Dear Families,
At 11:45am today, on Friday, March 13, 2020, Palo Alto Unified School District posted a new announcement on its website.
The announcement says:
Since the update provided yesterday evening, guidance from the Santa Clara County Public Health Department and Santa Clara County Office of Education has changed.
Schools will be closed to students beginning Monday, March 16 through the end of PAUSD’s regularly scheduled spring break (which ends Friday, April 10).
You can read the announcement in full here:
The Order of the Health Officer of the County of Santa Clara from March 13, 2020 says this:
Although gatherings of less than 100 persons are not prohibited if hosts or sponsors implement each of the COVID-19 risk mitigation measures, the Health Officer strongly urges hosts and sponsors to cancel all such gatherings.
You can read the announcement from Santa Clara Health Department here:
As of the writing of this email, eight states -- Ohio, Maryland, Oregon, New Mexico, Michigan, West Virginia, Virginia and Louisiana -- and some of the largest urban school districts in the country, including Los Angeles, Denver, Atlanta, San Diego, and Washington, D.C., are shutting down to prevent the spread of coronavirus.
We have been closely following the updates from Santa Clara County Health Department and from local school districts for the last several weeks.
At IYE, safety and health of our tutors, students, and parents is our top priority.
For this reason, starting Saturday, March 14, 2020, we will be moving all the lessons online.
We will still be conducting written and oral assessments from the office. We are also not cancelling any of summer camps. (We are actually going to spend some time saved from sitting in traffic going over student records and making individual recommendations to existing IYE students.) Should the schools extend the school year into the summer, we will move the dates of camps to align IYE camps with school calendars. We are also prepared to teach camps online, should circumstances demand it.
Currently, our tutors are at about 90% capacity, but we will consider requests for online group classes to make up for missed school classes. We are currently in touch with school tutors from local school districts to find out how they plan to operate during the shutdown and how we can be of assistance to IYE families.
We wish you and your family good health in the weeks ahead.
