February 22, 2021

Dear Lower School Families,

As Mrs. Soderberg wrote in her letter last night, this week our faculty and staff members will receive their second COVID-19 vaccine doses. This has the potential for disrupting your children’s classes on Thursday or Friday should your children’s homeroom teachers be out with adverse reactions to it and we are unable to find enough substitute teachers. We will both email and call all parents by 6:30 a.m. if your children’s classes are impacted on Thursday or Friday. We will do everything we can to continue with school for your children, but please recognize our limitations should we have many faculty members having adverse reactions and unable to come to school. Please make sure you check your email on Thursday and Friday morning to see if your children’s homeroom classes are impacted.

There is no school for all Academy students (Explorers through Grade 12) this Wednesday, February 24th, when our February Faculty Collaboration Day will take place. However, the next Faculty Collaboration Day originally scheduled for just the Lower School on March 10th has been cancelled, so that will return to being a normal school day.

Parent-Teacher Conferences in the Lower School will be on March 4th and 5th. The school day will end at noon on Thursday, March 4th (lunch will be served), and there will be no classes on Friday, March 5th. Like the fall conferences, they will be conducted by Zoom and you are encouraged to sign up not only to speak to your children’s homeroom teachers but their co-curricular teachers as well. The sign-up for conferences opened on February 17th and closes at noon on Friday, February 26th. You are encouraged to sign up (view instructions) to see all of your children’s teachers.

The Parent Book Club was postponed again due to the snow day last Tuesday. We will now meet on Tuesday, February 23rd, from 7:00-8:00 p.m. via Zoom. Please complete this form if interested in joining (even if you had already signed up for the earlier date). We will be discussing chapters 1-5 of Best Friends, Worst Enemies by Dr. Michael Thompson.
 
This week’s parenting article is “Why You Should Teach Your Kids to Cook” from TIME magazine. It can be found using this link.

Upcoming Events
  • February 24: Faculty Collaboration Day (NO SCHOOL)
  • February 28: Black History Month Celebration of Excellence & Entrepreneurship
  • March 4: Parent-Teacher Conferences (SCHOOL ENDS AT NOON)
  • March 5: Parent-Teacher Conferences (NO SCHOOL)
  • March 11-12 and 18-19: Third Grade Wax Museum
  • March 20-April 4: Spring Break (NO SCHOOL)
  • April 5: School Resumes

Be well,

Head of Lower School