Dear Northwood High School Community:
Our NHS Challenge Success Vision Statement states, “our school community values engagement, balance, and growth.” We hope to continue our collaboration with all members of the school community to see this vision through.
While the road continues to be long, we also found that we made small but significant strides in fostering the best possible learning environment for all our students. One of those changes was to move finals week before Winter Break, a practice that we are proud to continue this year. Our hope then, as it remains now, was and is to allow students and families to enjoy a true break, free from the need to prepare hurriedly for exams when returning to school in January, which traditionally had been the case.
We, as a staff, will do everything in our power to ensure a meaningful transition for all students when they return to finish the remaining days of the Fall semester, but please know that our foremost goal remains to provide as safe and healthy a learning environment as possible for our students and families. In that way, we sincerely believe that continuing with this change builds upon the positive momentum we have built over the past few years.
Here are a few things to note:
- This Friday, December 8th, we will run a special Tutorial/Survey Schedule. 9th and 11th grade will take the California Healthy Kids Survey. 10th and 12th graders will have an extra Tutorial while 9th and 11th graders will be released as they complete the survey. For any questions regarding the survey, please follow this link.
- On Thursday, December 14, the school will run a “Cocoa and Cram” session after school for all interested freshmen. Freshmen can grab some hot cocoa and study for finals outside the library.
- Monday, January 18 will be a normal EVEN day. We will then run Fall Semester Final Exams (schedule) over the next four days: December 19th – 22nd.
- Teachers will not be posting final exam grades until after the winter break. We ask that you respect their time by not contacting them in advance of or during the break regarding final exam grades.
- School will resume Monday, January 8th with an ODD day schedule.
- Thursday, January 11th, we will run a special schedule for our NHS State of the Student Day.
- Students will have a Semester Break on Monday, January 22nd. The first day of the Spring Semester will be Tuesday, January 23rd. We will follow a standard ODD/EVEN schedule for this week. However, we will begin in Advisement at 8:30 am on Tuesday, January 23rd.
- Final semester grades will post the afternoon of Wednesday, January 24th.
- While all of our students get free meals on campus, students who participate in the Free or Reduced-Price Meal Program are offered other support on campus. If you think you qualify, please consider completing a program application, OR if you are already approved and have not informed the school, please let us know. Please click here for more information.
Finally, as we prepare for the new semester, students looking to request a schedule change for the Spring may do so with the following link (link will open Monday, January 8th and close Friday, January 12th). Please remember that we will not accommodate any requests based on teacher or period preferences per NHS policy. Requests will be reviewed and final schedules will be posted Monday, January 22nd.
We thank you for your continued partnership and we hope you have a fantastic holiday season.