Although we are having to shift a significant portion of our program to an at-home, online format, the cost of delivering a UHS education has not changed.  Ensuring that we remain in a strong position regarding compensation of our faculty and staff, cleaning and maintaining our campus, and supporting the necessary technology and administrative functions of the school, requires that we continue to charge the tuition that was published for the 2020-21 school year.  

To respond to anticipated increase in the requests for financial assistance, the Board of Trustees and administration increased the tuition assistance budget by 10% this year.  We want all of our students and their families to be able to afford a UHS education in these trying times.  Please direct all inquiries to Director of Admission and Financial Aid Nate Lundy at: Nate.lundy@sfuhs.org.

We will be assessing the status of additional fees and the possibility of rebates once we determine which fee-based activities will not be taking place. We will be communicating to our families regarding fees at the end of the first two quarters.
 

PREPARING OUR CAMPUS – TODAY AND GOING FORWARD

UHS will follow the guidelines of the San Francisco Department of Health and the CDC to prepare the campus facilities for in-person use. Considerations include, but are not limited to:

• Signage will be placed throughout campus to inform students and adults of safety protocols.
   
• Cleaning
  • All cleaning supplies used will adhere to CDC recommendations.
  • All public spaces will be disinfected daily by a fogging machine.
  • All classroom/office spaces used during the day will be disinfected daily by a fogging machine.
  • Custodial teams will follow a daily schedule of cleaning and wiping down heavily-trafficked surfaces.
• All school spaces will be set up and clearly marked to ensure proper physical distancing. This will be done through a combination of removal, physical placement, clear marking of furniture not to be used, as well as physical barriers such as plexiglass shields. Access and use of restrooms will be managed to provide physical separation.
   
• All classroom/student spaces and offices will have PPE and safety supplies including: hand sanitizer, disinfectant wipes, protective masks and gloves.
  • Face Shields will be provided to each student and adult on campus, which will be used in addition to face coverings.
  • Hand sanitizer dispensers will be placed in every hallway, stairwell and public space.
  • Additional hand washing stations will be set up in key places on campus
• Food Service
  • Limited pre-packaged food will be available for purchase.
  • Physical distancing will be required for food pick-up and purchase.
  • When possible students will eat meals in an outdoor space.
  • Additional outdoor seating will be available.
• Ventilation
  • HVAC systems will be run at all times during the school day and filters will be changed at a minimum of once per month.
  • Where possible, windows will remain open to allow for fresh air.
  • Portable air filters will be utilized for all additional spaces.

Our Partnership with One Medical
We are enrolling all faculty, staff, and students (covered in our current fee structure) in One Medical to provide our students, faculty and staff with a seamless screening, testing and comprehensive healthcare experience in the wake of COVID-19 and beyond through its advanced primary care model.

• UHS faculty, staff, students and dependents will be enrolled in One Medical’s membership program, inclusive of its digital health services, in person care, and testing services.
   
• Membership will include One Medical’s return-to-school/work features such as COVID app-based screening, specimen collection, testing facilitation, test reporting, and patient care follow up through virtual and in-office care as needed.
   
• One Medical will provide specimen collection and integrated testing services at existing testing sites and will work closely with UHS to reassess testing frequency and modalities as things continue to emerge.
   
• One Medical membership includes mental health support such as virtual and in-person group visits billed under standard commercial insurance programs. Additional behavioral health coaching and therapy services are available for an additional fee.

In order to better facilitate on-line learning, and to accommodate small-cohort, on-campus learning when it is safe to do so, UHS has transitioned to a modified quarter/semester system for the 2020–21 school year. Students will take up to 3 classes at a time, and these classes will meet, virtually or in person, up to four times per week. Each 75-minute class will include a combination of synchronous (Zoom or in-person) and asynchronous, self-guided work. At the end of each quarter, students will receive a transcript “semester” grade for these three courses. In the first quarter, students will take semester-length courses in periods 1, 2, and 3. In the second quarter, they will take semester-length courses in periods 4, 5, and 6.  

We have created the following schedule  to accommodate a number of variations of cohort size and days on campus, so that we can nimbly move between response levels as circumstances allow. Most weeks, Wednesdays will be at-home days to allow for virtual community meetings, club meetings, and additional time for cleaning. 

Click HERE for a sample schedule.

Two clusters from each grade level will form a cohort, labeled with an element name. Should the pandemic be under sufficient control to allow limited on-campus, in-person learning (level 2), students from the ‘Earth’ element (for example) will be permitted to come to school on Mondays; students from the ‘Water’ element on Tuesdays, and so on. This allows for tiny in-person cohorts and strongly limited cross-cohort mixing - the average class size will be 4 students, and students will mix with typically just 12 other students per quarter. Students not on campus will still participate online. If a family doesn’t think it is safe to send their child to school during their cohort day, that student is welcome to learn from home. Cohorts will be swapped at the quarter to allow for broader socialization. Cohorts can be increased in size if pandemic conditions permit (level 1) - for example, a student would come Monday & Tuesday, but not Thursday & Friday.  

