Old Rochester Regional High School cancels finals

Mar 31, 2020

For Old Rochester Regional High School, strategies to deal with the unexpected leave of at least a month and a half to prevent the spread of coronavirus in the community will include cancelling finals, modifying the term schedule and grading term four on a pass/fail system. 

The high school will plan to get more rigorous with its schedule on April 6, providing both lessons at a set time and opportunities for learning outside of those lessons. Students will be held accountable for these classes in their grades. The school will send out a schedule this week that will detail when those two learning opportunities will happen. 

Old Rochester Regional High School will look to wrap up Term 3 on April 3 and begin term four on April 6. For Term 3, students will mostly be assessed on their work through March 13, when school let out. However, if teachers believe that grades through March 13 do not accurately reflect their students learning they may assign an extra project, which should be completed by April 9. 

For Term 4, the school has outlined two possibilities based on whether students return to school on May 4, as currently planned. If students are able to return to classrooms, Term 4 grades will be an average based upon virtual work from April 6 to May 1 and numeric grades from May 4 to June 24. The school has cancelled finals to use the time that would be spent on the tests as additional classroom instruction time. 

If students cannot return to the classroom on May 4, grades for the year will be determined based on the first three terms, with the final term being graded on a pass/fail system.