9-11-20

Dear LFS Families,

We've finally started ... and it's incredibly gratifying to see our students, albeit mostly online, after so many months of planning and preparation. In my many years of working in schools, I don't think I've ever felt quite the same level of anticipation and excitement simply to begin the school year! 

It's been a joy getting to know our nine Pre-K students over these past two days, and I look forward to Zooming into online classes to get to know each of our K-6 students and to experience our distance learning program in action. 

I'm grateful to the teachers and to all staff members for their hard work, creativity, and resilience. Our goals remain the same in this distance learning format: to engage your children in meaningful, interactive learning of new material and concepts, to ensure that they are connected to their teachers and to one another, and to uphold and sustain our Quaker values and our deep sense of community. 

To help with our community, I'll be working closely with Nancy Werner and with SCA Co-Chairs Christy Braken-Vasquez and Abby Martucci. Together we'll be looking both to adapt community events to an online format and to create new opportunities for us to be with one another in community throughout this unusual year. One such opportunity is this evening's Fall Supper Gathering, where we'll meet in large and smaller breakout groups to celebrate the beginning of school and to get to know one another. 

Given our desire to stay in close contact with families, I also will be offering weekly parent coffees, beginning next Friday, September 18 at 8:15-9:00AM. We'll use this time to share information and to address any questions or concerns you may have. Please join in and use this link to access each Friday's parent coffee.

On a final note, during our opening staff meetings last week, in addition to preparing for in-person Pre-K and online K-6 classes, we discussed the issue of race in this country. In keeping with our Quaker values, we asked ourselves not only how we felt about what is happening now in the context of our nation's legacy of systemic racism, but also what we feel we at LFS can and should be doing related to this topic ... with ourselves, our students, our families, and the wider community. We intend to seize this opportunity to model for our students a deep respect for all and to work toward changing the systems that raise some up at the expense of others. I welcome your thoughts as well about how we can best accomplish these goals. 

Please also mark your calendars with Thursday evening, September 24, when we'll host Back to School Night virtually. More details will be forthcoming. 

Thank you so much for your support and enthusiasm for LFS, and for trusting us with your children during this challenging time. 

I look forward to seeing many of you at this evening's Fall Supper!

Sincerely, 

Tr. Neal