Thank you for the outpouring of love and support over the past few days. 2020 will easily go down as the most challenging and memorable year of my career. When local fires and property damage are not the greatest obstacle to successfully running a school, you know it has been a humdinger. That said, the difficulties of this year have only made our staff, our students, and our community stronger and up for the task of returning to campus after the Blue Ridge Fire. We are more capable of adapting and accepting change with gratitude for the opportunities it provides.
I am excited to share some good news. The plan for next week is to have all students return to campus in our Hybrid learning model. This means that any child who was attending class in-person 5 days a week can continue to do just that. Our goal is to avoid creating another disruption to learning in 2020. We want to provide continuity for our students and allow our families to resume their daily schedules, many of which have only recently been established. As a short-term solution to the loss of our tents, we are repurposing several spaces on campus as temporary classrooms. Typically, these rooms are utilized for other purposes and we hope to return them to their intended uses once our Outdoor Classrooms have been reestablished.
Our COVID team met with the tent company to review the events that transpired on Monday. During the meeting we shared our disappointment with the previous measures taken to secure the tents and required that significant improvements be made. The tent company is scheduled to remove any remaining debris from the blacktop tomorrow and will immediately build two new tent structures. These new tents will come with added safety supports and reinforced restraints. Through the efforts of our amazing staff, we will return desks and barriers to the new and improved structures on Monday. Barring any issues with this plan, we will return to our Outdoor Classrooms on Tuesday.
As we approach the end of the first trimester, we also need to prepare for the possibility of additional learners returning to campus. We recognize that with each passing week, your perspective and comfort level with your child returning to in-person learning may shift. As promised, we are offering our virtual learners the opportunity to return to campus in our Hybrid learning model at the start of the second trimester. To gain a clearer understanding of our numbers and allow our staff to properly prepare, we ask that every Kindergarten through Eighth Grade family complete the brief (one question) survey below by Wednesday, November 4th. We will continue to offer virtual learning through the end of the school year, should that be your preference.
In the words of Carrie Underwood, "Jesus Take The Wheel"~
Jeannette Lambert
Principal
