Dear Parents and Guardians of our children,

We need your support.  Your child needs your support.  We need to make sure that your child is eating healthy at home, getting sufficient sleep, and coming to school on time.  Your child needs a safe place to study, free of interruptions from the television, video games, and truculent siblings.

We need you to make sure that they are doing their homework.  Every child is given an agenda.  In every class the teachers have the students write down their homework.  We need you to go over their assignments with them every night to make sure their homework is being completed.  If students don’t do their homework, then many of our efforts are going to fail.

We need to you be aware of your child’s grades.  Every week we send home a newsletter to communicate the affairs of the school.  There is a progress report on every second newsletter.  You need to be aware of how your child is doing, encourage them on their good work, and find solutions for their shortcomings.  Every guardian has access to their child’s grades and the results of every class assignment via the Internet through Powerschool. Every parent should learn how to access these grades and view them weekly, if not more, on the Internet.

Without the proper support, the high school years can be most difficult for young children.  At Rowe-Clark Math & Science Academy we do everything in our power to ensure our children have a safe place to learn where discipline and good work are rewarded.  To allow our children to succeed in school, they need the same structure and support at home.

Respectfully,

Joseph L. Tenbusch
Principal

Notice about Internet Content Filtering

Most of the computer infrastructure at Noble Network campuses has been funded with major assistance from a federal program called E-Rate that assists urban and rural schools and libraries with telecommunication costs. One qualification requirement is that we comply with the 2001 Children’s Internet Protection Act (CIPA) which states:

• In order to receive discounts for Internet access and internal connections services under the universal service support mechanism, school and library authorities must certify that they are enforcing a policy of Internet safety that includes measures to block or filter Internet access for both minors and adults to certain visual depictions.  These include visual depictions that are (1) obscene, or (2) child pornography, or, with respect to use of computers with Internet access by minors, (3) harmful to minors.  An authorized person may disable the blocking or filtering measure during any use by an adult to enable access for bona fide research or other lawful purpose.
• A school administrative authority must certify that its policy of Internet safety includes monitoring the online activities of minors.
• In order to receive discounts, school and library authorities must also certify that they have adopted and implemented an Internet safety policy addressing (i) access by minors to inappropriate matter on the Internet and World Wide Web; (ii) the safety and security of minors when using electronic mail, chat rooms, and other forms of direct electronic communications; (iii) unauthorized access, including so-called "hacking," and other unlawful activities by minors online; (iv) unauthorized disclosure, use, and dissemination of personal information regarding minors; and (v) measures designed to restrict minors' access to materials harmful to minors.

We have had an Internet filter in place to protect our students from inappropriate and distracting web sites since February 2000. In September 2003 we switched our filtering to an online version provided by our Internet service provider the Illinois Century Network. We are currently in the process of converting to filtering through our firewall for more powerful and flexible protection of student access. Throughout we have always blocked access to web sites in the following categories: adult search engines, alcohol, anonymizers, anonymizing utilities, chat, criminal skills, drugs, gambling, gambling related, game/cartoon violence, games, hacking, hate speech, humor, instant messaging, malicious sites, nudity, P2P/file sharing, phishing, pornography, profanity, provocative attire, school cheating information, sexual materials, spyware, tobacco, violence, weapons, web ads, and web phone.

This notice is to inform parents that we are enforcing a safe Internet use environment in the interest of teaching our students to tap the educational power of the Internet. If you have questions or comments, please contact Allen Ramsier at aramsier@noblenetwork.org.