Updates and thank you!

[prin...@sethigh.org]

Dear Students, Parents, and Guardians,

• Thank you to the SET PA for putting on the picnic
• Attendance recovery through Help Desk
• Health Insurance information requests on CoreCompetency starting today
• Thriller Dance coaching on Saturdays at 10:00 AM in the garage
• No school on Monday, 9/22 (it's a random "snow day")

 

Thank you to the SET PA for putting on the picnic

Thank you to the SET PA for their heroic effort at making the picnic a reality.  It was so nice to meet the new families and to catch up with old friends.

To help make the planning for the event less stressful, to help with September heat issues, and to have less going on around Back to School Night, we're thinking that next year we can have the 9th grade parents join us for dinner during the 9th grade retreat so that those parents can start to build their network.  We can then separate Back to School Night from the picnic, and have the picnic later in the year when it's cooler and the SET PA is more established.  The pressure to have the picnic earlier was there because we wanted the 9th grade parents to connect with each other as soon as possible, so that's solved by having the parents join us at the retreat.  Let us know before next summer if you have any strong feelings either way about this.

Attendance recovery through Help Desk

Starting in July of this year, California State Law now allows schools to recover attendance by providing instruction outside of normal school hours.  We also get to bank those extra hours to make up for future absences.  We have always provided Help Desk to our students before school, during lunch, and after school. Those time periods are all considered to be outside of our normal instructional minutes so we can now use the time that the students spend in Help Desk to help offset absences.  It takes 6 hours of help desk to make up one day of an absence, so it will take awhile to recoup the time, but it's still worth it.  There's now a module on the CoreCompetency dashboard that shows the Help Desk history of a student, so if parents are ever curious to know how much extra support their student is getting, you'll see it there.  Students, that's also where you go to sign up for a Help Desk.  Space is never an issue, so signing up is only to help the teacher take attendance.  Please make sure to do this so that we can recover as much lost revenue as possible.  In case you're not aware, schools do not receive funding based on the number of students they have.  It's based on the number of students that actually come to school every day.  Not even excused absences qualify, so every day a student is not in school, that is money that the State takes away from us.  We're hopeful that between the 10 days of Virtual School and now the Help Desk attendance recovery, that all of our students can achieve 100% attendance.

Health Insurance information requests on CoreCompetency starting today

Another new law that is helping schools secure additional funding allows school officials to bill MediCal and private health insurance companies for specific types of interactions that help address mental health concerns.  We have certain staff members who spend a large portion of their day helping students with life's challenges, and we have the potential to bring in enough money to potentially support a full-time therapist.  There is no charge to the families for these services, there are no co-pays, and it will not have any effect on future insurance coverage.  This whole process is transparent to the families once we have the insurance information on file.

The first step is to collect the health insurance information for each of our students.  Then, starting in January, we'll be able to begin billing the insurance companies and bringing in additional revenue to the school.  Please let us know if you have any challenges while entering the requested insurance information.  We have tried to make it as easy as possible for you.  You'll see a message at the top of the CoreCompetency dashboard explaining where you are in the process, and hopefully it will all be self-explanatory.

Thriller Dance coaching on Saturdays at 10:00 AM in the garage

Mrs. McCurdy, known by many of the students as the sex-ed lady since she teaches Sex Ed to the 9th graders in the Spring of each year, is one of the San Diego Thriller Dance flashmob participants.  She teaches the Thriller dance to the community each year.  Her dream is to have all of the students, staff, and parents learn it with her.  She'll be happy if there's just one of you!  Parents and families are all welcome.  Come as often as you can between now and Halloween.  Saturdays at 10:00 AM in the SET garage.  This conflicts with Premiere League soccer, so I understand if you can't make it.  :)

 

Thanks everyone!

Dr. McCurdy