Dear Families:
Welcome to the first day of the 2021-22 school year. At our Prayer Assembly this morning we focused on our school year theme: “Take Courage” from the Gospel of John. As we continue to face challenges from Covid, we will work together to support one another in staying safe and healthy. It truly does call us to be courageous and put our faith in God, knowing the promise of his presence is with us always.
Seeing the smiling eyes of our students (behind their masks) was energizing. They are happy to be back together and though we were spread from wall-to-wall across they gym as we gathered this morning, we were together as an entire school for the first time since March of 2020. It is going to be a good year and our students are demonstrating flexibility and a willingness to adjust their expectations to have as “normal” a year as possible.
We encourage all who are eligible to have the vaccine to keep others safe. At this time, we are not allowing visitors or volunteers in the building until we verify that they are fully vaccinated. As we have gathered vaccine documentation on our staff, we are also requiring proof from all who plan to volunteer in any capacity. We will not keep any copies of medical records, but we ask you to email or bring your proof to the main office for verification. The record we are required to keep just identifies the name of the person and the date we received the record.
We are also mandated by the Dept. of Health to verify Covid vaccines that our age eligible students may have received (12 years and older). Though we can obtain the information via the state vaccine site, we have found that they are not current on entering the information and it will be easiest if you send documentation to the office. We are asking for a copy of official verification no later than September 24th.
Our entire school community was amazing last year in doing everything possible to keep our students and staff safe from Covid exposure. Let’s keep up the good work. Here are the current guidelines we are using as we start this year.
If your child is experiencing symptoms of illness, please keep him/her home. A student must be temperature free for 24 hours without fever reducing medications before returning to school. If other symptoms do not improve within 24 hours of onset, please have your child take a Covid test before returning to school.
Finally, our Back-to-School Night scheduled for September 16th cannot be an in-person event. We are disappointed but it is not prudent to have all of our parent community inside the building and classrooms as it would be impossible to maintain proper distancing. Each teacher will be holding two zoom sessions beginning at 6:30pm. Session one will be from 6:30pm – 6:50pm with the second session (repeat of the first session) for families with more than one student, starting at 6:55pm. Your child’s teacher will be sending you a link to their classroom zoom. I will send a recording of a general session that you can watch at your leisure.
Here’s to a great year ahead!
Mary
