Thank you for attending November conferences last night and today. Connecting with so many families has been very inspirational and extremely valuable.

We would like to thank you for your support as we navigated a new approach to conferences for grades 7, 8, and 9. Trying something new for the first time always presents with some challenges and we are grateful for your patience and grace.

As you will recall, the purpose of providing an open format for Junior High conferences was to increase fair and equitable opportunities for parents/guardians to connect with teachers. For many, navigating the online booking system presents complications and often barriers to attending conferences. Another important piece to note is that most of our Grades 7-9 teachers teach more than one core subject and more than one grade, with a workload of 150+ students each. Typically, in a 3.5 hour conference block with 10 minute scheduled bookings, each teacher would only see 21 families, at most.

Overall, the new format was a success. Last night, many of our teachers met with 40+ families! The complimentary teachers also shared that they saw many, many more families than they would have with scheduled conferences. We acknowledge that there are some things that can improve for next time and we have been grateful for the positive and negative feedback that we’ve received. Thursday nights are always the busiest portion for conferences and some of our teachers realized very quickly the importance of monitoring time. All of our teachers did their very best to keep conversations moving along at a reasonable pace.

We would also like to thank you for maneuvering around our painting crews and their equipment. The painters continue to do an incredible job with giving our school a facelift. You may have noticed some of the new and fresh wall colors, along with the new cultural and non-cultural signage in the halls and open areas. Painting is moving along faster than originally planned and is expected to finish late January.

Thank you, once again, for your understanding, flexibility, and support.