Greetings Connect K8 Families,
Yesterday, you should have received an email from Dr. Wunder explaining our intention to continue widening the reach of our reopening plans. Because health and safety conditions have improved considerably and many of our teachers and families have received vaccinations, we are excited to share that we are shifting to in-person learning with our teachers and staff in classrooms beginning on May 4th. Please note that May 3rd will be a PD day for staff to prepare for this return.
We are asking all families to complete this Intent to Return RSVP Form for each child by 8:00pm Monday, April 26th so we can determine how many students will be returning to campus for in-class instruction and how many wish to remain remote-only learners.
All Da Vinci schools will continue to offer a full-time distance learning option for those who wish to remain remote for the rest of the 2020-21 school year. Students who remain remote will continue to zoom in to their teacher’s classes. Students who return to campus for in-person instruction will attend full-time on both of their cohort days with their teachers for live instruction. To mitigate contact tracing, we cannot honor requests for partial on-campus experiences at this time. We know this change of plan will be heard with a range of reactions--some will be excited, some confused, some nervous… We also recognize that we previously expressed skepticism about delivering learning both live and remotely at once. We carefully weighed all options and especially considering vaccinations, the success of our current partial reopening phase, and the recommended 3 feet of distance between students, we believe that bringing as many students back as wish to return and keeping all students with their teachers/classmates and same schedules is best for the remainder of this year.
We have made slight changes to our typical hybrid schedule to allow for staggered drop off/pick up and lunch times. Please take particular note of your child’s specific drop off and pick up window. Families with multiple students in different cores should use the later drop off and pick up windows. We will only be using the YELLOW route indicated in the map below for all drop off and pick up times. Thank you in advance for reviewing these documents and planning accordingly for your family!
For families choosing to remain remote, please note that the afternoon class time is optional--we realize that by extending our time on-campus, this potentially extends the time students are spending on zoom, and we want to be as flexible as possible! If your student experiences zoom fatigue or needs a plan to be “screen free” in the afternoon, they may log off for the day at lunchtime.
This change in schedule maintains compliance with our COVID safety guidelines as outlined in our COVID Handbook.
Thank you for your ongoing patience and support of our community as we work together to bring our students back to school safely!
Please reach out with any questions you might have.
With Gratitude,
Kaitlin, Tami and Michelle
