Hello Tiger Family,
I wanted to thank all of you for your commitment to our students this year. I understand that our shift to remote learning today came as a surprise to many of you. I appreciate all of your flexibility and willingness to educate our students from home. We understand, and remember, that it is not ideal.
I’d like to talk to you about why we had to make this change. We have stated time and time again that our goal this year is to have 100% of our students learning in person safely 100% of the time. That is still our driving force.
That goal often runs up against our COVID-19 reality. Right now, with the staffing shortage we face, we cannot transport every child to and from school safely. That said, we are exploring several other options that would allow us to keep our buses rolling with a limited number of staff.
Monday, November 15 will be a 100% virtual learning day for all students. As of right now, we will be able to open to students on Tuesday, November 16, 2021.
The way we will accomplish our reopening on Tuesday is working to re-route our buses, and consolidating some of our routes. We will get back in touch Monday by 3p.m. with more details, including what time your students should be at their bus stop.
We are also asking any parent that is able to drive their family to school, please do so beginning on Tuesday and whenever we’re in-person as this helps reduce the number of students on our buses. I know that none of these changes are easy for families. But we hope that they will be temporary. So if you can help in the short term, we could use it.
While we do our best to get everyone to school safely, if your child has even one COVID-19 symptom, even mild ones, please keep them home. We’ve got a list of COVID-19 symptoms on our website. What we’ve heard from our partners at the Washington County Health Department is that the positivity rate in our county continues to climb. If you need to find a COVID-19 testing site, check out the state’s test site finder.
Doing our part helps keep more of our students learning in school.
Sincerely,
Dan Ward, Superintendent