Assessment
One of the challenges educators face in this pandemic is our inability to provide professionally supervised and proctored exams in an equitably controlled environment. However, our teachers have spent several years thinking deeply about assessment, and are well-positioned to offer compelling feedback and accurate assessment of student progress and achievement even in the absence of traditional testing.  

Our guiding principles are as follows:

• We should not put parents in the untenable position of having to proctor or supervise exams at home, and we do not think it is safe or wise to bring students to campus solely for the purpose of isolated testing.
• Although honor-code testing exists in many colleges, research shows it is simply too much to ask high school students to navigate the moral peril involved in high-stakes testing “on their honor.” 
• Our small class sizes and intensive format allow for an integrated one-on-one feedback conversation to take place between the teacher and each student. This rich conversation consisting of feedback and student growth unfolds over weeks, and provides ample evidence of growth and achievement.
• Our continued pivot to increased student agency and more authentic, project-based work means that students are already emerging from our classes not just with a number and letter grade (i.e., “88.5%, B+”) but with a portfolio of compelling work that will support deeply personalized letters of recommendation and college application materials. The COVID pandemic brings into sharp relief the inadequacy of hairline numerical comparisons of students based on standardized testing. 
• In the Spring of 2020, we employed a “double-A” policy to ensure that work submitted in the emergency distance learning period in the 4th quarter would be assessed at an A- or A grade for students in good standing. With time for teachers and families to prepare, we will revert to our former grading practices for the 2020-21 school year. 

It can be useful in a college-preparatory curriculum to expose students to traditional testing environments, and many teachers will continue to do so in some form. We have asked teachers to ensure that such testing is understood to be relatively low-stakes, open-note and expansive in allotted time. We can reasonably expect students to not communicate with one another or with anybody else during that time period. Our core values as a school include both Agency and Integrity, and we need students to have opportunities to explore their own growth in these directions, as long as doing so doesn’t compromise the integrity of our transcript and diploma. 

Homework
In order to preserve as much essential learning as we can, we have temporarily modified our homework requirements. Teachers are asked to provide no more than 45 minutes of homework due per class period, with the exception of homework due for the Thursday (“Air”) period, when up to 75 minutes can be expected. No homework will be due Wednesday, on the weekends, or at any time other than during a class period. This means students will have 210 minutes (3.5 hours) of homework per class per week. With three classes, each meeting for 75 minutes, four times per week, the “nominal load” for a single course (including both class time and homework time) is 8.5 hours per week, and for three courses, 25.5 hours per week.  

Absences
We will continue to take synchronous attendance each period, via Zoom or equivalent. Students must not come to campus when sick, and students should not participate in online learning if resting up and getting healthy is the safer and healthier option. Should a student miss more than 20% of a semester-length class for any reason, including illness or quarantine, we have a process whereby students can petition for credit, and the Dean of Teaching & Learning and the Dean of Students will work with the family to generate an equitable outcome. We ask that parents keep a line of communication open with Assistant to the Deans Carol Coles (carol.coles@sfuhs.org). 

For the 2020-21 school year, acknowledging the enormous cognitive load required to manage school while largely or fully distance-learning and the need for the rapid and deep formation of relationships for new members of our community, students will take two or three classes at a time. 

These intensive classes are designed to run fully online but allow for cohorts of varying sizes to come to campus should conditions permit (a “hybrid” model). Courses will run for an academic quarter (roughly 8 weeks) and will come together four times per week on Monday, Tuesday, Thursday, and Fridays. In total, students will have 5 hours of class time and 3.5 hours of homework per course per week. Wednesdays are reserved for non-academic programming, community-building, and more flexible time, including day-long symposia devoted to topics like health, wellness, equity & community.  
 
There are several compelling reasons for this change to our schedule and program. Most importantly, it allows us to limit cohort-mixing should we determine it is safe to bring students and teachers to campus. Reducing the number of class cohorts a student mixes with by a factor of 2 reduces our chance for a COVID outbreak by a factor of 4. Also, when students work from home in relative isolation in an online format, the cognitive and executive load involved in managing the expectations of 5 or 6 courses proved too much to handle. Finally, we can achieve rapid and actionable identification of students who are struggling due to the conditions of the pandemic in particular. 
 
Our teachers are trained in best practices in curriculum design and development, instructional pedagogy, and the extension of these to the online learning environment. Teachers have spent their summer in professional development courses that will allow them to provide a common and manageable student experience in their courses. We have formed a dedicated instructional team to support teachers in the transition to hybrid learning, and this team has met with teachers in cohorts over the summer.  
 
In keeping with modern practices, all of our courses are “backwards-designed,” meaning that we start with the essential questions and core learning (“enduring understandings”) of the topic. These are the skills and habits of mind students will hold on to decades from now, even if they forget the everyday details of the course. After this, we design the learning goals/outcomes for the course. These outcomes are more temporal and provide the “content meat” of the course that students will grapple with in order to develop their longer-term strengths. Then we design our assessment mechanisms: how will we know a student has successfully learned what they need to know? Finally - and it is important that this comes last - we design all of the lessons and feedback mechanisms for the course. 
 
