APRIL 2020 NEWS & UPDATES | STPHILIPS1600.ORG
St. Philip’s Family and Friends,

Due to the evolving conditions of COVID-19 in Dallas County, we have changed how we operate as a school community. Effective Monday, March 23, all events, activities and non-essential programming has been suspended through May 4th . The purpose of the emergency declaration and change in operations is to provide an opportunity for social distancing to mitigate the spread of the virus. Dallas County is currently under a shelter-in-place order, which restricts citizens from leaving their homes unless absolutely necessary or have a job that is considered “essential.”

Closing our campus is imperative to ensure the health and safety of our entire community, especially while building operations perform essential work on our community's behalf. Building operations will complete a deep disinfection of our entire facility during this time.

Our Executive Leadership Team is assessing this crisis and our adjustments daily, along with the rest of the country. We will manage week by week assessments of all we are doing and its impact on students, external programming, and our surrounding neighborhood. However, please note that St. Philip’s is focused on the following PRIORITIES in the coming several weeks :

  1. DISTANCE LEARNING: To ensure ongoing and proper instruction for our 230+ students
  2. FOOD INSECURITY: Understanding we have a large community who depend on St. Philip’s for their daily nutrition, the Meals on Wheels and Aunt Bette’s Community Pantry will continue, however Kids Café has been temporarily suspended. 
  3. OUR PEOPLE: To ensure St. Philip’s can maintain our current faculty and staff to support the transition and implementation of Distance Learning AND our core programs
  4. COMMUNITY HEALTH: The Baylor Scott and White pediatric clinic located on our campus will remain open with modified schedules and service hours

In the midst of uncertainty everywhere, there lies complete certainty in our ability to transform the world through faith, education and service. Our school has turned to distance learning, including synchronous class meetings, posted learning materials and assignments, as well as Chapel service through Livestream and Facebook . We are grateful that we were able to issue Chromebooks to families that didn't have computers at home so that students can keep up with their lessons.We would also like to thank SMU students who are working with our kindergarten and 1st grade students on homework help and reading.

We would be remiss if we did not take a moment to thank our parents - we are grateful for your resilience, flexibility, and effort. You are doing a great job!
Dr. Flowers' Words of Wisdom

Dr. Flowers’ Words of Wisdom Blog is now up on our website. Please take a look at his latest inspirational and thought-provoking messages informed by faith, ministry in education, and community development. 

Resources for You and Your Family
Please see a list of resources regarding finances and COVID-19 topics such as unemployment, paying rent and mortgages, student loans, utilities, food assistance, resources for businesses and more provided by the City of Dallas on our website (City of Dallas Resident Resource Guide: March 23) . Please check this page regularly for updates.
How You Can Help
For those who have asked what you can do to support St. Philip’s – PRAY, VOLUNTEER, and DONATE . Our needs and that of those we serve continue and grow daily. Please consider signing up to volunteer (see information below) OR make an online charitable donation here to support our families. 

Aunt Bette's Community Pantry is one of the few pantries still operating during this coronavirus pandemic. In an effort to safeguard our staff, volunteers and clients, we have modified our operations in accordance with current social distancing guidelines. Our pantry has migrated to a "low touch" assembly and distribution model where we are providing pre-packaged boxes of staple foods for curbside distribution to our clients. This new temporary model enables us to reduce the number of individuals needed to serve our clients on a daily basis and to utilize a consistent daily workforce in lieu of our traditional volunteer model.  

The efficiency of the process allows us to condense our client appointments to Mondays and Tuesdays beginning the week of April 6th, while still enabling us to serve an increasing number of neighbors in need.  If you are able to commit to serve as part of this consistent workforce every Monday from 8am-12pm or every Tuesday from 1pm-5pm through this time of crisis, please email Angelyn Page .

Additionally, there is an opportunity for volunteers to help pick-up alternate sourced food from several locations of Snap Kitchen and the Super Target located at Skillman/Abrams. These sources provide many dozens of fresh meals for St. Philip's to distribute to our regular food pantry clients, to our elderly and to those needing emergency food. To utilize this great generosity from these food suppliers, we need volunteers seven days per week to pick up food from each of these sources and transport the food to Aunt Bette's Community Pantry and partner locations.  If you can transport packaged meals from these locations (no pantry client contact), please email us.

We are so appreciative for all of our volunteers, donors, and partners for your support during this pandemic. We are blessed to be considered an essential facility that is able to feed our community who needs it most. We wouldn’t be able to do it without you!

We prayerfully look forward to resuming our client choice shopping model and seeing you, our faithful volunteers, once again. We will notify you once we return to normal operations. 
Cancellations and Postponements for St. Philip’s School and Community Center Due to COVID-19

School Cancellations: 
April 8th Admissions Preview - Please view our virtual tour and learn more about our graduate profile until we can meet in person. If you want to schedule a call with our Director of Admissions or Admissions Coordinator, please send us an email.

Community Center Cancellations:
Senior Prom
Mother’s Day Store
Girls Night Out
Legal Clinic
Community Meetings

Academic Excursion Cancellations: 
3rd Grade- Sky Ranch 
4th Grade-Austin/San Antonio 
5th Grade-Civil Rights Trip
6th Grade-Grand Canyon
Families will be reimbursed for payments already made for these excursions. We are working on possibly offering these excursions at a later date.

Athletics Cancellations:
Soccer
Baseball & softball
Track & Field 
Lacrosse
All paid Athletic registration fees will be refunded.

Postponements: 
Job fair
Bingo, BBQ, and Blues - rescheduled for September 24, 2020
Please look for future emails and social media posts for other rescheduled dates in the spring.

For all the latest communications about our response to COVID-19 click here .
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