Dear St. Francis of Assisi Parents and Guardians,
The day is finally here where our Kindergarten through Sixth Grade students return to campus! Work has continued throughout the weekend to ensure we are as ready as we can possibly be for Monday. Below are updates and reminders on important notes for tomorrow:
Air Filtration
We were officially approved to move forward with the air filtration project on the morning of Tuesday, September 8th! We quickly worked with our contractor to see if we could meet the minimum requirements by Monday, September 14 for our opening. They literally searched inventory all over Orange County and hired the crew to work on campus all day Saturday. While all of the components are not installed in every room, they were able to install filtration for every classroom so that we would meet the filtration requirements for using our air conditioning, including in the Fr. Seamus Glynn Center. I am happy to share that our Early Childhood/Kindergarten building has been fully completed with both filtration and air scrubbing. As parts arrive, work will continue over the next two weeks as we complete this project. Air conditioning will be used tomorrow!
Desk Shields
The teacher desk shields and the Kindergarten desk walls arrived on Friday and were installed throughout the day. However, the student desk shields are still on a truck heading to us from the East Coast. When we learned about this delay, we quickly ordered and built some temporary shields from Amazon but were only able to get enough to cover the desks for the First and Second grade students in the Seamus Glynn Center. We went back into the First, Second, and Third Grade classrooms and were able to reconfigure all desks to be six feet apart front to back and six feet apart side to side! In the Fourth, Fifth, and Sixth Grade classrooms, they are six feet apart front to back and three feet apart side to side, so the plastic barriers remain for the side to side protection. As soon as the plastic desk shields arrive this week, parents will be notified and shields will be installed right away in First through Sixth Grade classrooms and in the Seamus Glynn Center.
Drop Off and Pick Up
Please watch the videos we posted to review the details of our new drop-off and pickup for this week.
School Wellness Screening App
We heard from some families that they were concerned about using the new app for the Covid Screening in the morning, due to uncertainty about who is receiving their information. We signed an agreement with a programmer to create this app specifically for our school, where only the administrators on the account, St. Francis Administration, have access to the daily information submitted. We did this to protect the privacy of all of our families. Please have this downloaded and completed in the morning.
Masks
Just a reminder that masks need to cover the nose and mouth. Students in Third Grade and up are required to wear a mask. Only students with a doctor's note excusing them from wearing a mask may wear a face shield in those grades. The note must be submitted to the school office in advance. Students in Second Grade and below are strongly encouraged but are not required to wear a mask.
Eating Lunch
To maintain social distancing and allow students to remove their masks, we have divided up the school yard into zones for eating. For now, First, Fourth, Fifth, and Sixth Grade students will be able to eat at the lunch tables with disinfecting occurring in between grade level use. Kindergarten, Second, and Third Grade students need to bring a "beach blanket" or "towel" to use for sitting on the grass to eat their lunch. Kindergarten students can leave their blanket in the classroom until the end of the week but Second and Third Grade students will need to bring it with them daily when they come on campus. All lunch benches have been sprayed with 3 "red" designated seating locations to provide social distancing for the students while they are eating.
Please send your student with a brown sack lunch so the contents can be thrown away when they are finished. This reduces the opportunity for physical contact on lunch boxes. Any lunch boxes left on campus on Friday will be thrown away to maintain a clean and sterile environment.
Tech Support
Tomorrow is our first full day of courses, both in person and for our virtual students at home. The schedules have been posted and have also been distributed from teachers to their students.
Should you need technical support, please use our ticketing system by sending an email to: [email protected] and our IT staff will respond to you as soon as possible during the school day.
We pray for all of our administration, faculty, staff, and families as we work together tomorrow to safely begin our new year! Let us extend a lot of grace and patience throughout this first week!
Be safe and be hopeful,
Jeannette Lambert
Principal
