Dear Fairview Families,
A lot has happened in the past week. The CDC has issued a decision tree and draft guidelines for schools, and we’ve been able to begin broader discussions around summer child care and summer camp and re-entry plans for our schools. Our
“Reimagine School” Task Force
has met twice now, and has just begun preliminary discussions about what school might look like as we plan to open the 2020-2021 school year. We’ve met twice so far going over introductory information and sharing current information and guidance. The next phase of this work is to expand the task force (core team) into sub-groups including more teachers, support staff, parents, and students (where appropriate) to solicit even more thoughts and ideas. Point people for each group are as follows: EEC (Trish Moran), Gilles-Sweet (Matt Krivak), Mayer MS/Fairview HS (Chris Vicha). Over the summer, we have a huge task before us. Safety is, and always will be, our first priority. We seek to build a plan that is designed using collective wisdom and science, driven by data, and implemented with compassion. Details of the plan will be shared as soon as the plan comes more into focus. Your patience, trust, and support are deeply appreciated.
Earlier today, at the Governor’s press briefing, information was shared about the easing of restrictions on
school athletics
. This includes “skills training for all sports.” Our spring seasons were cancelled, but the Governor and his team have been working with the Ohio High School Athletic Association (OHSAA) to address preparations for fall sports. They have not said we will have fall sports yet. We don’t even know completely what restrictions we will see for opening school yet. However, they acknowledged that fall athletes are often training from the end of spring and through the summer to prepare for the fall season, and are trying to provide guidance on how that can still continue during this pandemic. We will be reviewing this guidance over the next several days and will communicate with coaches regarding restrictions and expectations. Stay tuned for more information to follow.
Here are just a
few
of the guidance documents we are using to focus our work on developing plans for a detailed and SAFE re-entry of schools and programs…
Class of 2020 Recognition
Over the past several months, our administration and teachers have been doing all we can to make our seniors’ experiences as “normal”, celebratory, and positive as we can with our given circumstances. Our hearts all break for what our seniors have had to sacrifice due to this pandemic. Collectively, the teachers, support staff and administration have been with most of these kids for the past 13 years and consider them as family as well.
I know that several other communities have done senior parades. Each community has different circumstances that must be considered. We have to approve all plans through the Fairview Park Police Department and the Cuyahoga County Board of Health. It is my understanding that due to the volume of traffic on Lorain Road and the need to cross it or travel on it multiple times with a considerably long train of cars, a “parade" would create too much congestion and potential accidents. We do not want to do anything that can potentially cause injury or harm to anyone. There have also been concerns raised about lack of equity and fairness for kids who don’t have cars or access to cars, concerns about being able to keep students separated and not joining up in cars, and keeping spectators appropriately separated (we’ve seen many examples in the news recently how commonly social distancing recommendations are not being followed). We’ve discussed alternate “parade” routes to attempt to avoid busy streets. This creates a myriad of other fairness and safety concerns. Also, in essence, an event of this nature violates the Governor’s call for gatherings of no more than 10 people.
There have been many of hours of discussions with a wide variety of people around this issue and the end result is that we are not able to have a senior parade. I’ve heard rumblings on social media of people just wanting to do it anyway on their own. This is ill-advised and strongly discouraged. We’ve done a variety of other things to recognize and congratulate our seniors as much as we can within our given limitations. I hope this one issue does not overshadow the extensive efforts that have been made to keep the focus on our students positive and celebratory. Thank you for your understanding.
We are excited for the commencement ceremony we are planning over the course of three days -- June 8, 9, and 10 -- and appreciate all the feedback and assistance from our teachers, staff, PTA, and community members as we strive to make this a memorable occasion for the class of 2020.
