March 22, 2020
Dear Prince Families:
Unprecedented times call for unprecedented actions, and overall I am pleased with the performance of our school community thus far as it adjusts to this new, and temporary, sequestered lifestyle. The dean, principals, and I will meet again today, virtually, as we continue to make decisions and adjustments to improve the organization and delivery of online content to our students.
Quality, competitive organizations continuously seek self-improvement, and our partnership in your child’s education makes your input critical to our continued success. The parent survey I have previously written you about will be emailed to you this Tuesday, and I hope you will take ten minutes to provide us with your feedback. Parent survey responses will be carefully reviewed by our administrative leadership team and instructional faculty department heads to identify strengths and challenges in our current programming, and we will make changes to improve services to students to the greatest extent possible. Some parents have told us there is too much content, while others have stated they would like more. Your feedback will help clarify common trends, thus, enabling us to make better-informed decisions.
Routine and informative communication can help reduce anxiety levels, and we want to reassure you that our leadership team remains actively engaged in reviewing new information from our national, state, and local leaders. The majority of information that follows has been sent to parents by the appropriate grade level principal or director. Still, it appears here in consolidated form to keep you appraised of the changes across our school.
- The fine arts trip to New York City scheduled for April 17-21 is canceled, and we are working on refunds now.
- The Georgia High School Association (GHSA) has suspended athletic competitions until further notice. Athletic Director Ricketts is working with other local ADs in developing a local competition schedule to provide students with some athletic programming when school resumes if the GHSA elects not to do so.
- Trip week for middle school scheduled for April 27-May 1 (Washington, DC; Savannah, GA; and Kentucky) is canceled, and we are aggressively working refunds.
- The High School Junior/Senior Formal scheduled April 24 is postponed. Circumstances permitting, we will reschedule it in May with the intent of holding it on campus versus off campus.
The big question is, “When will we return to school?” We, and all the other K-12 schools in our service area, do not know the answer to that question. I can tell you we will not be returning on March 27 as I reported to you in my letter of March 13. Our goal a few days ago was to return on April 1, but we are not sure of that now. With colleges and universities throughout the southeast restricting students from their campuses for the rest of the school year and moving all instruction online, we are still seeking answers on when K-12 schools will be able to return to their campuses. Our goal is to resume on campus classes this year once permitted to do so.
I have received several questions from parents and students asking if we are canceling high school graduation since UGA and many other colleges have canceled theirs. The answer is we WILL have a high school graduation ceremony. If not on its scheduled day of May 16, we will have it on a date after that once we are permitted to gather in large groups again. This is a milestone, a lifetime memory for our students and their families, and we will have a formal ceremony at some point.
On behalf of the faculty and staff, please know we are continuing to collaborate and push ourselves as a team to seek new ways to make learning creative and fun for your students in this new environment. We, too, are doing a great deal of learning about online instruction, and we will be a stronger school because of this experience. If you missed the short video message we created on Friday to encourage you, you can view it
HERE
.
Today, my pastor reminded me that God is in control and that we should embrace, not fight, this disruption in our lives. He encouraged us to use this time to enjoy our families as we share time and space, to listen to Him, and to trust in Him as our Good Shepherd.
With warm regards and in His service,
