Dear SPHS Family and Friends,

It is hard to believe but October is here. We are now starting our fourth week of distance learning for the 2020-2021 school year. Our hope remains that we will be seeing our students soon, but I am very proud of the work our teachers and staff have done to meet the needs of our students.

By now, students are in full swing with their classes; they have been completing projects, working on assignments, and finishing tests. Parents are always encouraged to be checking Infinite Campus to check on grades, academic progress, and student attendance. We want all of our students to start strong so they can end the year strong!

Due to our schedule changes where students only take 4 classes each quarter, we will be done with a semester’s work of classes in early November. As a result, we have changed our Family/Teacher conference dates. Please see below for the new dates and times. We will also be holding our conferences via Zoom and parents will be signing up for a time to meet with each teacher. This is a change from our past conference schedule, but we hope it will make the process easier for families. Of course, you are always encouraged to reach out to our teachers whenever there are questions.

Our goal at SPHS is to ensure that all students are college and career ready when they leave our halls. To assist with students’ future goals, our counselors will be holding numerous student sessions throughout the year. At the end of September, our counselors held our annual WEF (Wisconsin Education Fair) for our Junior and Senior students. This was a great opportunity to meet with over 100 colleges, professionals, and military to learn about what they have to offer. Our counselors also meet with seniors to discuss the transition to post-high school. The topics include application submissions, transcript submission, ACT score submission, letters of recommendations, and scholarships. Please know the counselors are always available to help answer questions and parents are encouraged to reach out for any assistance.

As we head into October, there are a few key dates we want our families to be aware of:

October 8 Conferences from 4:00-8:00 pm by appointment

October 9 Conferences from 12:30-3:30 pm by appointment - NO SCHOOL for students

October 14 PSAT Test (information will be coming soon)

November 5 End of 1st Quarter

November 6 NO SCHOOL for Students

November 9 First day of 2nd Quarter (B day classes start)

We are looking forward to continuing the great start to the year and we want to thank you for being such a great partner with the schools. We will continue to communicate any changes to distance learning as we move forward. As always, please let me know if you have any questions.

Kind Regards,

Keith Nerby, principal

#SPcardinalpride

Help with Chromebook Issues or Request for Devices

Please use the links below if you are in need of chromebook repair or a hot spot.

Student Technology Issues/Requests (Incident IQ)

Incident IQ: Technology Support Request Tutorial

Directions for Powerwashing Chromebooks

SPASD Technology Tutorials Website

October 1, 2020

Families:

I realize that the issues with your child’s HP device have added frustration to an overall great start to the school year. I appreciate your patience and grace as we work to solve this problem, and I believe we are moving forward with a workable solution. I want to express my deepest gratitude to the many proactive and positive IT professionals in our community that rallied to investigate the processor issues. It truly takes a village - especially in times such as these.

Many of your children received a new HP Chromebook this fall. Many of you have also experienced issues with these devices when connecting to video conferencing tools such as Zoom. The problem is a result of both significant upgrades to video conferencing software and the processor in the device. We have worked closely and directly with HP and Google developers to isolate the problem and identify solutions. As a result, Google recently pushed a new update to Chromebooks. We tested the update with high school students this week, and the results were promising.

While updates typically happen automatically while the device is connected to the internet, I want to let you know that you can seek and download the update to your student’s device. Google has put together this site to walk you through next steps with manual updates. While the update would eventually happen automatically, for the sake of time, it is my recommendation that you attempt to manually update your student’s chromebook following the steps found in this link. We will be assessing the fix through teacher feedback this coming week and will be reporting back to HP and Google. Please note that home wireless networks will not be improved with this update, only the performance of the individual device.

Manually updating your Chromebook link

Regards,

Curt Mould

Director of Digital Media, Innovation and Strategy

Great news! Math League is happening this year! Our first meet is on October 28, and it will be virtual. Further meets are Dec 9, Feb 3, and Mar 17. Join in for any or all meets. Students have joined for many reasons over the years, but they always agree it is an interesting challenge and a fun time!

To see previous competitions and be alerted to all Math League news, please join the Google Classroom site: LS7SWIR. Also feel free to email Ms. Konz at bakonz@sunprairieschools.org with questions.

If ever there's a year for a club focusing on safety and security in the cyber world, this is it! Sun Prairie's CyberPatriot team is entering its 3rd year of competition in the Air Force Association's Cyber Education Program. No prior experience necessary - just a desire to learn. The program is designed to learn as you go. Competitions are happening virtually this year. Join Google Classroom vm6ufy2 to learn more and gain access to Zoom links for club meetings. Our first meeting is Thursday, Oct 1, at 3:30, but please feel free to join next week or reach out to Ms. Konz (bakonz@sunprairieschools.org) with further questions. Happy computing!