Dear Parents/Guardians of School District No. 83 Students,
Due to the high level of interest from parents/guardians about expanding our distance learning program to include the younger grades, we are sending out a form to gather more information from interested families.
Please fill out a separate survey form (link is at the bottom of this email) for each of your students that are interested in attending the Education Outreach Program. Students who are in grades 10-12 do not need to fill out this form. They can follow our regular process through our website at https://eop.sd83.bc.ca/ .
Although we completely understand peoples’ concerns (especially for those families who have immunocompromised members), we feel it is very important to emphasize some points for you to consider:
- We will be continuing to take significant steps to maintain the safest environment possible for students to be able to attend our schools including reducing contact opportunities.
- It is our opinion that the best way for the vast majority of students to learn is in a classroom setting where face to face instruction with qualified educators is occurring. Not only does important academic learning take place in the classroom but very important social development also takes place.
- If your family does decide to choose some form of online learning, staying connected through our Education Outreach Program (Distance Learning) will help facilitate the transfer of your child(ren) when they are ready to return to the regular school program.
- Students who enroll in distance learning programs can return to the regular program if space is available. However, if we have a significant number of students signing up for our distance learning program rather than our regular programs, we will have to reconfigure our regular programs and space may not be available in the school the student wants to return to during the current school year.
We will be sending out more information to parents after we have collected the information from the survey. This information will include details about the programs that are available and instructions for parents/guardians on how to register for distance learning support through the Education Outreach Program.
We understand that families are having to make many difficult decisions during this time and we will continue to do our best to support you.
Please contact me (rmacaula@sd83.bc.ca) if you have further questions.
Sincerely,
Rob MacAulay,
EOP Principal
