Dear Community,

As we head into this Thanksgiving holiday weekend with the COVID-19 pandemic still raging around our country and in our community, I continue to be thankful to all of our teachers, our support staff and our administration, who are doing the hard work of educating our students in the safest way possible.

Everyone has had to make major adjustments, whether it’s our students learning how to participate in online schooling; our teachers trying to teach to half a class that is attending in person while the other half is attending online; or our parents, trying to balance their own work while assisting their children at home. It certainly has not been easy for anyone and it has been a testament to our community’s resilience.

As I write this, our schools are once again going to be virtual instruction only from November 23 until December 6 as per the November 13 order from the Montgomery County Board of Health. The goal is to protect our community and the students, teachers and staff in our district by stemming the number of infections that potentially could occur post the Thanksgiving holiday gatherings.

While many of our families had chosen for their students to remain fully virtual at the end of our first marking period (28%), the remainder had just started to return in hybrid form. Students were physically in school two to three days per week, and had to adhere to social distancing measures such as wearing a mask and maintaining six feet of distance from other people. Nonetheless, it was a relief for many to see students back in our school buildings. We certainly understand these families’ disappointment in having to revert to virtual instruction at this time. However, we emphasize that this mitigation strategy is intended to help us stay open in the long run. It is our hope that during this two week period, that if everyone does what is necessary to help tamp down the positivity rate in the North Penn School District (NPSD) and Montgomery County, it will allow us to resume hybrid instruction on December 7 for those students and families choosing to do so. Information regarding the 11/23 to 12/4 Virtual Learning/COVID-19 School Closure can be found here.

That said, many people struggle with mental health issues during the holiday season under the best of circumstances. With the pandemic this year, these issues have been and will continue to be exacerbated. It is important to the North Penn School Board (NPSB) of Directors and to the administration that we do all that we can to offer mental health support to our students and families. As per an update from our assistant superintendent Dr. Todd Bauer at our most recent school board meeting, students will soon be able to access an extensive resource with opportunities for them and their families to get services for a variety of needs. I encourage you to review the following documents which address some of these concerns:

Counselors will be reaching out to our families. We will also be engaging the Hanover Research Company, the company that conducted an extensive climate survey for us two years ago. The goal is to gauge how NPSD is doing with this hybrid model in regard to transportation to arrival procedures to the cafeteria and technology. This survey was scheduled to be conducted the first week of December. However, due to the return to virtual mode this week, we will be postponing this new survey until after we are able to have students return to school.

And finally, we have our Safe2Say Something violence prevention program that was implemented last winter. If you or someone you know is experiencing an issue, please have them reach out for help.

On behalf of the North Penn School Board of Directors, I wish you and your families a safe and healthy Thanksgiving holiday. It will undoubtedly be different from what we are used to, but as we have been saying since the pandemic began, we will get through this together, because we are North Penn Strong.

Sincerely,