Dear Jeffco families,
We made it! One week of remote learning is be
hind us and I want to express my sincere gratitude and amazement to our students, our teachers and staff, and to you for helping us to succeed.
As a parent working from home this week myself, I know that this experience had its difficulties. From technological and software problems to real feelings of anxiety and concern over the virus and what it may mean for your families.
Still, I am so proud of the way Jeffco has risen to this challenge.
We had a plan in place for this situation. When the time came, there was no hesitation from our staff - they knew what they had to do and worked over this past weekend and on Monday to keep the learning going.
We also relied on the professionalism, creativity, and ingenuity of our team and staff to “figure this out” as we went through it. One popular social media post likened it to the Apollo 13 team from NASA engineering solutions to problems on the fly.
Now, we must also commit to learning and adapting over these next few weeks or longer. We are all growing and we must continue to offer grace and understanding to each other and to our children as we work through this disruption.
Looking ahead, there is much we still need to do. We have to find those students who are not engaging and make sure they continue to have a connection to school and are making progress. We have to work on serving all of our exceptional student groups, including our students with disabilities and those who are learning English. We will not have been successful in this effort unless every child has an opportunity to continue growing and learning.
My request of you over this coming spring break is take some time to care for yourselves and your families. This week has been stressful - on top of school and work commitments, the social isolation we are experiencing, mounting fears over this virus, and the unknown. But we will need you and our students to come back recharged and ready to go after spring break - so we all need to take whatever steps are necessary to be ready.
We have no idea how long this period of disruption may last. Our remote learning effort presents new challenges and stresses for all of us. Still, I am absolutely committed that it is the only right path for us and for our students. I believe that we will persevere and overcome this challenge and that is because we are all driven by love for our children.
Take care of yourselves and each other - and we will see you (virtually) on the other side of spring break.
Kind regards,
Jason E. Glass, Ed.D.
Superintendent & Chief Learner
Jeffco Public Schools
