Superintendent’s update on Rome City Schools
Hello everyone,
Let me begin by saying how proud I am of how everyone has handled this crisis. It has been quite a challenge that everyone has accepted. I truly appreciate your efforts.
I want to share the plans for Rome City Schools as we continue to deal with the current crisis and not being able to return to in-school instruction. Below is a summary of what we will be doing for school meals, our academic plans, the return of items to the school, and current plans for graduation.
School Meal Distribution
Changes
Beginning this week, we will be changing our times for school meal distribution to Monday and Thursday from 10:00 AM until Noon. Distribution will continue to be at each of the schools.
Academic Plan
Beginning April 27 there will not be any new graded assignments for students. All teachers will continue to reach out to students and/or parents weekly through recorded/live video sessions until May 8. There will be additional social-emotional lessons that parents may opt to do with their children.
From April 27 -May 8 students who are failing will have the opportunity to make up missed work and improve their averages. For students who have completed all of the previous assignments, they can choose to participate in the Rome Reads Challenge, the Math Masters Challenge, and/or the STEM Standouts Challenge. These assignments are not required. Details on these challenges and the associated prizes will be sent out by each school.
Materials Collection/
Distribution
Rome City Schools is tentatively planning to use the last two weeks of school,
May 11-May 22 to schedule times for parents and students to pick up items from the school, bring materials such as library books and Chromebooks back to the school, pick up report cards, and pre-register for the next school year. These schedules will be released later.
Graduation
We continue to monitor the guidelines of the Governor and local authorities to help determine plans for the Graduation of the Rome High School Class of 2020. We expect to be able to finalize those plans by May 1st. Please know that no final plans will be made until we see what happens with the Governor’s Executive Orders and the City of Rome’s Emergency Declarations. After discussing this situation with numerous people to include some of the members of the Class of 2020, we hope that we can have a formal ceremony on May 23rd but will have contingency dates pre-determined. If it is determined that we cannot have a formal graduation on May 23rd, we may have some type of virtual ceremony that day to be followed up with an actual ceremony on one of the contingency dates. We will be announcing the potential make-up dates for a formal graduation soon. We realize that there is a long list of events that have had to be cancelled this year for the Class of 2020. We, Rome City Schools, plan to do everything we can to make sure that a formal Graduation Exercise is not on that list of cancelled events, even if it means having it at a later date.
I want to thank everyone from students, parents, teachers, support staff, administrators, board members, community partners, etc. that have stepped up to the challenges we have faced these past few weeks. We will get through this together. Please stay safe and remain healthy.
Louis Byars Superintendent Rome City Schools
A Georgia State Trooper (right) walks the empty hallways of the Georgia State Capitol building during the 29th day of the Georgia Legislative session, Friday in Atlanta. Out of caution and in relation to the coronavirus, the Georgia General Assembly suspended the legislative session until further notice.