The schedule we have created will allow for significantly more instructional content and opportunities for teacher and peer connection than did our emergency distance learning plan in the 4th quarter of the 2019-20 school year. It also creates hour-length “meetings periods” embedded in every school day to attend teacher office hours and get help without worrying about conflicts with athletics practices.
 
Performing and Studio Arts and Laboratory Practices
There are certain types of learning that are more heavily impacted by a move toward remote learning. Among these are the fine arts (drawing and painting, ceramics, and other skilled arts that require in-person, hands-on instruction), the performing arts (jazz ensemble, chorus, theatre), and laboratory sciences. Our relevant departments have spent the summer retooling their curriculum to meet this intense challenge. Responses vary by discipline, but include at-home learning materials (for example, a set of common materials students can use at home so they can perform physics experiments), a shift to visual and audio recording, and the use of any available on-campus time to work in intensive cohorts with very small teacher to student ratios (as low as 4:1). On-campus singing and the use of wind instruments are not allowed at this time.

Field Trips
Class field trips are currently suspended. Should the health situation allow, we will revisit the possibility of small and safe field trips.
 

The health and safety of our community remains our highest priority. The following is an explanation of health screening and other safety measures that we have put in place.
 
Students, faculty and staff will enter and exit campus through one of three designated entrances to provide supervised, sufficient points of access to have their health screen checked and to ensure hand sanitation upon entry. All other entrances will not be accessible, except for emergency purposes or for facilities use. 

• Washington Street Entrance to Middle Campus.
• Washington Street Entrance to Lower Campus
• South Campus Entrance. 
• THE JACKSON STREET ENTRANCE IS RESERVED FOR APPROVED VISITORS ONLY

All students, faculty and staff must carry their entry card/school ID, which will be color coded for the day your cohort is on campus.

Symptom Screening
All students, faculty and staff will use the UHS-approved symptom screening app whose screening checklists are consistent with public health guidance. We are partnering with One Medical to provide support and administration of these systems.
 
Support for Students/Employees with Symptoms
Students or employees who develop symptoms of illness while at school will be isolated in a safe and secure space in Upper Campus. Our partner, One Medical will be on hand to support the school, our employees and their parents and guardians with considerations for care and testing as well as advise parents of sick students regarding  CDC/SFDPH criteria to discontinue home isolation.

Students will remain in isolation with continued supervision and care by a Health and Safety Monitor until they can be transported home or to a healthcare facility. Students and employees must be picked up by a designated parent/guardian through the Jackson Street entrance.
 
How We Are Asking You to Partner with Us
Our healthy school ecosystem relies on students, families, and faculty/staff adhering to health guidelines outside of school as well as when on campus. We ask that you continue handwashing, physical distancing, mask wearing and that you avoid large crowds. If we do not practice these safety measures, it will add to the necessity to close our campus. 
 
If a student has active allergy symptoms, the student MUST stay home. You are permitted to medicate for allergy symptoms, but not for fever reduction. Also, in coordination with SFDPH, all students and families who have traveled outside the state should quarantine for 14 days before the start of school. Any student who leaves the state and returns at any point of the year should stay home for 14 days before returning to school.
 

ASM, Cluster and Club Meetings
Clusters will continue to meet in a designated slot on Aether days (typically Wednesdays). We will provide some structure in the form of guided activities, projects, and specific lessons from previous HD programming focused on identity-development and integrating into the UHS environment, especially to support the building of community amongst our younger students. Clusters will also be able to interact with, compete against, and play with other clusters in periodic challenges and in ASM.

The bulk of our community time will be spent in clubs and affinity spaces. While these spaces have always served as catalysts for connection, learning, and growth, they will become even more important this year. 

Our Student Council will work to represent their peers’ needs and create grade-level and school-wide community programming (e.g. Welcome Week, regular movie and game nights, class challenges, etc.).

Community Engagement will continue to explore and provide virtual and low-risk options for our students to engage with our own community and communities in need in the Bay Area. Social Issues classes have moved to Canvas in the form of asynchronous but paced lessons.

Athletics
On July 20th, The California Interscholastic Federation (CIF) announced the  postponement of the fall interscholastic season to the winter with a plan to commence in December 2020. Because there will not be a fall interscholastic season, the UHS athletic and PE department is developing a robust physical education program to meet the needs of all of our students during the first two quarters.  If we can host portions of the program in-person, we will offer programming aligned with our existing cohorts. 

All students will be receiving specific information about the upcoming year in athletics and physical education from the UHS Athletic and PE Department in early August.
 
Orientations and Retreats
We will follow SFDPH guidelines regarding grade-level retreats and orientations. It is our hope that we can host some outdoor activities at Paul Goode Field, Crissy Field, and nearby hiking trails that will allow multiple cohorts to be in those expansive spaces at one time while maintaining all mask-wearing and physical distancing protocols. We will partner with Aspire Adventures to safely plan and execute these activities. 

There will be a mandatory two days of virtual orientation for all students that will provide all necessary information to launch the year.
 
Mental Health Support
We are committed to the health and wellbeing of our students and will provide additional staffing to augment our current counseling services. Individuals, affinity groups, and special interest clubs will have access to this additional resource when their needs intersect with the topic of or need for mental and emotional health support.