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May 1, 2020
Good Afternoon:

I hope you are all doing well and staying safe and healthy. Here are a few updates we wanted to make sure you were all aware of this week.

First of all, I wanted to remind you that each building will be working with families/students to arrange a time for picking up all personal items at school. This will happen sometime during the week of May 11th through the 15th. Someone from your child’s school will be reaching out to you to schedule a time to get these personal belongings. We will make sure we are practicing proper social distancing and following all protocols regarding COVID-19 throughout this process.

Secondly, we have set two potential dates for prom and graduation. If we are able to gather larger groups together in June, we will hold prom on June 20th and graduation on June 28th. If the restrictions are not lifted until July, we will hold prom on July 18th and graduation on July 26th. The exact time for prom has not been determined yet, but graduation will be held at CHS at 12:30 and at WDHS at 2:00. If we are unable to hold a traditional graduation ceremony on either of the dates selected, we will hold a virtual ceremony on July 28th. If we don’t have a traditional graduation ceremony, we will not have prom either.

Grading and report card information was communicated to high school parents in weeks past; students will receive a CR (credit for the course with no official grade attached) for all Term 3 courses. This update is related to middle school and elementary (PK-5) report cards. In typical years, elementary families would receive an end of the year report with communication regarding student's end of school year data regarding meeting or not yet meeting standards. Families will not receive this document this year because they received the most up-to-date data at Spring parent-teacher conferences just a week or two before the closure of our schools. Middle school students (6-8) will also receive a CR (credit for the course with no official grade attached) for all Term 3 courses just as our high school students. We will not send out paper copies of these reports, as these families also just received them at their last parent-teacher conferences. Thank you for understanding our desire to have no student GPA, transcript, or record be negatively impacted by this COVID school closure situation.

We are still waiting for guidelines from the state regarding our return to learn plan for 2020-2021. We do anticipate that one component of the plan will include how we will provide distance learning to all of our students in the event of another long school closure. As we continue to plan and prepare for next year, we will be sending out a short survey to all families to determine their access to technology and Wi-Fi. Look for the survey to come out early next week.

Thank you for your support and patience through this challenging time. Take care of yourself and your family.


Rick Colpitts, Superintendent
Western Dubuque Community School District