April 13th Letter

WESTSIDE FAMILIES:

Happy Monday and welcome back from Spring Break. We are officially in the home-stretch of this wild and bizarre second semester that now ends early for students on May 13^th! We want to keep you in the loop and plan to send out an email from my office each week. Please hang in there with us as we aren’t trying to overflow your inboxes but rather just communicate so we can all try to get/stay on the same page.

What does student check-out look like for May?

To be honest, we don’t know yet. This is one of the main things we are working on in the coming weeks. We want to create a plan and run it by the Douglas County Health Department for their approval as the safety of our students and staff is always a top priority.

• We do know that we hope to coordinate some type of social-distancing process May 14-15 and/or May 22-26 where students’ families can return instruments, costumes, textbooks, technology, etc. while also collecting personal belongings and cleaning out lockers. We might have to do this later in the summer too. We are not sure yet.

Stay tuned for more info as we work on this. We hope to communicate something by May 1^st if at all possible. Please take good care of your textbooks, iPads, laptops, instruments, etc. in the meantime.

What do we think this summer and next school year will look like?

Staying consistent with you, we don’t know yet. We know we can’t have large group gatherings through May 31^st. We anticipate an announcement from state leaders and health experts in mid to late May about what will be recommended and allowable for June and/or July. We will respond and communicate accordingly.

• We want to have summer school, Kindergarten Roundup, 6^th Grade Recognition, Warrior Walk-About/7^th Grade Orientation at WMS, WHS Graduation, etc.
• Some of our orientations might not take place until August. We might have some “Recognition” events in August or September.
• Earlier today, we sent info directly to the WHS Class of 2020 about alternate graduation plans that include the possibility of a virtual ceremony or a traditional ceremony in July.

We are trying to plan for all kinds of scenarios. Some say we might be able to start school “like normal” in August and have another forced closure in September or October to help “re-flatten the curve.” Others say we might not be able to start school until September. We are trying our best to plan for all kinds of scenarios.

What else?

We are not able to close down all of our playgrounds and school campuses/facilities. We actually locked some of the high school facilities a few weeks ago and people damaged and bent fencing to get in. Some of our elementary playgrounds are out in the open and unable to be locked up. We encourage folks to stay home and use social distancing when out in public. We don’t have available staffing to supervise and turn away people from all 13 campuses on an hourly/daily basis. We hope people that use the facilities do so in a responsible and safe fashion. Some metro schools have “closed off” their facilities but still have people on them as well due to not being able to supervise them and steer people away around the clock.

Hang in there. Smile and do your best! Thanks for all YOU do. WE are Westside!

Mike