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September 10, 2021





August 24, 2021

Good Evening Berkshire Parents,

Our staff is excited to be seeing all of you for the first day of school tomorrow.  I apologize for the length of this letter, however there are many important points I want to share with you all to ensure we have a safe and successful first day of school.  I have also attached this information as a PDF if that is easier to read than in an email.  You should also be receiving an all-call with the same information

Table of Contents:
Start of Day / Dismissal
LEAPs morning program
Masks
Bussing
Visitors
Water
Covid Symptoms
Quarantining

First day Welcoming:
For the very first day of school we will return to our normal tradition of collecting all of our students outside in their homerooms and then ring the bell to "ring in the year"

While we typically do not need to wear masks while outside we are asking all students and staff to wear masks during this time due to the high volume of people in a smaller space and the close proximity that we will all be in during this time.

Start of Day / Dismissal:
Start of Day:
Our school day begins at 7:50.  Please make sure to not drop off your students before 7:50 as the building will not be open to students  until then.  Just like last year, students will not be allowed into the building until the start of the school day.

For drop off in the morning, please only use the left lane to drive up and drop your child off at the gym lobby crosswalk.  Students will then walk along the sidewalk to the main door and enter the school building.  We are asking you to only use the left lane for drop off so that we do not have students walking across the parking lot in and around moving cars.  Please be patient and wait for the car in front of you to start moving, before you move your car.  Do not attempt to drive around a parked car. 

Students who ride the bus will be dropped off at 7:50 as well.  A bus greeter will take attendance for the busses as they are dropped off.  This will help us for contact tracing purposes.

Dismissal:
Dismissal will occur the same way it did last year, Please park in the right or left lanes of the front parking lot and at 3:00 we will begin calling students for pick up, or to their bus.

Sometimes a student may take an extra long time to get all of their materials and get out to the car.  If you are in the front of the line (by the crosswalk), and have been asked to move around to the back of the line, please do so. This will allow us to continue to dismiss other families and keep the flow of traffic.

Please do not drive around a parked car.  There will be people and small children moving in and around cars that you may not see, and we want to avoid an accident.

LEAPS morning program
Leaps morning program starts the first day of school.  The program starts at 7:00 am and students can be dropped off until 7:30am, LEAPs students then join the rest of the school when the school day starts at 7:50.

Only students who have officially enrolled in the morning program so please make sure you have contacted our LEAPs coordinator, Eva Volenta at eva.valenta@fnesu.org to sign your child up if you are wanting them to attend the morning program.

If a parent drops off a student at leaps who has not been enrolled in LEAPs they will be asked to return to their car and wait until the school day begins.

The LEAPS morning program will be in the gym, so please drop off your LEAPS morning student at the crosswalk at the gym lobby and wait until they have been let into the building before you drive away.

Masks:
Masks are expected to be worn at all times by all people inside the school building.  We understand that many people have different opinions on masking, however this is the current school expectation to ensure health and safety for our students in regards to the ongoing COVID pandemic.

Please make sure to send your child to school with a properly fitting mask.  However, if a student does not have one, we have plenty on hand to provide them to wear while at school.

Teachers will continue to work to provide class mask breaks, which will be especially needed during these warmer days in the early part of the school year.

Bussing:
There will be assigned seats for all students while riding the bus.  This is an important measure for contact tracing purposes and it is an expectation that students sit in the seat they are assigned.

All individuals on the bus are expected to wear a mask during the bus ride.

Visitors:
At this time, FNESU schools have asked that we not allow visitors into the building.  This may change in the future.  While I understand that walking our child to their classroom and saying goodbye is a wonderful experience, we can not accommodate that at this time.

Water:
As I communicated to you this summer, we have had to take many of our drinking faucets out of service due to our LEAD test.  We have successfully achieved a balanced PH of 7.0 and will begin collaborating with the state and addressing the faucets and fixtures that have been removed from service.

In the meantime we will have water coolers with distilled water (like in offices) for students to use in their classrooms.  However these are not designed to be drinking faucets, therefore we ask you to have your child bring a refillable water bottle to school every day that they can use to fill up for drinking water.

COVID Symptoms
All staff and students are still asked to stay home when they have COVID related symptoms like we did this past year.  I have attached the Back to School after Illness document that we all used last year to determine if a child needed to stay home due to COVID related symptoms.

Quarantining:
If an individual student needs to quarantine we will not be providing remote learning like we did last year.  Rather, we may be able to provide learning packets for students to engage with some learning while they are home.  In general, however, we will be returning to the practice from pre covid where-in teachers would work with the student and family to help the child make up the work they missed after they return from quarantining.

If a whole class is needing to quarantine then we will plan to provide remote learning for that class using our 1:1 devices and online learning platforms such as google classroom or seesaw.  For individual families that do not have access to the internet during the remote learning time, we will work to provide individual hardcopy learning packets.


June 28, 2021

FNESU IS HAPPY TO ANNOUNCE - The Vermont Agency of Education has approved a plan to offer a K-12 Flexible Pathway Academy (a one-year pilot program).  

If you are interested in more information on the VLA/FPA program, or want to enroll in the program, please click the following link, VLA/FPA Informational Flyer to access the links to register or enroll. 

The virtual informational session will be held on Thursday July 1, 2021 at 6PM.

Families will need to enroll by July 9, 2021. 












Berkshire Elementary School
4850 Water Tower Road
Richford, VT  05476
TEL: (802) 933-2290
FAX: (802) 933-2812