September 18, 2020

Dear Parent/Caregiver,

I wanted to share some more information in relation to the start of our school year since the video I sent on September 4th. First, we have placed a COVID-19 dashboard on the main page of our website providing you with the most current information in relation to positive cases in our district. This dashboard will be updated at the end of every school day. When positive cases arise, the parents/caregivers of students in the same building in which the positive student or staff member attends/works will receive a letter through OneView within a 24 hour period as required by the Ohio Department of Health order posted on our website under District News on September 3, 2020. Contact tracing will be done and those deemed to be close contacts of the positive student or staff member will be required to quarantine for 14 days. Those close contacts will be called by our staff as well as contacted by the Allen County Health Department. Please make sure your contact information is correct in OneView so that we can effectively communicate these situations in a timely manner.

Second, we will continue to do Wellness Checks at the beginning of the day checking temperatures and completing symptom checks of our students and staff. This may change at some point as we get more information from the CDC, Ohio Department of Health, and/or the Allen County Health Department. We will communicate our change to processes with you if this happens.

Finally, all of us are facing some unique challenges this school year. One of the biggest challenges facing educators is finding the right balance for time in providing a quality education for both remote learners and traditional face to face learners. One of the changes we made to begin the school year was delaying our start date for students so that we could add trainings, prep time, and student orientations. We also added a 0 period to the school day in every building for remote learning. These changes have helped but we recognize the need for more time to be more effective in both platforms. Therefore, we have decided that we will be implementing a two-hour delay every Friday beginning next Friday September 25th. This two-hour delay on Fridays will remain in effect through the first nine weeks which ends November 4th. These delays will allow teachers to provide an asynchronous remote learning situation as well as work on recordings, lesson plans and time to communicate with students/parents. As we move through October, we will continue to evaluate this new schedule and communicate accordingly. As you know, there are a variety of different schedules being utilized by different schools and communities throughout the state of Ohio. We are trying to find the right balance to achieve our goal of providing a quality education for our students and parents whether in person or online, while at the same time setting our teachers up for success. We appreciate your patience and flexibility during this time.

Sincerely,

Rich Dackin