operate on our normal schedule for both our middle school and our high school. All classes will be live and facilitated by our teachers through Zoom, with a tentative start date of Monday, August 3 (our original start date). This approach is similar to yesterday's announcement from the Phoenix Union District, one of the largest districts in the country. Next week, the Arizona Department of Education and the Arizona Charter Board will provide us with additional guidance, which mainly focuses on how we measure time for online student engagement with course material.
We are preparing for the technological needs of students and families. We have purchased 60 additional Chromebooks and are working with our IT company on providing wireless hotspots for students who will need them. We will have details on this information -- and more -- next week.
Thank you for your support.
We look forward to providing a rich and engaging learning experience for students starting in August.
Respectfully,
Metropolitan Arts Institute Administration
Matt Baker, Head of School
Jenny Quinn, Student Services & Academics
Betsy Rosenmiller, Finance
Lisa Starry, Operations
John Perovich, Admissions and Student Life
